V.E Schwab - A Darker Shade of Magic

“What happened to the Sea King ?” he asked.

“It burned down.” A defiant flutter of pride filled her chest when his eyes widened a fraction in surprise. She liked surprising Barron. It wasn’t an easy thing to do.

“Did it now?” he asked lightly.

“You know how it is,” said Lila with a shrug. “Old wood goes up so easy.”

Barron gave her a long look, then exhaled a smoke-filled breath. “Powell should’ve been more careful with his brig.”

“Yeah,” said Lila. She fiddled with the brim of the top hat.

“You smell like smoke.”

“I need to rent a room.” The words stuck in her throat.

“Funny,” said Barron, taking another puff. “I distinctly remember you suggesting that I take my tavern and all its many—albeit modest—rooms and shove each and every one of them up my—”

“Things change,” she said as she plucked the cigar from his mouth and took a drag.

He studied her in the lamplight. “You okay?”

Lila studied the smoke as it poured through her lips. “I’m always okay.”

She handed back the cigar and dug the silver watch out of her vest pocket. It was warm and smooth, and she didn’t know why she liked it so much, but she did. Maybe because it was a choice. Taking it had been a choice. Keeping it had been one, too. And maybe the choice started as a random one, but there was something to it. Maybe she’d kept it for a reason. Or maybe she’d only kept it for this. She held it out to Barron. “Will this buy me a few nights?”

The owner of the Stone’s Throw considered the watch. And then he reached out and curled Lila’s fingers over it.

“Keep it,” he said casually. “I know you’re good for the coin.”

Lila slid the trinket back into her pocket, thankful for its weight as she realized she was back to nothing. Well, almost nothing. A top hat, a map to anywhere—or nowhere—a handful of knives, a flintlock, a few coins, and a silver watch.

Barron pushed the door open, but when she turned to go inside, he barred her path. “No one here’s a mark. You got that?”

Lila nodded stiffly. “I’m not staying long,” she said. “Just till the smoke clears.”

The sound of glass breaking reached them beyond the doorway, and Barron sighed and went inside, calling over his shoulder, “Welcome back.”

Lila sighed and looked up, not at the sky but at the upper windows of the dingy little tavern. It was hardly a pirate ship, a place for freedom and adventure.

Just till the smoke clears , she echoed to herself.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad. After all, she hadn’t come back to the Stone’s Throw with her tail tucked between her legs. She was in hiding. A wanted man. She smiled at the irony of the term.

A piece of paper flapped on a post beside the door. It was the same notice the constable had showed her, and she smiled at the figure in the broad-brimmed hat and mask staring out at her beneath the word WANTED. The Shadow Thief, they called her. They’d drawn her even taller and thinner than she actually was, stretched her into a wraith, black-clad and fearsome. The stuff of fairy tales. And legends.

Lila winked at the shadow before going in.

IV

WHITE THRONE

I

“Perhaps it should be a masquerade instead.”

“Focus.”

“Or maybe a costume ball. Something with a bit of flare.”

“Come on, Rhy. Pay attention.”

The prince sat in a high-backed chair, gold-buckled boots kicked up on the table, rolling a glass ball between his hands. The orb was part of a larger, more intricate version of the game Kell had pawned off in the Stone’s Throw. In place of pebbles or puddles or piles of sand nesting on the little board, there were five glass balls, each containing an element. Four still sat in the dark wood chest on the table, its inside lined with silk and its edges capped in gold. The one in Rhy’s hands held a handful of earth, and it tipped side to side with the motion of his fingers. “Costumes with layers, ones that can be taken off …” he went on.

Kell sighed.

“We can all start the night in full-dress and end in—”

“You’re not even trying.”

Rhy groaned. His boots hit the floor with a thud as he straightened and held the glass ball up between them. “Fine,” he said. “Observe my magical prowess.” Rhy squinted at the dirt trapped inside the glass and, attempting to focus, spoke to the earth under his breath in low murmuring English. But the earth did not move. Kell watched a crease appear between Rhy’s eyes as he focused and whispered and waited and grew increasingly irritated. At last, the dirt shifted (albeit half-heartedly) within the glass.

“I did it!” exclaimed Rhy.

“You shook it,” said Kell.

“I wouldn’t dare!”

“Try again.”

Rhy made a sound of dismay as he slumped in his chair. “Sanct, Kell. What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong,” insisted Kell.

“I speak eleven languages,” said Rhy. “Some for countries I have never seen, nor am likely to set foot in, yet I cannot coax a clod of dirt to move, or a drop of water to rise from its pool.” His temper flared. “It’s maddening!” he growled. “Why is the language of magic so hard for my tongue to master?”

“Because you cannot win the elements over with your charm or your smile or your status,” said Kell.

“They disrespect me,” said Rhy with a dry smile.

“The earth beneath your feet does not care you will be king. Nor the water in your cup. Nor the air you breathe. You must speak to them as equal, or even better, as supplicant.”

Rhy sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I know. I know. I only wish …” he trailed off.

Kell frowned. Rhy looked genuinely upset. “Wish what?”

Rhy’s gaze lifted to meet Kell’s, the pale gold glittering even as a wall went up behind them. “I wish I had a drink,” he said, burying the matter. He shoved up from his chair and crossed the chamber to pour himself one from a sideboard against the wall. “I do try, Kell. I want to be good, or at least better. But we can’t all be …” Rhy took a sip and waved his hand at Kell.

The word he assumed Rhy was looking for was Antari . The word he used was “You.”

“What can I say?” said Kell, running his hand through his hair. “I’m one of a kind.”

“Two of a kind,” corrected Rhy.

Kell’s brow creased. “I’ve been meaning to ask; what was Holland doing here?”

Rhy shrugged and wandered back toward the chest of elements. “The same thing he always is. Delivering mail.” Kell considered the prince. Something was off. Rhy was a notorious fidgeter whenever he was lying, and Kell watched him shift his weight from foot to foot and tap his fingers against the open lid of the chest. But rather than press the issue, Kell let it drop and, instead, reached down and plucked another of the glass balls from the chest, this one filled with water. He balanced it in his palm, fingers splayed.

“You’re trying too hard.” Kell bid the water in the glass to move, and it moved, swirling first loosely within the orb and then faster and tighter, creating a small, contained cyclone.

“That’s because it is hard,” said Rhy. “Just because you make it look easy doesn’t mean it is.”

Kell wouldn’t tell Rhy that he didn’t even need to speak in order to move the water. That he could simply think the words, feel them, and the element listened, and answered. Whatever flowed through the water—and the sand, and the earth, and the rest—flowed through him, too, and he could will it, as he would a limb, to move for him. The only exception was blood. Though it flowed as readily as the rest, blood itself did not obey the laws of elements—it could not be manipulated, told to move, or forced to still. Blood had a will of its own, and had to be addressed not as an object, but as an equal, an adversary. Which was why Antari stood apart. For they alone held dominion not only over elements, but also over blood. Where elemental invocation was designed simply to help the mind focus, to find a personal synchronicity with the magic—it was meditative, a chant as much as a summoning—the Antari blood commands were, as the term suggested, commands . The words Kell spoke to open doors or heal wounds with his blood were orders . And they had to be given in order to be obeyed.