V.E Schwab - A Darker Shade of Magic

Vitari.

Just then, footsteps fell on the stairs, and Kell stiffened. No one should be able to see those stairs, let alone use them, but he could hear the boots. How had they followed him here?

And that’s when Kell saw the pattern on the swatch of pale fabric that had once been wrapped around the stone and now lay unfolded on his bed. There were symbols scrawled across it. A tracing spell.

Sanct.

Kell shoved the stone in his pocket and lunged for the window as the small door behind him burst open violently. He mounted the sill and jumped out, and down, hitting the street below hard and rolling to his feet as the intruders came crashing into his room.

Someone had set him up. Someone wanted him to bring a forbidden relic out of White London and into his city.

A figure leaped through the window in his wake, and Kell spun to face the shadows on his heels. He expected two of them, but found only one. The hooded stranger slowed, and stopped.

“Who are you?” demanded Kell.

The shadow didn’t answer him. It strode forward, reaching for the weapon at its hip, and in the low alley light Kell saw an X scarred the back of his hand. The mark of cutthroats and traitors. A knife-for-hire. But when the man drew his weapon, Kell froze. It was no rusted dagger, but a gleaming half-sword, and he knew the sigil on its hilt. The chalice and rising sun. The symbol of the royal family. It was the blade wielded by members of the royal guard. And only by them.

“Where did you get that?” growled Kell, anger rolling through him.

The cutthroat flexed his fingers around his half-sword. It began to glow dully, and Kell tensed. The swords of the royal guards weren’t just beautiful or sharp; they were enchanted . Kell himself had helped create the spellwork that ran through the metal, spellwork that dampened a magician’s power with only one cut. The blades were designed to put a stop to conflicts before they began, to remove the threat of magical retaliation. Because of their potential, and the fear of that potential in the wrong hands, the royal guards were told to keep the blade on them at all times. If one of them had lost their sword, they’d likely lost their life as well.

“Sarenach,” said the cutthroat. Surrender. The command caught Kell by surprise. Knives-for-hire took loot and blood, not prisoners.

“Put down that sword,” ordered Kell. He tried to will the weapon from the cutthroat’s grip, but it was warded. Another fail-safe to keep the blade from falling into the wrong hands. Which it already had. Kell swore and drew his own knife from its holster. It was a good foot shorter than the royal blade.

“Surrender,” said the cutthroat again, his voice strangely even. He tilted up his chin and Kell caught a glimmer of magic in the man’s eyes. A compulsion spell? Kell had only a moment to note the use of forbidden magic before the man lunged, the glowing weapon slicing through the air toward him. He jerked back, dodging the sword as a second figure appeared at the other end of the alley.

“Surrender,” said the second man.

“One at a time,” snapped Kell. He threw his hand into the air, and the street stones shuddered and then shot upward in a wall of rock and dirt, barring the second attacker’s path.

But the first kept coming, kept slashing, and Kell scrambled backward out of the sword’s arc. He almost made it; the blade caught his arm, slicing through fabric but narrowly missing his skin. He lunged away as the weapon cut again, but this time it found flesh, slashing across his ribs. Pain tore through Kell’s chest as blood welled and spilled down his stomach. The man pressed forward and Kell retreated a step and tried to will the street stones to rise between them. They shuddered and laid still.

“Surrender,” ordered the cutthroat in his too-even tone.

Kell pressed his hand to his shirtfront, trying to stem the blood as he dodged another slice. “No.” He spun the dagger in his hand, took it by the tip, and threw as hard as he could. The blade found its mark, and buried itself in the cutthroat’s shoulder. But to Kell’s horror, the man didn’t drop his weapon. He kept coming. Pain didn’t even register on his face as he pulled the knife free and cast it aside.

“Surrender the stone,” he said, dead-eyed.

Kell’s hand closed protectively around the talisman in his pocket. It hummed against his palm, and Kell realized as he held it that even if he could give it away—which he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, not without knowing what it was for and who was after it—he didn’t want to let it go. Couldn’t bear the thought of parting with it. Which was absurd. And yet, something in him ached to keep it.

The cutthroat came at him again.

Kell tried to take another step back, but his shoulders met the makeshift barricade.

There was nowhere to run.

Darkness glittered in the cutthroat’s eyes and his blade sang through the air, and Kell threw out his empty hand and ordered, “Stop,” as if that would do a damned thing.

And yet, somehow, it did.

The word echoed through the alley, and between one reverberation and the next, the night changed around him. Time seemed to slow, and so did the cutthroat, and so did Kell, but the stone clutched in his hand surged to life. Kell’s own magic had bled out through the wound across his ribs, but the stone sang with power, and thick black smoke poured between his fingers. It shot up Kell’s arm and across his chest and down his outstretched hand, and rushed forward through the air toward the cutthroat. When the smoke reached him, it did not strike him, did not force him off his feet. Instead, it twisted and coiled around the cutthroat’s body, spreading over his legs, up his arms, around his chest. And everywhere it touched, as soon as it touched, it froze , catching the cutthroat between one stride and the next, one breath and the next.

Time snapped back into motion, and Kell gasped, his pulse pounding in his ears and the stone singing in his grip.

The stolen royal blade hung mid-slash, inches from his face. The cutthroat himself stood motionless, his coat caught midbillow behind him. Through the sheet of shadowy ice or stone or whatever it was, Kell could see the cutthroat’s stiff form, eyes open and empty. Not the blank gaze of the compelled, but the vacancy of the dead.

Kell stared down at the stone still thrumming in his hand, at the glowing symbol on its face.

Vitari.

It is the word for magic. It refers to its existence, and its creation.

Could it also mean the act of creating?

There was no blood command for create . The golden rule of magic said that it couldn’t be created. The world was made of give and take, and magic could be strengthened and weakened, but it could not be manifested out of nothing. And yet … he reached out to touch the frozen man.

Had the power somehow been summoned by his blood? But he hadn’t given a blood command, hadn’t done anything but say “Stop.”

The stone had done the rest.

Which was impossible. Even with the strongest elemental magic, one had to focus on the form they wanted it to take. But Kell hadn’t envisioned the frozen shell, which meant the stone didn’t simply follow an order. It interpreted . It created . Was this the way magic had worked in Black London? Without walls, without rules, without anything but want and will?

Kell forced himself to return the talisman to his pocket. His fingers didn’t want to relinquish it. It took all his focus to let go, and the moment the stone slipped from his hand back into his coat, a dizzy chill ran through him, and the world rocked. He felt weak as well as wounded. Drained. It isn’t something for nothing after all , thought Kell. But it was still something. Something powerful. Something dangerous.