The Fragile Threads of Power, page 35
Yes, thought Berras, the word rising like bile in his throat. He hated Alucard for having so much magic. He hated Alucard for being soft. There were tears in his eyes when he looked up, and Berras hated him for that, too, the way he let them roll down his cheeks, the emotion that flooded his face. He hated Alucard for not hating himself.
Berras’s sore knuckles cracked as he clenched his fists. Someone had to teach him. It was his job, their father said. He was the oldest. The example. If Alucard was weak, it was because Berras had failed to make him strong.
“Our father says—” he started.
“Our father is cruel,” snapped Alucard, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “He was mean before Mother died, and he is meaner now. Why must you follow at his heels?”
“That is what it means, to be a son.”
“No,” said Alucard, “that is what it means to be a shadow.”
Berras towered over him. “Do you know what it means to be an Emery?”
“I thought it stood for pride and honor,” said Alucard, scrubbing at his tears, “but apparently, it means one is a raging dic—”
Berras struck him again. This time, Alucard at least put up a fight. His hand flew out, and the water in the pitcher surged to him, froze around his forearm as he brought it up to block the blow. The ice shattered with the force of Berras’s fist, and knocked Alucard to the floor again.
Anisa reappeared, tugging on their father’s arm, trying to pull him into the room, to make him intercede. But if she wanted help, she should have called a servant. Reson Emery only stood there, watching. His eyes skated over Alucard as if he were invisible, and went to Berras, landing on the blood that wept from his ruined knuckles.
“Well,” he sneered, “did you at least win?”
Berras met his father’s gaze. “I always do.”
II
NOW
Moonlight spilled into the royal chamber, mixing with the Isle’s glow. It cast thin fingers over the bed, over Rhy’s shoulder, as it rose and fell, the rest of him weighted down by sleep; over Alucard Emery as he sat up, gasping for breath.
It was just a dream, he told himself, over the angry hammer of his heart.
Just a dream. But that was, of course, a lie. It was a tangle of memories, of brutal moments wound together into nightmare. It was his sister burning from the inside out. It was iron chains in the belly of a ship. It was Berras breaking his bones while their father watched.
Alucard looked down at his hands where they gripped the sheet, forced his fingers to release their hold, frowned when he saw that they were shaking. He flung off the covers, and rose, reaching for his robe, shivering as the silk kissed his bare skin.
The nightmares left him feeling raw, old wounds reopened, nerves exposed. He could feel sleep retreating like a tide, and knew he would have to swim to meet it.
He padded barefoot to the gilded tray against the wall, with its stoppered bottles, and short glass cups waiting to be filled. He could have lit a lamp, but the truth was, he had made the tincture for Rhy so many times that he could do it by feel, even without the glow of the river and the moon. He ran his fingertips over the bottles until he felt the sharp edge of the diamond-shaped stopper, and drew it out. As he did, he should have heard as much as felt the liquid slosh within. Instead, there was only absence. The bottle was empty.
Alucard swore under his breath.
In the bed, Rhy rolled over, murmured something to himself before sinking deeper into sleep. Alucard went to his side, bowed just long enough to kiss his brow, then slipped the empty vial into the pocket of his robe, and left.
* * *
The queen’s workshop was empty.
It was strange, thought Alucard, given the hour. Nadiya always said the darkest part of the night was the best for getting anything of value done. Those long, black hours before dawn, when she could cast off the mantles of mother and queen and be what she wanted most: a Loreni. An inventor.
Another time, Alucard might have lingered to explore. But tonight, he wanted only to find his way back to sleep. The kind that fell like a curtain, and brought neither dreams nor memories.
He went to the chest on the far side of the room, its surface covered in cut-glass vials, jars of herbs, a stone mortar and pestle. The vessels were all marked, and he studied their labels, trying to remember the exact portions of dreamsquick and hallowsroot as he drew the empty bottle from his pocket. He’d just taken up the first vial, was trying to decide between three drops and four, when a voice behind him cut in.
“There’s a fine line between medicine and poison.”
He turned, and saw Nadiya at the base of the stairs, a tray balanced on her hip.
“I thought you might be asleep,” he said.
“At this hour?” she asked, as if that were absurd. “I wanted tea.” She set the tray down. It held a steaming pot, a cup, and a stack of small spiced cookies.
“I’m sure the servants would have obliged.”
“I’m sure,” she said, striding toward him. “But I have two legs and a passing ability to boil water.” She plucked the empty bottle from his hand and shooed him away from the chest.
“You know,” she went on, drawing the dropper from the hallowsroot, “there are times in life when it serves one to guess, and times when it does not.” Two small beads of liquid disappeared into the bottle. “This is one of the latter. Unless, of course, you like not knowing if you’ll wake.”
“I would prefer it,” he said as she returned the hallowsroot, and reached past the dreamsquick for a bundle of widowswork instead, dropping a leaf into the mortar.
“The king is going through this batch quite quickly.”
“It’s not for him,” admitted Alucard.
Nadiya met his gaze but said nothing, only returned to preparing the tonic. He decided to make himself useful; drifted toward the tray and poured the tea, swiping a spiced cookie from the top of the stack. He placed the cup at her elbow.
“Did you know that the Antari are in residence?” she asked, as if making pleasant conversation.
“Mhmm,” he said around the cookie. Swallowed. Offered nothing else. The queen was brilliant, but her eyes took on a different light when Kell and Lila were around. She called it curiosity. He called it hunger.
“What brings them to London after all this time?” she pressed.
“The Hand,” he said, then continued to wander about the queen’s workshop as he explained about the raid on Maris Patrol’s floating market, and the stolen persalis, and Bard’s certainty that it had been smuggled here to use against the crown. He trailed off as he reached the worktable in the middle of the room.
“What’s this?” he asked, studying the counter.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” the queen called without turning to see. But Alucard was busy trying to make sense of the sight himself.
The three Antari rings were out of their glass box. The wide silver bands sat like weights, pinning the corners of a large black cloth, its surface covered in Nadiya’s slanted hand, the white chalk markings of a spell. The marks were connected, a vast, intricate web of lines, and at their center sat two lengths of chain, both wrought in gold. One was thinner and shorter than the other.
“Oh, that,” said the queen, appearing at his side. She set her tea down on a nearby stack of books, and handed him the sleeping tonic. He slipped it absently into his robe, unable to take his eyes from the work laid out before him.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“Right now? It is a work in progress. One day, perhaps, it will change everything.” Unease prickled beneath his skin as Nadiya took up the thicker chain, held it between her hands as if it were a priestly relic.
“It’s one thing,” she said, “to devise an object that magnifies a user’s magic, as long as that magic is confined to a single element. Two water mages. Two fire workers. Two—or even three—Antari. Something that functions only as an amplifier, allowing one magician to borrow another’s strength. But it is quite another for that magician to borrow a different power. Imagine being able to pair a water worker and an earth mage, or a fire maker and a wind one. Or”—her eyes flicked up to his—“a person without magic, and one who has plenty.”
A dark feeling coiled in his stomach. “Nadiya—”
“Those rings allowed the Antari to do it once,” she went on. “Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, they respond only to Antari. Which severely limits their application. I couldn’t modify them, so I had to start from scratch. Here,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
And before he could say no, she wound the gold chain around his wrist. Alucard shivered at the cold weight of the metal on his skin, the way it wrapped against itself, the echo of old chains. He waited, but felt nothing else change.
“How does it work?” he asked, as Nadiya took up the smaller length of chain and wrapped it around her index finger, where it bound to itself, becoming a gold ring.
She said nothing to activate the spell, only flexed her hand, as if admiring the bauble. But as she did, Alucard felt the gold chain tighten around his wrist, and become a cuff, flush with his skin, a band with no beginning and no end.
Nadiya flashed him a performer’s smile. “Let me show you.”
She crooked her fingers, and as she did, Alucard felt something come loose inside him. It was the strangest sensation, a collapsing inward, a weight dropping, if the weight were his lungs, his heart, everything that took up space beneath his skin. A dizzy lightness, a sudden, shocking hollow. And he didn’t know what was missing, what was gone, until the air around Nadiya’s hand began to ripple. Until the teacup rose and the contents spun out and the three elements churned together above her palm—wind, and earth, and water.
Even though Nadiya had only ever been a fire worker.
Those were his elements, his magic, or they had been. Alucard caught his own reflection in a mirrored surface, and saw the air around him bare of color, the blue and green and amber threads of his magic now twining through the air around Nadiya instead, braiding with the red of her power.
He tried to pull the magic back, only to find he couldn’t reach it. There was nothing to grab on to. It simply … wasn’t there.
“Give it back,” he demanded, clawing uselessly at the gold around his wrist.
“That’s the trouble,” she said, eyes trained on the twisting elements above her palm. “It is much easier to take a thing than share it.”
Alucard felt sick. The way he had his first days at sea, when the deck tipped and bobbed beneath his feet. He threw out a hand to steady himself. “Nadiya.”
But she went on, as if she weren’t holding his stolen magic in her hand. “Ideally, the power would go both ways. Shared equally between its users. As you can tell, right now, it’s one-directional.” She looked around the workshop. “Interesting,” she said. “I still can’t see the way you do.”
“Nadiya, stop.” The words came out soft and hoarse, and her attention flicked back to Alucard, as if she’d forgotten him entirely.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, touching the ring, and it unraveled again, the short gold chain dropping into her palm; the elements she’d controlled a moment before now crumbled and fell away. The cuff went slack around Alucard’s wrist, and violently he shook off the adornment, as if it were a snake, the gold rope chiming faintly when it hit the floor.
He could feel his magic pour back in as if he were a vessel, emptied and refilled. It churned with his shock and anger and for a second he was torn between charging the queen, and getting as far away from her as he could.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded as she knelt to retrieve the fallen length of gold.
The queen looked at him, perplexed. “Come now, Alucard,” she said, returning both pieces to the table. “It was only a test.”
“You weren’t the one chained.” He straightened, flexing his fingers, studying the threads of magic in the air above his skin. “You had no right to do that.”
Nadiya sighed, impatient. “I thought it would be easier to demonstrate than to explain.” She took up a narrow piece of chalk and began to make notes on the edge of the cloth. “As I said, it isn’t finished. When I’m done, the spell will always go both ways, to ensure consent.”
“There is a reason power has limits,” he said.
The queen clicked her tongue. “You sound like the Aven Essen. Ezril is always coming down here, lecturing me about the balance of magic, the flow of power. As if all we’re capable of is floating down the stream. Sometimes you have to bend the rules—”
“This isn’t bending, Nadiya. This is binding. And in the wrong hands—”
She waved him off. “In the wrong hands a paring knife can end a man’s life. Shall we ban them from the kitchen?”
Alucard stared at her, aghast. Nadiya Loreni was a brilliant inventor, but she had a kind of tunnel vision when it came to her work. She never seemed to see the danger in it, only the potential. In her mind, power was a neutral force. Alucard wished he could agree.
“This is dangerous.”
“This is progress,” she shot back. “Magic chooses, that’s what the priests say. Do you believe that you’ve been chosen? That the forces guiding the world decided you should be able to wield not one element but three? What makes you so deserving?” He said nothing, then. He had no answer. “Why should some arbitrary force decide who wields water or fire or stone? Who has magic and who does not?”
Alucard stilled—this was not some pursuit followed for the sake of curiosity. This was a weapon against scrutiny, a way to protect their family and their throne. He did not blame her for it. And yet.
“Nadiya,” he said, the anger slipping from his voice.
But it only mounted in hers. “Think of Rhy. Of how many people claim he should not be allowed to rule simply because he has no magic.”
“Those people are fools,” he said.
“Of course they are,” she said, “but fools have voices, and voices carry. They want to punish Rhy, Alucard, all because magic did not choose him. But we can. We can give him power.”
“By taking it from someone else.”
“It isn’t done,” she said, exasperated.
“Yes, it is.” It had to be. Because Alucard understood. Understood that if Nadiya offered Rhy power, he might take it, and if he did, those people—the ones who called him weak—wouldn’t stop, they’d simply have another, better reason to hate him. They would find out his magic was borrowed, or stolen, the balance of the world tipped unrightly in his favor, and then, when they called for his head, they would be right.
He stepped toward Nadiya, set his hands on the queen’s shoulders, and met her eyes.
“Destroy it,” warned Alucard, “or I will.”
III
WHITE LONDON
Holland Vosijk stood beside the tree in the center of Kosika’s room.
It had grown over the last year, from a knee-high sapling to a tree half as tall as the room was high, a hundred eyes staring out from its pale trunk, and its leaves the color of amber. But unlike the ones in the Silver Wood, those leaves never fell. They colored, and withered, curled in only to fan wide again when the seasons changed.
The servants whispered of the tree that had taken root overnight. Spoke of signs and miracles. They had no idea how right they were.
“How was the tithe?” asked Holland now.
“You should have come with me,” said Kosika, rising from the kol-kot board, where she’d left Nasi’s present.
His eyes found hers. “I am always with you.”
She felt warmth flood beneath her skin as he said it, turned to hide the blush and made her way to the basin. It stood waiting on a marble shelf, a bottle of salve and a length of clean cloth beside it. A castle of servants at the ready, but she preferred to tend the tithing cuts herself. They thought it was a part of the ritual, when in truth, it was privacy, so that she and her saint could speak.
Kosika rolled up her sleeve. Her head was bowed over her work, but she could feel Holland’s shadow fall over her as she cleaned the four fresh cuts that scored her forearm.
“You are troubled.”
She looked down into the basin, the water tinted with her blood. “I feel the city’s magic getting stronger. I do.” She swallowed. “But some days it feels like the soil will never be sated.”
Holland rested his hand on her head. She could feel it—no longer just the shadow of a touch, but something closer to flesh and bone. “Magic can speed the work of many things, Kosika. But change itself will always take time.”
His words were steady, but she was sure that if she turned her gaze to his, she’d see disappointment in his eyes. She was disappointing him. Her king. Her saint.
The weight of his fingers fell away. “We are working a vast and complicated spell. You must be patient.”
Kosika shook her head as she smoothed the cold salve across the inside of her arm. Patience was a word for ordinary souls. She was Antari. If she could not summon enough magic—she tried to silence the fears, knew she shouldn’t give voice to them, lest he take her thoughts as a lack of faith. But of course, he heard them anyway.
Holland sighed, soft, almost soundless. “Perhaps you are expecting too much.”
Kosika turned toward him. “What do you mean?”
He was quiet for several moments, and though one eye was black and one green, somehow, they both seemed to darken. “Only that you are young, and I am … a shadow of myself. We have done much, and if the city grows no stronger—”
“No,” she snapped.
“It is better than it was.”
“A candle is better than the dark,” she said. “But it is not enough to warm your hands by. Not enough to banish the cold from your hearth. And not enough to light a city.”
Holland considered her. A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. “So stubborn, little queen. But you cannot build a fire like that from will alone.”
