The box was made of dark, notched wood and held shut by a small silver clasp. It was a fine thing, and she would have been able to sell it for a bit of coin, but Lila kept it close. Not out of sentimentality, she told herself—her silver pocket watch was the only thing she couldn’t bring herself to sell—but because it was useful.
She slid the silver clasp, and the game board fell open in front of her, the elements in their grooves—earth and air, fire and water and bone—waiting to be moved. Lila flexed her fingers. She knew that most people could only master a single element, maybe two, and that she, being of another London, shouldn’t be able to master any.
But Lila never let odds get in her way.
Besides, that old priest, Master Tieren, had told her that she had power somewhere in her bones. That it only needed to be nurtured.
Now she held her hands above either side of the drop of oil in its groove, palms in as if she could warm herself by it. She didn’t know the words to summon magic. Alucard insisted that she didn’t need to learn another tongue, that words were more for the user than the object, meant to help one focus, but without a proper spell, Lila felt silly. Nothing but a mad girl talking to herself in the dark. No, she needed something, and a poem, she had figured, was kind of like a spell. Or at least, it was more than just its words.
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright …” she murmured under her breath.
She didn’t know many poems—stealing didn’t lend itself to literary study—but she knew Blake by heart, thanks to her mother. Lila didn’t remember much of the woman, who was more than a decade dead, but she remembered this—nights drawn to sleep by Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The gentle cadence of her mother’s voice, rocking her like waves against a boat.
The words lulled Lila now, as they had back then, quieted the storm that rolled inside her head, and loosened the thief’s knot of tension in her chest.
“In the forests of the night …”
Lila’s palms warmed as she wove the poem through the air. She didn’t know if she was doing it right, if there was such a thing as right—if Kell were here, he would probably insist there was, and nag her until she did it, but Kell wasn’t here, and Lila figured there was more than one way to make a thing work.
“In what distant deeps or skies …”
Perhaps power had to be tended, like Tieren said, but not all things grew in gardens.
Plenty of plants grew wild.
And Lila had always thought of herself more as a weed than a rose bush.
“Burnt the fire of thine eyes?”
The oil in its groove sparked to life: not white like Alucard’s hearth, but gold. Lila grinned triumphantly as the flame leaped from the groove into the air between her palms, dancing like molten metal, reminding her of the parade she’d seen that first day in Red London, when elementals of every kind danced through the streets, fire and water and air like ribbons in their wake.
The poem continued in her head as the heat tickled her palms. Kell would say it was impossible. What a useless word, in a world with magic.
What are you? Kell had asked her once.
What am I? She wondered now, as the fire rolled across her knuckles like a coin.
She let the fire go out, the drop of oil sinking back into its groove. The flame was gone, but Lila could feel the magic lingering in the air like smoke as she took up her newest knife, the one she’d won off Lenos. It was no ordinary weapon. A month back, when they’d taken a Faroan pirate ship called the Serpent off the coast of Korma, she’d seen him use it. Now she ran her hand along the blade until she found the hidden notch, where the metal met the hilt. She pushed the clasp, and it released, and the knife performed a kind of magic trick. It separated in her hands, and what had been one blade now became two, mirror images as thin as straight-edged razors. Lila touched the bead of oil and ran her finger along the backs of both knives. And then she balanced them in her hands, crossed their sharpened edges—Tyger Tyger, burning bright—and struck.
Fire licked along the metal, and Lila smiled.
This she hadn’t seen Lenos do.
The flames spread until they coated the blades from hilt to tip, burning with golden light.
This she hadn’t seen anyone do.
What am I? One of a kind.
They said the same thing about Kell.
The Red messenger.
The black-eyed prince.
The last Antari.
But as she twirled the fire-slicked knives in her fingers, she couldn’t help but wonder …
Were they really one of a kind, or two?
She carved a fiery arc through the air, marveling at the path of light trailing like a comet’s tail, and remembered the feeling of his eyes on her back as she walked away. Waiting. Lila smiled at the memory. She had no doubt their paths would cross again.
And when they did, she would show him what she could do.
I
RED LONDON
Kell knelt in the center of the Basin.
The large circular room was hollowed out of one of the bridge pillars that held up the palace. Set beneath the Isle’s current, the faintest red glow from the river permeated the glassy stone walls with eerie light. A concentration circle had been etched into the stone floor, its pattern designed to channel power, and the whole space, wall and air alike, hummed with energy, a deep resonant sound like the inside of a bell.
Kell felt the power welling in him, wanting out—felt all the energy and the tension and the anger and the fear clawing for escape—but he forced himself to focus on his breathing, to find his center, to make a conscious act of the process that had become so natural. He wound back the mental clock until he was ten again, sitting on the floor of the monastic cell in the London Sanctuary, Master Tieren’s steady voice in his head.
Magic is tangled, so you must be smooth.
Magic is wild, so you must be tame.
Magic is chaos, so you must be calm.
Are you calm, Kell?
Kell rose slowly to his feet, and raised his head. Beyond the concentration circle, the darkness twisted and the shadows loomed. In the flickering torchlight, sparring forms seemed to take the faces of enemies.
Tieren’s soothing voice faded from his head, and Holland’s cold tone took its place.
Do you know what makes you weak?
The Antari’s voice echoed in his head.
Kell stared into the shadows beyond the circle, imagining a flutter of cloak, a glint of steel.
You’ve never had to be strong.
The torchlight wavered, and Kell inhaled, exhaled, and struck.
He slammed into the first form, toppling it. By the time the shadow fell, Kell was already turning on the second one at his back.
You’ve never had to try.
Kell threw out his hand; water leaped to circle it and then, in one motion, sailed toward the figure, turning to ice the instant before it crashed into the form’s head.
You’ve never had to fight.
Kell spun and found himself face to face with a shadow that took the shape of Holland.