Despite the chill, his hands were bare inside their pockets; his fingertips were going numb, but Antari relied on their hands and their blood to do magic, and gloves were cumbersome, an obstacle to quick-drawn spells. Not that he feared an attack on Grey London soil, but he’d rather be prepared….
Then again, with George, even simple conversation felt a bit like a duel, the two possessing little love and less trust for one another. Plus, the new king’s fascination with magic was growing. How long before George had Kell attacked, just to see if and how he would defend himself? But then, such a move would forfeit the communication between their worlds, and Kell didn’t think the king was that foolish. At least he hoped not; as much as Kell hated George, he didn’t want to lose his one excuse to travel.
Kell’s hand found the coin in his pocket, and he turned it over and over absently to keep his fingers warm. He assumed they were walking toward a graveyard, but instead the king led him to a church.
“St. George’s Chapel,” he explained, stepping through.
It was impressive, a towering structure, full of sharp edges. Inside, the ceiling vaulted over a checkered stone floor. George handed off his outer coat without looking; he simply assumed someone would be there to take it, and they were. Kell looked up at the light pouring in through the stained-glass windows, and thought absently that this wouldn’t be such a bad place to be buried. Until he realized that George III hadn’t been laid to rest up here, surround by sunlight.
He was in the vault.
The ceiling was lower, and the light was thin, and that, paired with the scent of dusty stone, made Kell’s skin crawl.
George took an unlit candelabrum from a shelf. “Would you mind?” he asked. Kell frowned. There was something hungry in the way George asked. Covetous.
“Of course,” said Kell. He reached out toward the candles, his fingers hovering above before continuing past them to a vase of long-stemmed matches. He took one, struck it with a small, ceremonial flourish, and lit the candles.
George pursed his lips, disappointed. “You were all too eager to perform for my father.”
“Your father was a different man,” said Kell, waving the match out.
George’s frown deepened. He obviously wasn’t used to being told no, but Kell wasn’t sure if he was upset at being denied in general, or being denied magic specifically. Why was he so intent on a demonstration? Did he simply crave proof? Entertainment? Or was it more than that?
He trailed the man through the royal vault, suppressing a shudder at the thought of being buried here. Being put in a box in the ground was bad enough, but being entombed like this, with layers of stone between you and the world? Kell would never understand the way these Grey-worlders sealed away their dead, trapping the discarded shells in gold and wood and stone as if some remnant of who they’d been in life remained. And if it did? What a cruel punishment.
When George reached his father’s tomb, he set the candelabrum down, swept the hem of his coat into his hand, and knelt, head bowed. His lips moved silently for a few seconds, and then he drew a gold cross from his collar and touched it to his lips. Finally he stood, frowning at the dust on his knees and brushing it away.
Kell reached out and rested his hand thoughtfully on the tomb, wishing he could feel something—anything—within. It was silent and cold.
“It would be proper to say a prayer,” said the king.
Kell frowned, confused. “To what end?”
“For his soul, of course.” Kell’s confusion must have showed. “Don’t you have God in your world?” He shook his head. George seemed taken aback. “No higher power?”
“I didn’t say that,” answered Kell. “I suppose you could say we worship magic. That is our highest power.”
“That is heresy.”
Kell raised a brow, his hand slipping from the tomb’s lid. “Your Majesty, you worship a thing you can neither see nor touch, whereas I worship something I engage with every moment of every day. Which is the more logical path?”
George scowled. “It isn’t a matter of logic. It is a matter of faith.”
Faith. It seemed a shallow substitution, but Kell supposed he couldn’t blame the Grey-worlders. Everyone needed to believe in something, and without magic, they had settled for a lesser god. One full of holes and mystery and made-up rules. The irony was that they had abandoned magic long before it abandoned them, smothered it with this almighty God of theirs.
“But what of your dead?” pressed the king.
“We burn them.”
“A pagan ritual,” he said scornfully.
“Better than putting their bodies in a box.”
“And what of their souls?” pressed George, seeming genuinely disturbed. “Where do you think they go, if you don’t believe in heaven and hell?”
“They go back to the source,” said Kell. “Magic is in everything, Your Majesty. It is the current of life. We believe that when you die, your soul returns to that current, and your body is reduced again to elements.”
“But what of you?”
“You cease to be.”
“What is the point, then?” grumbled the king. “Of living a good life, if there is nothing after? Nothing earned?”
Kell had often wondered the same thing, in his own way, but it wasn’t an afterlife he craved. He simply didn’t want to return to nothing, as if he’d never been. But it would be a cold day in Grey London’s hell before he agreed with the new king on anything. “I suppose the point is to live well.”
George’s complexion was turning ruddy. “But what stops one from committing sins, if they have nothing to fear?”
Kell shrugged. “I’ve seen people sin in the name of god, and in the name of magic. People misuse their higher powers, no matter what form they take.”
“But no afterlife,” grumbled the king. “No eternal soul? It’s unnatural.”
“On the contrary,” said Kell. “It is the most natural thing in the world. Nature is made of cycles, and we are made of nature. What is unnatural is believing in an infallible man and a nice place waiting in the sky.”
George’s expression darkened. “Careful, Master Kell. That is blasphemy.”
Kell frowned. “You’ve never struck me as a very pious man, Your Majesty.”
The king crossed himself. “Better safe than sorry. Besides,” he said, looking around, “I am the King of England. My legacy is divine. I rule by the grace of that God you mock. I am His servant, as this kingdom is mine at His grace.” It sounded like a recitation. The king tucked the cross back beneath his collar. “Perhaps,” he added, twisting up his face, “I would worship your god, if I could see and touch it as you do.”
And here they were again. The old king had regarded magic with awe, a child’s wonder. This new king looked at it the way he looked at everything. With lust.
“I warned you once, Your Majesty,” said Kell. “Magic has no place in your world. Not anymore.”
George smiled, and for an instant he looked more like a wolf than a well-fed man. “You said yourself, Master Kell, that the world is full of cycles. Perhaps our time will come again.” And then the grin was gone, swallowed up by his usual expression of droll amusement. The effect was disconcerting, and it made Kell wonder if the man was really as dense and self-absorbed as his people thought, or if there was something there, beneath the shallow, self-indulgent shell.
What had Astrid Dane said?
I do not trust things unless they belong to me.
A draft cut through the vault, flickering the candlelight. “Come,” said George, turning his back on Kell and the old king’s tomb.
Kell hesitated, then drew the Red London lin from his pocket, the star glittering in the center of the coin. He always brought one for the king; every month, the old monarch claimed that the magic in his own was fading, like heat from dying coals, so Kell would bring him one to trade, pocket-warm and smelling of roses. Now Kell considered the coin, turning it over his fingers.