“I’m well aware what I can do,” said Lila.

  Maris shot her a warning look. “Everything you do can be done with a spell. That was the theory. So fabricators set out to design spellwork that could emulate your gifts.”

  A bad feeling was beginning to curl in Lila’s gut, but this time, she didn’t interrupt.

  “Antari magic,” continued Maris, “is the place where spell and element meet. It is simple, and elegant, and the craft needed to replicate it was none of those things. It was volatile, and complicated, and required devices to contain the magic, to keep the spells from falling apart, or unraveling in horrible ways.”

  “But it worked,” guessed Lila.

  “But it worked,” said Maris. “The object they stole is called a persalis. A doormaker.”

  Lila’s bad feeling turned to horror. “Tell me this doesn’t make doors between worlds.”

  “Thankfully, no,” said Maris. “Only Antari were ever able to manage that. But it does make doors within them. The iron ring in the front comes free and is used to mark the destination. The box creates a portal.”

  Just like As Tascen, thought Lila. The spell that had allowed her to make a shortcut into the world, step from the street onto the ship.

  “Unlike your magic,” continued Maris, “this portal stays open, no matter how many people pass through. As long as the spell is active, an entire army could move from one location into another.”

  Horror hardened into anger. Lila’s jaw clenched. “Do you ever think,” she said, “that instead of storing the world’s most dangerous magic, you might simply destroy it, and save us all the headache?”

  “If I had done that, there would have been no rings to share Antari power, and the three of you would have lost to Osaron, after which London would have fallen to his plague, followed swiftly, I imagine, by everywhere else. If you only think of the wrong hands magic can fall into, you forget that now and then there are right ones.”

  Lila raked a hand through her hair. “So one thief made it off the ship. And the other two…?”

  “Didn’t,” said Maris simply. She flicked her fingers at Katros, who produced a small pouch.

  “Everything that was in their pockets,” he explained, passing it to Lila. She pulled the string and tipped the contents out into her palm. Nothing but a few red lin. Barely enough to pay for a meal.

  “Tell me you have more than this,” she said, returning the coins to the pouch.

  Maris cleared her throat. “He also had a mark burned into his skin. A handprint.”

  At that, Lila muttered a quiet “Fuck.”

  “Ever the poet,” said the captain of the Ferase Stras, and Lila thought, not for the first time, that she should have paid for the damned glass eye some other way.

  “I suggest you find the box quickly,” added Maris. “Before someone puts it to use.”

  “And here I thought I’d take my time.” Lila shoved the pouch of coins into her pocket. “Anything else?”

  Maris drew something from her pocket. A card-sized piece of glass. “This might help.”

  Lila took the object, turned it over in her hands. It looked ordinary enough, but since it was here on Maris’s ship, chances were it wasn’t. She held it up. “Are you going to make me guess?”

  The old woman let out a sound that might have been a laugh. It came out dry as paper.

  “Think of it as a backward glance,” she said. “In case, like me, you find yourself a step behind.” She explained how to activate the spell, but when Lila lifted the glass to her eye to test it, the word already on her tongue, Maris’s hand shot out, old fingers closing around her wrist.

  “Use it wisely,” she warned. “It only works once.”

  “Of course,” the Antari sighed, slipping the fragile pane into her coat. “Well, if there’s nothing else…” She unsheathed a small blade from her hip, but as she brought the steel to her skin, Maris cleared her throat.

  “I wouldn’t. The wards bent for my nephew. I doubt they’ll be so kind to you.” She nodded at the boarding platform, which jutted like a narrow tongue out over the sea. It reminded Lila of a plank, the kind mutinous sailors were forced to walk in penny dreadfuls. “Better safe than sorry.”

  Lila stepped up onto the plank. The ship bobbed in the current, the wooden board dipping beneath her boots, but she didn’t stumble. She took one step, and then another, past the body of the ship and the wards that shielded it until she was safely out over the sea.

  She could have stopped there, but something urged her forward, to the very edge of the plank. Lila looked down at the black water as she drew a sliver of wood from her pocket. A piece of the bird at the bow of her ship. Alucard had had a fit when he noticed the missing feather, chiseled from the sculpture’s wing. But Lila had good reason.

  The persalis may be an impostor’s magic tool, but it understood one thing.

  Never open a door unless you know where it leads.

  She pressed her thumb to the edge of her knife, felt the bite of metal, the well of blood.

  “Delilah,” called Maris.

  Lila looked back. “Let me guess, you want me to be careful.”

  Again, that dry laugh. “Careful is for old bodies crossing wet floors,” said Maris, breeze tugging at her silver braid. “I want you to get me back that fucking box.”

  Lila smiled, and pressed her bloody thumb to the wooden feather.

  “Aye aye, Captain,” she said, stepping off the ship as the spell left her lips.

  She never hit the waves.

  * * *

  A heartbeat later, Lila landed on the Barron’s deck.

  A short drop, a lurch in her chest, and then her boots hit the wood, half a stride from Vasry and Raya, whose heads were bent over a game of Sanct. Vasry yelped and fell backward off his stool. Raya’s mouth twitched in amusement.

  “Never get used to that,” said Vasry, getting back to his feet.

  Lila rolled her head on her shoulders as she strolled away across the deck, tucking the wooden feather back in her pocket. The thrill of the night had worn away, and she felt suddenly tired, her bones aching from the fight on the Crow, her thoughts churning from Maris’s mission, her skin stained with blood and power. She peeled off her coat and tossed it aside, rinsing her hands and face with a jug of water.

  “Stross and Tav?”

  “Hesassa,” answered Raya.

  “Out cold,” translated Vasry, whose Fresan had gotten understandably better over the years.

  “What about our neighbors?” she asked, nodding down the docks to the empty berth where the Crow had been. “Any trouble?”

  “Oh, plenty,” said Vasry. “The other four came back, looking for their ship.”

  “And?”

  “It’s Verose,” he said with an amiable shrug. “If they didn’t want to lose it, they shouldn’t have left it. They did come around,” he added, “asking if we’d seen anything. But it was clear we were rather occupied.” Raya flicked her fingers, and a tiny curl of water splashed his face.

  Lila scanned the deck.

  “We haven’t seen him,” said Vasry, reading her thoughts. “Not since he came back. Went straight down to his room, and we thought, best to leave him be.”

  She nodded. All these years, and the crew still kept Kell at a distance. She couldn’t exactly blame them. Stross wasn’t happy to have a royal prince on board, said it drew too much attention. Tav and Vasry treated him like a piece of precious cargo. Raya acted like he was a cannon that might go off at any moment.

  In short, they were afraid of him.

  They were afraid of Lila, too, of course. But it was different. They were afraid of what she could do. They were afraid of what Kell was. Even if they were both Antari, the crew managed to forget about Bard’s eye, until she did something like step out of thin air onto the ship.

  Lila bid them goodnight, and went down the short flight of stairs into the body of the Barron. She wanted a bath. Wanted a hot meal. Wanted a bed. But when she reached her cabin, it was only to shed her coat, and slip the glass card Maris had given her into the top drawer of her desk.

  After that, she continued down the narrow hall to the closed door at the end.

  She didn’t bother knocking.

  Kell lay on his side in the dark, his hair making small waves across the pillow. His eyes were shut, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping. He never slept, not when she was out. Lila sank down beside him, stretched out long in the narrow bed, and he pretended to stir, rolling first onto his back and then toward her.

  “Hello,” he said in English. His voice was soft and low, but she felt herself leaning into the word as much as the sound. All her life, she’d taken the language for granted, but here in this world, English was a royal tongue, reserved for Arnesian nobles and the crown at court, an ostentation born from centuries of Antari magicians carrying missives between London kings and queens. But here, at sea, it was something private. The language they slipped into only when they were alone.

  Kell reached out and brushed a clump of hair behind her ear. These days his hands were rougher, but his touch was just as light, as if she were the one who might break.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, and she told him. Of Tanis’s warning, of Valick’s arrival, of Maris, and the robbery aboard the floating market, and the mission that she’d been given.

  Soon Kell was sitting up, chin resting on his knotted hands as he listened to the story of the persalis, the three thieves who came to steal it, and the one who got away. And when she finished, he did not tell her it was too dangerous, did not say that it was a fool’s errand, a needle in a haystack when you couldn’t find the hay. He did not even ask where they would start. He knew as well as she did. If this was the work of the Hand, it was to only one end. The palace. The crown. The king.

  Lila stretched out long beside him, felt her limbs loosen at last.

  “To London, then,” he said in the dark.

  She nodded, and whispered back.

  “To London.”

  Part Three

  THE KING’S HEART

  I

  RED LONDON

  The city was full of broken things, though few, Tes found, were truly beyond repair.

  She spent her day off as she always did, combing through stalls and trinket shops, salvaging anything that struck her fancy. Some trinkets she would simply fix, but others she would take apart, pry the threads of magic loose and use them somewhere else. Take something that was and make it better. Other workers focused on inventions, but she preferred improvements.

  A bag of the day’s spoils rattled on her shoulder as Tes made her way through the crowded market. As she went, she murmured softly; not to herself, but to the owl tucked in the front pocket of her coat.

  “… still looking for an iron key. And I need a bit more copper, don’t you think?”

  Vares rattled his bones in agreement, the feeling like a second heart against her shirt.

  It helped, having someone to talk to, even if that someone was more of a something and that something was technically dead. Tes felt on edge, her nerves jangling as they always did when she’d left the safety of the shop. It was probably the pot of bitter tea she’d downed before setting out, or the sugar bun she’d eaten in two gulping bites at the last market.

  She reached the end of the stalls, but instead of continuing on, she turned, and slipped through a curtained fold between the tents, into a second, hidden line of tents.

  One of the first things she learned was this: most good markets have two faces.

  The first face was bland and unassuming, filled with the ordinary fare, but the second, the second loomed just behind it, back-to-back, like a coin turned edgewise, or the high priest in Sanct—the only card that had two sides.

  Here, the magic shone a little brighter. Here, the cost could be sorted out in trade as well as coin. Here, you never knew what you might find.

  The second side wasn’t a forbidden market—Tes always avoided those out of her usual caution—simply one that preferred to conduct its own business, unbothered by the royal guard. Like the back room in an antiques shop, reserved for those who knew where to look, and also knew better than to ask any questions.

  Tes slowed as she reached a table covered in different element sets, their lids yawning open to reveal their contents.

  Five elements: water, fire, earth, wind, bone; the last included even though the use of it was strictly forbidden. Some of the sets were large, ornate chests, each of the elements contained in glass orbs the size of summer melons. Others were small enough to fit into a child’s hand, the elements trapped inside glass beads.

  Pouches crowded the front of the table, each filled with spare beads, the elements pooling in the bottom, as if resting. They sat like a dark spot in her vision, the power dormant, the magic unconjured.

  There was no sign of the seller, but Tes let her fingers drift to one of the sets, a small, gold-edged box, the elements in a single row. But as she did, the bag on her shoulder slipped, and caught the nearest sack of beads, spilling the contents across the table.

  “No, no, no,” she hissed. She lunged, caught the pouch in time to right it, but not before a handful of glass beads had gone clattering over the side, hitting the cobblestones like hail. Tes flinched as heads turned toward her, and dropped to her knees, collecting the fallen beads, drops of tinted water sloshing inside each.

  She grabbed two as they tried to roll away, missed the third as it disappeared beneath the table. She knelt to retrieve it, but as her fingers skimmed the glass, it rolled farther out of reach. At the same time, she saw the shift of boots behind the stall, heard the voices of two men.

  “… days are numbered.”

  “You know something I don’t?”

  A low chuckle. “Let’s just say, I wouldn’t invest in crimson and gold.”

  Tes went very still. They were talking about the crown.

  “Does it really matter, which royal ass sits on the throne?”

  “It does, when the body in question has no power.”

  Tes frowned. Everyone said that King Rhy had no magic to speak of, but she didn’t see how that had anything to do with ruling Arnes, until the voice went on.

  “It matters when the magic’s drying up.”

  It wasn’t the first time Tes had heard talk about the shortage of power, the tide of magic pulling back, but if the threads were dimming, she didn’t see it. And if they were, well, who was to say it was the king’s fault? The Antari were supposed to be the pinnacle of magic, and they’d been dwindling for centuries, while Rhy Maresh had only taken the throne in the wake of the Tide. The Tide, which spread like a plague through the London streets, infecting those who didn’t fight, and killing most who did. If the power really was ebbing now, why not blame that? Didn’t it seem more likely that the empire’s magic had been damaged by that chaotic event, and not a magicless king on a man-made throne?

  Not that it mattered.

  When people wanted to make trouble, all they needed was a good excuse. For months, she’d been able to taste the trouble brewing. It was like smoke, or bitter tea, and every day it seemed a little stronger.

  “Do you know what Faro and Vesk do to those without power?” one was saying as she held her breath and tried to reach the water bead.

  “They sure as saints don’t hand them a crown.”

  “Exactly. Makes us look weak. The way I see it, a mistake was made. The Hand is going to fix it.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Well, then, what’s one less pampered royal in the world?”

  At last, Tes’s fingers closed around the lost bead. She scrambled back, and rose, dropping her quarry in the cloth pouch and hurrying away from the stall before the men stepped through the curtain and realized someone had heard them discussing treason.

  She didn’t look back, didn’t slow, even when Vares pecked her through her shirt, as if the dead owl was nudging her to do something. And there was something she could do. Every citizen had seen the gold writing on the city’s scrying boards, the orders that sounded more like pleas, instructing the people of London to report any signs of rebellion.

  There was a scrying board at the market’s edge. She knew if she pressed her palm to the mark, soldiers would come.

  But she didn’t.

  Tes had nothing against the king.

  She’d been only eight years old, and a hundred miles north, when the Tide hit London, and Rhy Maresh was forced onto the throne. She hadn’t been there, to see the city fall, or rise again, to witness the rakish young prince suddenly orphaned and just as suddenly crowned king. But she remembered her first winter in the city, three years ago. The dazzling parade that filled the grand avenue with icy light on Sel Fera Noche, the royal family floating on a gilded platform, as if the road were a frozen lake. For a moment—only a moment—Tes had been close enough to see the king’s face, his proud chin, his dazzling smile, the crown nestled in his glossy black curls, but she’d been drawn to his gold eyes, which, despite their molten brightness, struck her as sad.

  No, she had nothing against Rhy Maresh. He seemed a good enough king. But Tes had enough problems on her own, so she made a point of staying clear of other people’s trouble.

  Besides, everyone thought the king powerless, but that day, during the parade, she’d seen the silver light that bloomed from his chest, spreading less threads than flames, burning the air around his crown.

  Rhy Maresh wasn’t nearly as helpless as he seemed.

  “Well, if it isn’t my favorite apprentice!”

  She’d reached the last stall, where Lorn, a wiry old man with glasses perched on his nose, was waiting for her. He had a face like a weathered stump, lines cracking at the corners of his eyes and mouth whenever he spoke. “How is Master Haskin this week?”

  She pushed the king from her mind, and managed a smile. “Busy,” she said. “Believe it or not, things keep breaking.”