The woman’s cold eyes swiveled back to her. “What’s your name?”

  A name was often a valuable thing, but only if you were alive to use it. “Tes.”

  “Well, Tes. Our friend made a mistake. He should have brought that piece to us, not you. We’re here to take it off your hands.” As she said that last word, she tapped the metal pinning Tes’s fingers to the table. “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “No,” said Tes, glad it was the truth. “He practically shoved it at me, never even said what it was meant to do. Do you know how hard it is to fix a spelled object without knowing its purpose?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Did you? Fix it?”

  “No,” she said, the word coming out too fast. The metal tightened suddenly, white-hot pain as the steel sliced into the base of her thumb. “I mean, not yet,” she gasped out. “I’m still working on it.”

  “But it can be fixed?”

  Tes nodded, frantic, and after a moment, the metal loosened. Blood dotted the counter between her fingers.

  “Where is it now?” asked the woman, gaze drifting over the shelves, and Tes gritted her teeth to hide her surprise. Something in the bland way she scanned the shop made Tes suspect she’d never seen the doormaker before, at least, not when it was whole. If they didn’t know what they were looking for—

  Tes twisted, gesturing with her free hand to the wall of shelves behind her. The stash, as Nero called it.

  “Third shelf,” she lied, the words coming out too fast as she wracked her brain for the contents of each basket, something that was roughly the right shape. “Second bin from the left.”

  It was a dangerous gamble, and as the woman rounded the counter and pulled out the bin, Tes watched for signs of suspicion, or anger, braced for the feeling of steel slicing through skin. But all the woman did was lift the contents from the bin.

  A box.

  Roughly the same size and shape as the one bundled beneath the counter between her feet. Only this box would never open doors to other worlds. It was a simpler thing, meant to capture and play sounds, like the one she kept beside her bed to help her sleep.

  She’d salvaged it from a market a week before, wanted to see if she could modify the spell to hold a voice, thought it might be nice if Vares could talk as well as listen.

  “Doesn’t look very broken,” said the woman.

  “The box is just a container,” said Tes. “That part was easy to fix.” The same had been true for the doormaker. “It’s the spellwork inside that’s hard.”

  “Well then,” said the woman, placing the box on the counter. “I suggest you get to work.”

  Tes took a deep breath. “I need both hands.”

  The woman tipped her head, as if considering. Then the metal released, withdrew, returning to the cuff on her arm. Tes rubbed her hand, flexed her fingers, tried to hide how badly they were shaking. Her thoughts spun as she looked down at the box on the table in front of her.

  “This will take time,” she said.

  Please go, please go, please go, thudded her heart, loud as the drums she’d heard in that other London.

  The woman turned, as if to leave, then grabbed a chair and dragged it across the shop floor to the counter. She spun it around and sat, arms crossed along the back.

  “We’ll wait.”

  III

  Lila Bard should have listened to her gut.

  After all, it had gotten her this far.

  Six Helarin Way wasn’t in the shal. Far from it. Helarin Way lay on the city’s northern bank, nearer the ostra and vestra than the dregs of London. It was an affluent borough, with elegant, well-appointed shops, all of which sat dark at this hour, though the streets were still well lit, lanterns burning with warm, enchanted light.

  There was no date etched into the coin, no way to know if the time printed on the edge had come and gone, or lay ahead. But the Ferase Stras had been attacked less than a week before, and one of the thieves had been carrying this coin. She had to hope it wasn’t a keepsake, but an invitation—one that hadn’t yet expired.

  SON HELARIN RAS • NONIS ORA

  Eleventh hour. According to the clock on the corner and the watch in her pocket, it was half past eleven now. She quickened her step, boots sounding first on stone, and then on wood as she crossed the bridge onto the northern bank.

  This part of London moved at its own pace, time turned to honey by the moneyed elite. It played home to performance halls and smoking parlors, dinner clubs and grand estates, places where the city’s wealth and power were both on full display. She saw no painted hands, and yet, the coin rolled in her fingers, letters pressed against her skin.

  As she neared Helarin Way, Lila forced her steps to slow and lengthen into a more casual stride, turned up her collar and straightened her spine, carrying herself with a confidence she always felt, but rarely showed, taking on the airs of the people she’d passed as she made her way to the address.

  With any luck, it would be the pleasure garden Tanis spoke of, the Hand all gathered neat within, her hunt begun and ended in a single night. But when she got there, she found only a darkened house.

  Not a vestran estate, with grounds and a gate, though hardly a hovel. Three stories, with dark iron ringing its doorway and trimming the balconies above, the roof a series of gold-tipped peaks.

  She kept walking, past the house to the corner, where she paused beneath an awning, and considered the façade, waited to see if anyone else came or went. Lanterns burned in other windows, but 6 Helarin Way was dark, and not the shallow dark that fell when a house’s tenants had simply gone to bed. It had the hollow dark peculiar to abandoned places.

  Lila chewed the inside of her cheek.

  Perhaps she was too late. But she didn’t think so. No, she thought, whatever was meant to happen here, it wasn’t happening tonight.

  She turned down the road, toward the river, and the inn, and the narrow bed that waited, when she felt a body moving in her wake.

  Lila slowed, craning to hear footsteps, but they must have been timing their strides to hers, because she heard only her own boots, the far-off canter of hooves, and the murmur of voices drawn high and thin on the breeze.

  And that was what made them stand out. The silence of them was too heavy, too solid, like stuffing in a pillow. Kell had told her once that if she tried, she could feel the magic present in another body, and she didn’t tell him that she’d been able to feel that long before she knew it was magic.

  Lila rolled her wrist, and the blade whispered against her palm.

  She stepped into the road, as if to cross, and in a shopfront window, she saw it, the flicker of movement at her back. A hooded figure, blending almost perfectly into the dark.

  She turned, the blade already singing through the air.

  The shadow lunged out of the way just in time, but Lila twitched her fingers, and the dagger followed, dropping an inch at the last second so that it buried itself in the fabric of their cloak, and the wooden door behind.

  The figure gasped in surprise, pinned like a moth to the wood.

  “Well, hello,” she said, as if stumbling across a friend, and not a Hand. Perhaps this had not been a wasted night at all. Beneath the hood, the shadow wore a mask, featureless and black. Even their hands were hidden beneath black gloves, which reached not for Lila or for magic, but the dagger, the metal scraping against the wood as they dragged it free an inch.

  “Not so fast.” Lila flexed, and the metal drove back in to the hilt. “I have some questions—”

  That was as far as she got before a small object tumbled from the figure’s hand, hit the street between them, and exploded. There was no force to the blast, and barely any sound, only a flash of blinding light, followed by clouds of choking black smoke. Lila’s arm flew up to shield her eye from the flash, and then the smoke was everywhere, swallowing the lanterns and the street and every other source of light.

  She braced herself for an attack, a weapon or a body surging out of the dark, but nothing came. The smoke hung, unmoving, and she sliced her arm through the air. A gust of wind sliced with it, cutting through the wall of black, revealing the door, and the place where the figure had been pinned against it. But they were gone.

  Her dagger lay on the ground, abandoned, and she swept it up, and turned, surveying the street as it came back in pieces. She caught the edge of a black cloak as it vanished down another road.

  Lila ran.

  The shadow was fast, and as her boots thudded over stone, she cursed them for fleeing, and making her chase, when they could have just stayed put and fought and lost.

  By the time she reached the corner, and turned onto an alley, they were nearly to the other end.

  She missed her flintlock then. Her lovely gun, which had run out of bullets years before and been relegated to the bottom of her trunk. Aim, and fire, and down they would go. Instead, she was about to make a mess.

  Lila took a deep breath.

  Tyger, Tyger, she thought, and even though she didn’t need the words, she felt the magic rise to meet them, folded into hard steel by the sounds they made, if only in her head. Lila turned her hand, palm up, and the street beyond the figure buckled, and rose.

  The night shook, and the world beneath her trembled with the force of earth and stone scraping together as they were hauled up to block the road.

  A dead end.

  The figure spun, looking for another way out, and perhaps they would have found one, but she was tired of running. She clenched her hand, and the street grew up over their boots, binding them in place.

  “Now,” she said, ambling down the road as if she had all the time in the world. “Let’s try this again.” In one hand, she held her knife. In the other, fire bloomed.

  But as she neared the figure, they fell forward, collapsing to their hands and knees, and for a moment, she assumed they were injured. The truth was much worse. They were bowing.

  She reached the kneeling figure, and used the tip of her knife to push back their hood. When it fell back, so did the mask, revealing a young face, dark skin and wide brown eyes and cheeks that looked like they couldn’t even grow hair.

  Her gaze dropped to his front. His cloak had fallen open, and in the firelight she saw the armor, and the symbol pressed into its surface, black on black, so the sigil barely showed. But she knew it. Of course she knew it. It was a chalice and sun.

  Lila’s breath hissed through her gritted teeth. No wonder he hadn’t fought back. He wasn’t a Hand. He was a member of the res in cal. The crows that spied for the crown. For the queen.

  “Apologies, mas aven,” he said, folding English and Arnesian together as so many of the guards did among the palace royals.

  Lila let go of the magic, and the earth crumbled from his boots.

  “Get up,” she ordered, and he rose, eyes flickering up to her chin. “What were you doing at that house?”

  The confusion on his face said enough. There were people who knew how to school their expressions, hide whatever they were thinking behind a placid mask of calm. This boy wasn’t one of them. She was willing to bet he’d never won a game of Sanct.

  He hadn’t been waiting at Helarin Way. That was just when she’d finally noticed him. She put out the flame, and brought her hand to her face, rubbing her eyes. “How long were you following me?”

  “From the palace,” he answered, an obedient servant now. “You crossed the southern walk, then circled the shal before going into the Merry Way, then—”

  “Enough.” Lila prickled in annoyance. She hadn’t heard him coming. It was the queen’s damned work, the cloak absorbing light, the armor spelled for stealth, even the boots warded so they made no sound on the paving stones. Still, she thought, she should have sensed him sooner. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  Lila rested the tip of her blade against the chalice on his chest.

  “Take a message to the queen. Next time she sends a crow to follow me, I’ll cut off its wings.”

  The boy—and he really was a boy—looked about to speak, then thought better of it. He nodded once, but didn’t move. Lila stepped aside with a flourish, but he still hesitated, as if waiting for her to leave first. Not a chance.

  “Fly away,” she ordered, and as she said it, a gust of wind rolled through and pushed him in the right direction. She watched him leave, watched until her eye couldn’t split him from the other shadows, until he melted away into the dark.

  * * *

  On the way back, she took her time.

  It was almost midnight, and the city had quieted, taken on the weariness of a body needing sleep. She retraced her steps across the Copper Bridge, which despite its name was mostly wood and stone, the green-tinged metal reserved for rail and arch and filigreed post.

  Lila stopped halfway across.

  Despite the hour, she wasn’t the only one on the bridge. A carriage rattled past, and a few nobles were making their way back to the northern bank on foot. One stopped to admire the palace, the way it vaulted over the Isle and doubled there, golden edges reflected against the watery sky. But Lila put her back to the spires, and looked out at London. Stood there, halfway between the banks, the city cleaved in two by the crimson river.

  They’d been looking in the wrong place.

  She had no doubt that Alucard and his guards were searching for the Hand, but she was willing to bet they’d focused their efforts on the city’s darkest corners.

  She thought of the handprints circling the shal, how obvious they seemed. A bull’s-eye in red paint. The X on a treasure map. Her hand slipped into her pocket, fingers tightening around the coin, its uneven edge digging into her palm as her gaze skated back to the northern banks, home to the city’s elite.

  They cannot hide, said Alucard.

  But what if the real danger wasn’t hiding at all?

  What if it was standing in plain sight?

  * * *

  Back at the Setting Sun, the tavern was dark, the shutters drawn. Lila climbed the stairs, limbs growing heavier with every step, but when she reached her room, it was empty. Crimson spilled in through the window, caught on the edge of the trunk, cast pale red fingers across the unused bed.

  Kell hadn’t come back.

  No matter, Lila told herself as she slumped onto the cot. More room for her. She tucked her hands beneath her head, let the quiet settle like a sheet, waited for sleep. It didn’t come. At last, Lila heaved herself up, an oath on her lips, the knife already in her hand. The brief prick of pain, the well of blood against her fingers. She drew the mark, and whispered the words to the wall, felt the wood drop away as she stepped through.

  The narrow room vanished, replaced by the grand palace chamber, as if the world had drawn in a very deep breath, and pushed outward, the low ceiling thrust into a vaulted one, decked in gossamer clouds, the weathered wood turned to marble. The only common tie, that crimson light, spilling now through etched glass doors, glancing off the gold threads in the rug, and the body sprawled atop the royal bed.

  Kell lay half-dressed and facedown, his coat and shoes cast off in a breadcrumb trail from the door to the foot of the mattress. His back rose and fell. His copper hair fanned out like a dying fire over his cheek and onto the pillow.

  Too many years of safety had made him a heavy sleeper.

  He didn’t stir when she kicked off her boots. Or when she shed her coat, and the more cumbersome blades. Or when she climbed onto the bed. Or when she reached out and ran her fingers with all the lightness of a thief over the pale streak that glinted in his hair. Or when she curled in, close enough to hear the soft tide of his breath, and let it pull her down to sleep.

  IV

  WHITE LONDON

  It was dark by the time Kosika mounted the castle steps, her clothes stiff with blood.

  With every stop on the procession, she had shed more and more of her guard. Now, returning from the Silver Wood, only four soldiers flanked her, Lark among them. And only one Vir—Serak. And Nasi, of course.

  The drums had ceased, but she could still feel them echoing in her skull. Kosika told herself it was not a headache; it was the pulse of the city growing stronger. Still, it had been a long day. Her arm ached where she had cut it in the ritual, and her legs were sore from crossing the city on foot, and she wanted nothing more than to rinse the blood from her skin, and sleep.

  But the castle doors swung open onto celebration, the great hall brimming with life.

  Lanterns hung like orbs of silver light, a dozen pale suns casting the shadows from the stone, and the scent of a banquet wafted through the air like steam. It was the Vir who insisted on throwing these extravagant feasts. As if the tithes and gifts were only a preface, as if they weren’t the entire point of the day.

  The city’s highborns gathered, their hands neatly bandaged in silk instead of gauze, the only signs that there had been a tithe at all. The royal guard had cast off their helms, and now moved about the room, mingling with the guests, and the Vir stood around, resplendent in their silver mantles.

  The sight of it all rankled Kosika.

  This was meant to be a day of prayer. Of sacrifice. Devotion. And instead—

  “Our queen!” said Vir Talik lifting his glass, and across the hall, the drinks all rose, their contents crimson.

  Nasi came up behind her, reaching to peel the bloodied cloak from Kosika’s shoulders.

  “Leave it,” she snapped, striding out of her friend’s reach. She walked into the gathered crowd, the sea of people parting like water, burbling their praise. But Kosika didn’t linger to be fêted. She continued past them, to the stairs. She wasn’t in the mood to entertain, to be paraded through the halls. Vir Reska, a keen-eyed woman with greying hair, tried to cut her off.

  “Your Majesty, the feast.”

  “I’m tired,” said Kosika, and that should have been reason enough to make her step aside, but the Vir gestured at the crowd of nobles.

  “But you must—”

  Kosika’s gaze swung toward the Vir like a blade as she realized her mistake. She took a step back, and dropped to one knee, her silver half-cloak skimming the floor. Kosika reached out, and brought her hand to the Vir’s shoulder, just as she had earlier that day. She could feel the woman tense beneath the touch. They both knew that of all the blood that stained Kosika’s skin, some of it was her own. Knew that it would only take a word, and the Vir would come apart, just as her attacker had. His bones were still heaped in the street, the rest of him churned into the river.