And there, at the heart of the great hall, his throne, its base throwing roots, its back surging into crownlike spires, its arms spread like an old friend waiting to be embraced. Its surface shone with an iridescent light, and as Osaron climbed the steps, mounted the platform, took his seat, the whole palace sang with the rightness of his presence.
Osaron sat at the center of this web and felt the strings of the city, the mind of each and every servant tethered to his by threads of magic. A tug here, a tremor there, thoughts carrying like movement along a thousand lines.
In each devoted life, a fire burned. Some flames were dull and small, barely kindling, while others shone bright and hot, and those he summoned now, called them forward from every corner of the city.
Come, he thought. Kneel at my feet like children, and I will raise you. As men. As women. As chosen.
Beyond the palace walls, bridges began to bloom like ice over the river, hands extended to usher them in.
My king, they said, rising from their tables.
My king, they said, turning from their work.
Osaron smiled, savoring the echo of those words, until a new chorus interrupted them.
My king, whispered his subjects, the bad ones are leaving.
My king, they said, the bad ones are fleeing.
The ones who dared to refuse you.
The ones who dare defy you.
Osaron steepled his fingers. The Antari were leaving London.
All of them? he asked, and the echo came.
All of them. All of them. All of them.
Holland’s words came back to him, an unwelcome intrusion.
“How will you rule without a head for your crown?”
Words quickly swallowed by his clamoring servants.
Shall we chase them?
Shall we stop them?
Shall we drag them down?
Shall we bring them back?
Osaron rapped his fingers on the arm of the throne. The gesture made no sound.
Shall we?
No, thought Osaron, his command rippling through the minds of thousands like a vibration along a string. He sat back in his sculpted throne. No. Let them go.
If it was a trap, he would not follow.
He did not need them.
He did not need their minds, or their bodies.
He had thousands.
The first of those he’d summoned was entering the hall, a man striding toward him with a proud jaw and a head held high. He came to a stop before the throne, and knelt, dark head bowed.
“Rise,” commanded Osaron, and the man obeyed. “What is your name?”
The man stood, broad shouldered and shadow eyed, a silver ring in the shape of a feather circling one thumb.
“My name is Berras Emery,” said the man. “How may I serve you?”
IV
Tanek came into sight shortly after dark.
Alucard didn’t like the port, but he knew it well. For three years, it was as close to London as he’d dared to come. In many ways it was too close. The people here knew the name Emery, had an idea of what it meant.
It was here he learned to be someone else—not a nobleman, but the jaunty captain of the Night Spire. Here he first met Lenos and Stross, at a game of Sanct. Here he was reminded, again and again and again, of how close—how far—he was from home. Every time he returned to Tanek, he saw London in the tapestries and trappings, heard it in the accents, smelled it in the air, that scent like woods in spring, and his body ached.
But right now, Tanek seemed nothing like London. It was bustling in a surreal way, oblivious to the danger lurking inland. The berths were filled with ships, the taverns with men and women, the greatest danger a pickpocket or a winter chill.
In the end, Osaron hadn’t taken their halfhearted bait, and so the shadow of his power had ended an hour back, the weight of it lifting like the air after a storm. The strangest thing, thought Alucard, was the way it stopped. Not suddenly, but slowly, over the course of a click, the spellwork tapering so that by the end of its reach, the few people they met had no shadows in their eyes, nothing but a bad feeling, an urge to turn back. Several times they passed travelers on the road who seemed lost, when in fact they’d simply waded to the edge of the spell, and stopped, repelled by a thing they couldn’t name, couldn’t remember.
“Don’t say anything,” Kell had warned when they’d passed the first bunch. “The last thing we need is panic spreading beyond the capital.”
A man and woman stumbled past now, arm in arm and laughing drunkenly.
Word clearly hadn’t reached the port.
Alucard hauled Holland down from the horse, setting him roughly on the ground. The Antari hadn’t said a word since they’d left, and the silence made Alucard nervous. Bard didn’t talk much either, but hers was a different kind of quiet, present, inquisitive. Holland’s silence hung in the air, made Alucard want to speak just to break it. Then again, maybe it was the man’s magic that set him on edge, silver threads splintering the air like lightning.
They handed the horses off to a stablehand whose eyes widened at the royal emblem blazoned on the harnesses.
“Keep your heads down,” said Kell as the boy led the mounts away.
“We are hardly inconspicuous,” said Holland finally, his voice like rough-hewn rock. “Perhaps, if you unchained me—”
“Not likely,” said Lila and Jasta, the same words overlapping in different tongues.
The air had warmed a fraction despite the thickening dark, and Alucard was looking around for the source of that warmth when he heard the approach of armored boots and caught the gleam of metal.
“Oh, look,” he said. “A welcome party.”
Whether it was because of the royal horses or the sight of the strange entourage, a pair of soldiers was heading straight toward them.
“Halt!” they called in Arnesian, and Holland had the sense to fold his cuffed hands beneath his cloak; but at the sight of Kell, the two men paled, one bowing deeply, the other murmuring what might have been a blessing or a prayer, too low for him to make out.
Alucard rolled his eyes at the display as Kell adopted an imitation of his usual arrogance, explaining that they were here on royal business. Yes, everything was well. No, they did not need an escort.
At last, the men retreated to their post, and Lila gave her own mocking bow in Kell’s direction.
“Mas vares,” she said, then straightened sharply, the humor gone from her face. With a gesture that was at once casual and frighteningly quick, she freed a knife from her belt.
“What is it?” asked Kell and Alucard at once.
“Someone’s been following us,” she said.
Kell’s brows went up. “You didn’t think to mention that before?”
“I could have been wrong,” she said, twirling the blade in her fingers, “but I’m not.”
“Where are—”
Before Kell could finish, she spun, and threw.
The knife sang through the air, eliciting a yelp as it embedded itself in a post a few inches above a crop of brown curls threaded with gold. A boy stood, back pressed to the post and empty hands raised in immediate surrender. On his forehead was a mark in blood. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, no red and gold trim, no symbols of the House Maresh emblazoned on his coat, but Alucard still recognized him from the palace.
“Hastra,” said Kell darkly.
The young man ducked out from under Lila’s blade. “Sir,” he said, dislodging the knife.
“What are you doing here?”
“Tieren sent me.”
Kell groaned, and muttered under his breath, “Of course he did.” Then, louder, “Go home. You have no business here.”
The boy—and he really was just a boy, in manner as well as age—straightened at that, puffing up his narrow chest. “I’m your guard, sir. What is that worth if I don’t guard you?”
“You’re not my guard, Hastra,” said Kell. “Not anymore.”
The boy flinched but held his ground. “Very well, sir. But if I am not a guard, then I am a priest, and my orders come from the Aven Essen himself.”
“Hastra—”
“And he’s really very hard to please, you know—”
“Hastra—”
“And you do owe me a favor, sir, since I did stand by you, when you snuck out of the palace and entered the tournament—”
Alucard’s head whipped around. “You did what?”
“Enough,” cut in Kell, waving his hand.