“I will,” said Bard, but she didn’t move.
Alucard turned automatically toward the wheel before remembering he wasn’t the captain of this ship. He hesitated, like a man who’s gone through a door to fetch something, only to forget what he’d come for. At last, he went to help Lenos with the sails, leaving Bard at the ship’s rail.
When he looked back ten, fifteen, twenty minutes later, she was still there, eyes trained on the line where water met sky.
V
Rhy rode out as soon as they were gone.
There were too many souls to find, and the thought of staying in the palace another minute made him want to scream. Soon the dark would be upon them, upon him, the fall of night and the confinement. But for now, there was still light, still time.
He took two men, both silvers, and set out into the city, trying to keep his attention from drifting to the eerie palace floating next to his, the strange procession of men and women climbing its steps, trying to keep himself from dwelling on the strange black substance that turned stretches of road into glossy, icelike streaks and climbed bits of wall like ivy or frost. Magic overwhelming nature.
He found a couple hunkered down in the back of their house, too afraid to leave. A girl wandering, dazed and coated in the ash of someone else, family or friend or stranger, she wouldn’t say. On the third trip, one of the guards came galloping toward him.
“Your Highness,” called the man, blood mark smearing with the sweat on his brow as he reined in his horse. “There’s something you need to see.”
They were in a tavern hall.
Two dozen men, all dressed in the gold and red of the royal guard. And all sick. All dying. Rhy knew each and every one, by face if not by name. Isra had said that some of them were missing. That the blood marks had failed. But they hadn’t vanished. They were here.
“Your Highness, wait!” called the silver as Rhy plunged forward into the hall, but he was not afraid of the smoke or the sickness. Someone had pushed the tables and chairs out of the way, cleared the space, and now his father’s men—his men—were lying on the floor in rows, spaces here and there where a few had risen up, or fallen forever.
Their armor had been stripped off and set aside, propped like a gallery of hollow spectators along the walls as, on the floor, the guards sweated and writhed and fought demons he couldn’t see, the way Alucard had aboard the Spire.
Their veins stood out black against their throats, and the whole hall smelled vaguely of burning skin as the magic scorched its way through them.
The air was thick with something like dust.
Ash, realized Rhy.
All that was left of those who’d burned.
One man was slumped against the wall by the doors, sweat sheening his face, the sickness just beginning to set in.
His beard was trimmed short, his hair streaked with grey, and Rhy recognized him at once. Tolners. A man who’d served his father before he was king. A man assigned to serve Rhy. He’d seen the guard this morning in the palace, safe and well within the wards.
“What have you done?” he asked, grabbing the guard by the collar. “Why did you leave the palace?”
The man’s vision slid in and out of focus. “Your Majesty,” he rasped. Trapped in the fever’s hold, he mistook Rhy for his father. “We are—the royal guard. We—do not hide. If we are not—strong enough—to brave the dark—we do not—deserve to serve—” he broke off, wracked by a sudden, violent chill.
“You fool,” snapped Rhy, even as he eased Tolners back into his chair and pulled the man’s coat close around his shivering form. Rhy turned on the room of dying guards, raking an ash-slicked hand through his hair, feeling furious, helpless. He couldn’t save these men. Could only watch as they fought, failed, died.
“We are the royal guard,” murmured a man on the floor.
“We are the royal guard,” echoed two more, taking it up as a chant against whatever darkness fought to take them.
Rhy wanted to yell, to curse, but he couldn’t, because he knew the things he had done in the name of strength, knew what he was doing even now, walking the cursed streets, combing the poisoned fog, knew that even if Kell’s magic hadn’t shielded him, he would have gone again, and again, for his city, his people.
And so Rhy did what he had done for Alucard on the Spire floor.
He did the only thing he could.
He stayed.
*
Maxim Maresh knew the value of a single Antari.
He had stood before the windows and watched three ride away from the palace, the city, the monster poisoning its heart. He had weighed the odds, known it was the right decision, the strategy with the highest odds, and yet he could not help but feel that his best weapons were suddenly out of reach. Worse, that he had loosened his grip, let them fall, and now stood facing a foe without a blade.
His own wasn’t ready—it was still being forged.
Maxim’s reflection hung suspended in the glass. He did not look well. He felt worse. One hand rested against the window, shadows contouring to his fingers in a ghostly mimic, a morbid echo.
“You let him leave,” said a gentle voice, and the Aven Essen materialized in the glass behind him, a specter in white.
“I did,” said Maxim. He had seen his son’s body on the bed, chest still, cheeks hollow, skin grey. The image was burned like light against his eyes, an image he would never forget. And he understood, now more than ever, that Kell’s life was Rhy’s, and if he could not guard it himself, he would see it sent away. “I tried to stop Kell once. It was a mistake.”
“He might have stayed this time,” said Tieren carefully, “if you’d asked instead of ordered.”
“Perhaps.” Maxim’s hand fell away from the glass. “But this city is no longer safe.”
The priest’s blue eyes were piercing. “The world might prove no safer.”
“I cannot do anything about the dangers in the world, Tieren, but I can do something about the monster here in London.”
He began to cross the room, and made it three steps before it tipped violently beneath him. For a terrible instant his vision dimmed, and he thought he would fall.
“Your Majesty,” said Tieren, catching his arm. Beneath his tunic, the fresh line of cuts ached, the wounds deep, flesh and blood carved away. A necessary sacrifice.
“I’m well,” he lied, pulling free.
Tieren gave him a scornful look, and he regretted showing the priest his progress.
“I cannot stop you, Maxim,” said Tieren, “but this kind of magic has consequences.”
“When will the sleeping spell be ready?”
“If you are not careful—”
“When?”
“It is difficult to make such a spell, harder still to stretch it over a city. The very nature of it toes the line of the obscene, to put a body and mind to rest is still a manipulation, an exertion of one’s will over—”
“When?”
The priest sighed. “Another day. Maybe two.”
Maxim straightened, nodded. They would last that long. They had to. When he began to walk again, the ground held firm beneath his feet.
“Your Majesty—”
“Go and finish your own spell, Tieren. And let me finish mine.”
VI
By the time Rhy returned to the palace, the light was gone and his armor was painted grey with ash. More than half of the men in the hall had died; the surviving few now marched in his wake, helms beneath their arms, faces gaunt from fever and lit by lines of silver that trailed like tears down this cheeks.
Rhy climbed the front steps in exhausted silence.