“I told you she’d be fine,” said Holland, folding his arms.
“She still looks pretty rough,” said Alucard. “No offense, Bard.”
“None taken,” she said hoarsely. She looked up into their faces—Kell pale, Holland grim, Alucard tense—and knew it must have been a near thing.
Leaning on Kell, she got to her feet.
Ten Copper Thieves lay sprawled on the alley floor. Lila’s hands shook as she took in the scene, and then kicked the nearest corpse as hard as she could. Again and again and again, until Kell took her by the arms and pulled her in, the breath leaving her lungs in broken gasps, even though her chest was healed.
“I miscounted,” she said into his shoulder. “I thought there were six….”
Kell brushed the tears from her cheek. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
“You were only at sea for four months,” he said. “How many enemies did you make?”
Lila laughed, a small, jagged hiccup of a laugh, as he pulled her closer.
They stood there like that for a long moment, while Alucard and Holland walked among the dead, freeing Lila’s knives from chests and legs and throats.
“And what have we learned from this, Bard?” asked the captain, wiping a blade on a corpse’s chest.
Lila looked down at the bodies of the men she’d once spared aboard the Copper Thief.
“Dead men can’t hold grudges.”
*
They made their way back to the ship in silence, Kell’s arm around her waist, though she no longer needed him for support. Holland walked in front with Alucard, and Lila kept her eyes on the back of his head.
He hadn’t had to do it.
He could have let her bleed out in the street.
He could have stood and watched her die.
That’s what she would have done.
She told herself that’s what she would have done.
It isn’t enough, she thought. It doesn’t make up for Barron, for Kell, for me. I haven’t forgotten.
“Tac,” said Jasta as they made their way up the dock. “What happened to you?”
“Rosenal,” said Lila blandly.
“Tell me we’re ready to sail,” said Kell.
Holland said nothing, but made his way straight toward the hold. Lila watched him go.
I still don’t trust you, she thought.
As if he could feel the weight of her gaze, Holland glanced back over his shoulder.
You do not know me, his gaze seemed to say.
You do not know me at all.
III
“I’ve been thinking about the boy,” said Vor.
They were sitting at a low table in the king’s room, he and Holland, playing a round of Ost. It was a game of strategy and risk, and it was Vortalis’s favorite way to unwind, but no one would play him anymore—the guards were tired of losing the game, and their money—so Holland always ended up across the board.
“Which boy?” he asked, rolling the chips in his palm.
“The messenger.”
It had been two years since that visit, two long years spent trying to rebuild a broken city, to carve a shelter in the storm. Trying—and failing. Holland kept his voice even. “What of him?”
“Do you still have the coin?” asked Vor, even though they both knew he did. It sat in his pocket always, the metal worn from use. They did not speak of Holland’s absences, of the times he disappeared, only to return smelling too sweetly of flowers instead of ash and stone. Holland never stayed, of course. And he was never gone long. He hated those visits, hated seeing what his world could have been, and yet he couldn’t keep himself from going, from seeing, from knowing what was on the other side of the door. He couldn’t look away.
“Why?” he asked now.
“I think it’s time to send a letter.”
“Why now?”
“Don’t play the fool,” said Vor, letting his chips fall to the table. “It doesn’t suit you. We both know the stores are thinning and the days grow shorter. I make laws, and people break them, I make order and they turn it into chaos.” He ran a hand through his hair, fingers snagging on the ring of steel. His usual poise faltered. With a snarl he flung the crown across the room. “No matter what I do, the hope is rotting, and I can hear the whispers starting in the streets. New blood, they call. As if that will fix what is broken, as if shedding enough will bring the magic in this world to heel.”
“And you would fix this with a letter?” demanded Holland.
“I would fix it any way I can,” countered Vor. “Perhaps their world was once like ours, Holland. Perhaps they know a way to help.”
“They’re the ones who sealed us off, who live in splendor while we rot, and you would go begging—”
“I would do anything if I thought it would truly help my world,” snapped Vortalis, “and so would you. That is why you’re here beside me. Not because you are my sword, not because you are my shield, not because you are my friend. You are here with me because we will both do whatever we can to keep our world alive.”
Holland looked hard at the king then, hard, took in the grey threading his dark hair, the permanent furrow between his brows. He was still charming, still magnetic, still smiled when something delighted him, but the act now drew deep lines in his skin, and Holland knew the spells across Vor’s hands weren’t enough to bind the magic anymore.
Holland set a chip on the board, as though they were still playing. “I thought I was here to keep your head on your shoulders.”
Vortalis managed a strained laugh, a farce of humor. “That, too,” he said, and then, sobering: “Listen to me, Holland. Of all the ways to die, only a fool chooses pride.”
A servant entered with a loaf of bread, a bottle of kaash, a pile of thin cigars. Despite the crown, the castle, Vor was still a man of habit.
He took up a tightly rolled paper, and Holland snapped his fingers, offering the flame.
Vor sat back and examined the burning end of the taper. “Why didn’t you want to be king?”
“I suppose I’m not arrogant enough.”
Vor chuckled. “Maybe you’re a wiser man than I am.” He took a long drag. “I’m beginning to think that thrones make tyrants of us all.”
He blew out the smoke, and coughed.
Holland frowned. The king smoked ten times a day, and never seemed to suffer for it.
“Are you well?”
Vor was already waving the question away, but as he leaned forward to pour himself a drink, he put too much weight on the table’s edge and it upset, the Ost chips raining down onto the stone floor as he fell.
“Vortalis!”
The king was still coughing, a deep, wracking sound, clawing at his chest with both hands as Holland folded over him. On the floor nearby, the cigar still burned. Vor tried to speak, but managed only blood.
“Kajt,” swore Holland as he clutched a shard of glass until it bit into his hand, blood welling as he tore open Vor’s tunic and pressed his palm against the king’s chest, and commanded him to heal.
But the toxin had been too fast, the king’s heart too slow. It wasn’t working.
“Hold on, Vor….” Holland splayed both hands against his friend’s heaving chest, and he could feel the poison in his blood, because it wasn’t poison after all but a hundred tiny slivers of spelled metal, tearing the king apart from within. No matter how fast Holland tried to heal the damage, the shards made more.
“Stay with me,” the Antari ordered, with all the force of a spell, while he drew the metal shards free, his king’s skin soaking first with sweat and then blood as the metal slivers pierced vein and muscle and flesh before rising in a dark red mist into the air above Vor’s chest.
“As Tanas,” said Holland, closing his fist, and the shards drew together into a cloud of steel before fusing back into a solid piece, cursework scrawled along its surface.
But it was too late.
He was too late.
Beneath the spelled steel, beneath Holland’s hand, the king had gone still. Blood matted his front, flecked his beard, shone in his open, empty eyes.
Ros Vortalis was dead.