The woman considered him over her fingertips. “Hm. Two for making a valid point,” she said, “and one for annoying me. The cost stays at three, Kell Maresh.” He started to back away when she added, “It would be wise of you to take this deal.”
And there was something in her gaze, something old and steady, and he wondered if she saw something he couldn’t. He hesitated, then moved to the sphere and placed his fingers in the grooves.
The dial ticked down from four to three.
Maris pulled the lever.
It did not hurt, not exactly. The orb seemed to suddenly bind to his hands, holding them in place. His pulse surged in his head, and there was a short, dull ache in his chest, as if someone were drawing the air from his lungs, and then it was done. Three years, gone in three seconds. The sphere released him, and he closed his eyes against a shallow wave of dizziness before taking up the ring, now rightfully his. Bought and paid for. He wanted to be free of this room, this ship. But before he could escape, Maris spoke again, voice heavy as stone.
“Captain Emery,” she said. “Give us the room.”
Kell turned to see Alucard vanish through the door, leaving him alone with the ancient woman who’d just robbed him of three years of life.
She rose from the table, knuckles whitening on her cane as she used it to lever her old body up, then crossed behind the sphere.
“Captain?” he prompted, but she didn’t speak, not yet. He watched as the old woman splayed one hand across its top. She murmured a few words, and the surface of the metal glowed, a tracery of light that withdrew line by line beneath her fingers. When it was gone, Maris exhaled, shoulders loosening as if a weight had been lifted.
“Anesh,” she said, wiping her hands. There was a new ease to her motions, a straightness to her spine. “Kell Maresh,” she said, turning the name over on her tongue. “The prize of the Arnesian crown. The Antari raised as royalty. We’ve met before, you and I.”
“No, we haven’t,” said Kell, even though the sight of her tickled something in his mind. Not a memory, he realized, but the absence of one. The place where a memory should be. The place where it was missing.
He’d been five years old when he was given to the royal family, deposited at the palace with nothing but a sheathed knife, the letters KL carved into its hilt, and a memory spell burned into the crook of his arm, his short life before that moment erased.
“You were young,” she said. “But I thought by now you might remember.”
“You knew me before?” His head spun at the thought. “How?”
“I deal in rare things, Antari. There are few things rarer than you. I met your parents,” continued Maris. “They brought you here.”
Kell felt dizzy, ill. “Why?”
“Perhaps they were greedy,” she said absently. “Perhaps they were afraid. Perhaps they wanted what was best. Perhaps they wanted only to be rid of you.”
“If you know the answer—”
“Do you really want to know?” she cut in.
He started to say yes, the word automatic, but it stuck in his throat. How many years had he lain awake in bed, thumb brushing the scar at his elbow, wondering who he was, who he’d been, before?
“Do you want to know the last thing your mother said? What the initials stand for on your father’s knife? Do you want to know who your true family was?”
Maris rounded her desk and took her seat with a slow precision that belied her age. She took up a quill and scribbled something on a slip of parchment, folding it twice into a small, neat square. She held it out between two aged fingers.
“To remove the spell I put on you.”
Kell stared at the paper, his vision sliding in and out. He swallowed.
“What is the price?”
A smile played across the woman’s old mouth. “This one, and this one alone, is free. Call it a debt now paid, a kindness, or a closing door. Call it whatever you want, but expect nothing more.”
He willed his body forward, willed his hand not to tremble as it reached for the paper.
“You still have that crease between your eyes,” she said. “Still the same sad-faced boy you were that day.”
Kell closed his fist around the slip of paper. “Is that all, Maris?”
A sigh escaped like steam between her lips. “I suppose.” But her voice followed him through the door. “Strange thing about forgetting spells,” she added as he hovered on the threshold, caught between shadow and sharp light. “Most will fade on their own. Stuck on at first, sure as stone. But over time, they slide right off. Unless we don’t want to let them go….”
With that, a gust of wind cut through, and the door to Maris’s market swung shut behind him.
IV
The market called to Delilah Bard.
She couldn’t see the threads of magic like Alucard, couldn’t read the spells like Kell, but the pull was there all the same, enticing as new coins, fine jewels, sharp weapons.
Temptation: that was the word for it, the urge to let herself look, touch, take.
But that shine, that unspoken promise—of strength, of power—reminded Lila of the sword she’d found back in Grey London, the way Vitari’s magic had called to her through the steel, singing of promise. Almost everything in her life had changed since that night, but she still didn’t trust that kind of blind, bottomless want.
So she waited.
Waited until the sounds beyond the door had stopped, waited until Kell and Alucard were gone, waited until there was no one and nothing left to stop her, until Maris was alone, and the want in Lila’s chest had cooled into something hard, sharp, usable.
And then she went in.
The old woman was at her desk, cupping Lila’s watch in one gnarled hand as if it were a piece of ripened fruit as she drew a nail across the crystal surface.
It is not Barron, Lila told herself. That watch is not him. It’s just a thing, and things are meant to be used.
The dog heaved a sigh beneath Maris’s feet, and it must have been a trick of the light, because the queen of the market looked … younger. Or, at least, a few wrinkles shy of ancient.
“Nothing strike your fancy, dearie?” she said without looking up.
“I know what I want.”
Maris set the watch down, then, with a surprising degree of care. “And yet, your hands are empty.”
Lila pointed at the Inheritor hanging from the woman’s throat. “That’s because you’re wearing my prize.”
Maris’s hand drifted up. “This old piece?” she demurred, twirling the Inheritor between her fingers as if it were a simple pendant.
“What can I say?” said Lila casually. “I have a weakness for antiquated things.”
A smile split the old woman’s face, the innocence shed like a skin. “You know what it is.”
“A smart pirate keeps her best treasure close.”
Maris’s sandy eyes drifted back to the silver watch. “A valid point. And if I refuse?”
“You said everything had a price.”
“Perhaps I lied.”
Lila smiled and said without malice, “Then perhaps I’ll just cut it from your wrinkled neck.”
A gravelly laugh. “You wouldn’t be the first to try, but I don’t think that would go well for either of us.” She traced the hem of her white tunic. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get blood out of these clothes.” Maris took up the watch again, weighing it in her palm. “You should know, I don’t often take things without power, but then few people realize that memory casts its own spell, that it writes itself on an object just like magic, waiting to be picked over—or picked apart—by clever fingers. Another city. Another home. Another life. All bound up in something as simple as a cup, a coat, a silver watch. The past is a powerful thing, don’t you think?”
“The past is the past.”
A withering look. “Lies don’t write themselves on me, Miss Bard.”