“I’m not lying,” said Lila. “The past is the past. It doesn’t live in any one thing. It certainly doesn’t live in something that can be given away. If it did, I would have just handed you everything I was, everything I am. But you can’t have that, not even for a look around your market.” Lila tried to slow her heartbeat before continuing. “What you can have is a silver watch.”
Maris’s gaze held hers. “A pretty speech.” She lifted the Inheritor over her head and set it on the desk beside the timepiece. Her face betrayed no strain, but when the object hit the wood, it made a solid sound, as if it weighed a great deal more than it seemed, and the woman’s shoulders seemed lighter for the lack of it. “What will you give me?”
Lila cocked her head. “What do you want?”
Maris leaned back and crossed her legs, one white boot resting on the dog’s back. It didn’t seem to mind. “You’d be surprised how rarely people ask. They come here assuming I’ll want their money or power, as if I’ve any need for either.”
“Why run this market, then?”
“Someone has to keep an eye on things. Call it a passion, or a hobby. But as to the question of payment …” She sat forward. “I’m an old woman, Miss Bard—older than I look—and I really want only one thing.”
Lila lifted her chin. “And what is that?”
She spread her hands. “Something I don’t already have.”
“A tall order, by the looks of this place.”
“Not really,” said Maris. “You want the Inheritor. I’ll sell it to you for the price of an eye.”
Lila’s stomach turned. “You know,” she said, fighting to keep her tone airy, “I need the one I have.”
Maris chuckled. “Believe it or not, dearie, I’m not in the business of blinding my customers.” She held out her hand. “The broken one will do.”
*
Lila watched the lid of the small black box close over her glass eye.
The cost had been higher, the loss greater, than she realized when she first agreed. The eye had always been useless, its origins as strange and lost to her as the accident that took her real one. She’d wondered about it, of course—the craftwork so fine it must have been stolen—but for all that, Lila wasn’t sentimental. She’d never been particularly attached to the ball of glass, but the moment it was gone, she felt suddenly wrong, exposed. A deformity on display, an absence made visible.
It is only a thing, she told herself again, and things are meant to be used.
Her fingers tightened on the Inheritor, relishing the pain as it cut into her palm.
“The instructions are written on the side,” Maris was saying. “But perhaps I should have mentioned that the vessel is empty.” The woman’s expression went coy, as if she’d managed a trick. As if she thought Lila was after the remains of someone else’s power instead of the device itself.
“Good,” she said simply. “That’s even better.”
The woman’s thin lips curled with amusement, but if she wanted to know more, she didn’t ask. Lila started toward the door, combing the hair over her missing eye.
“A patch will help,” said Maris, setting something on the table. “Or perhaps this.”
Lila turned back.
The box was small and white and open, and at first, it looked empty, nothing but a swatch of crushed black velvet lining its sides. But then the light shifted and the object caught the sun, glinting faintly.
It was a sphere roughly the size and shape of an eye.
And it was solid black.
“Everyone knows the mark of an Antari,” explained Maris. “The all-black eye. There was a fashion, oh, about a century ago—those who’d lost an eye in battle or by accident and found themselves in need of a false one would don one of blackened glass, passing themselves off as more than they were. The fashion ended, of course, when those ambitious, misguided few discovered that an Antari is much more than a marking. Some were challenged to duels they could not win, some were kidnapped or murdered for their magic, and some simply couldn’t stand the pressure. As such, these eyes became quite rare,” said Maris. “Almost as rare as you.”
Lila didn’t realize she’d crossed the room until she felt her fingers brush the smooth black glass. It seemed to sing beneath her touch, as if wanting to be held. “How much?”
“Take it.”
Lila looked up. “A gift?”
Maris laughed softly, the sound of steam escaping a kettle. “This is the Ferase Stras,” she said. “Nothing is free.”
“I’ve already given you my left eye,” growled Lila.
“And while an eye for an eye is enough for some—for this,” she said, nudging the box toward Lila, “I’ll need something more precious.”
“A heart?”
“A favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
Maris shrugged. “I suppose I’ll know when I need it. But when I call you, you will come.”
Lila hesitated. It was a dangerous deal, she knew, the kind villains coaxed from maidens in fairy tales, and devils from lost men, but she still heard herself answer, a single binding word.
“Yes.”
Maris’s smile cracked wider. “Anesh,” she said. “Try it on.”
When she had it in, Lila stood before the mirror, blinking fiercely at her changed appearance, the startling difference of a shadow cast across her face, a pit of darkness so complete it registered as absence. As if a piece of her were missing—not an eye, but an entire self.
The girl from Grey London.
The one who picked pockets and cut purses and froze to death on winter nights with only pride to keep her warm.
The one without a family, without a world.
This new eye looked startlingly strange, wrong, and yet right.
“There,” said Maris. “Isn’t that better?”
And Lila smiled, because it was.
V
The slip of paper Maris had given Kell still blazed against his palm, but he kept his fist closed tight around it as he and Alucard stood, waiting, beyond the door.
He was worried that if they crossed the platform and left the ship, they wouldn’t be allowed back on, and given Lila’s tendency for trouble, Kell wanted to stay close.
But then the door swung open and Lila stepped through, the Inheritor clutched in her hand. And yet it wasn’t the scroll-like device that caught his attention. It was Lila’s smile, a dazzling, happy smile, and just above, a sphere of glossy black where shattered brown had been. Kell sucked in a breath.
“Your eye,” he said.
“Oh,” said Lila with a smirk, “you noticed.”
“Saints, Bard,” said Alucard. “Do I want to know how much that cost?”
“Worth every penny,” she said.
Kell reached out and tucked the hair behind Lila’s ear so he could see it better. The eye looked stark and strange and utterly right. His own gaze didn’t clash against it, the way it did with Holland’s, and yet, now that it was there, her eyes divided into brown and black, he couldn’t imagine ever thinking she was ordinary. “It suits you.”
“Not to interrupt …” said Alucard behind them.
Lila tossed him the Inheritor as if it were a mere coin, a simple token instead of the entire goal of their mad mission, their best—and maybe only—chance of saving London. Kell’s stomach dropped, but Alucard snatched the talisman from the air just as easy.
He crossed the plank between the market and the Ghost, Lila falling in step behind him, but Kell lingered. He looked down at the paper in his hand. It was nothing but parchment, yet it could have weighed more than stone, the way it rooted him to the wooden floor.
Your true family.
But what did that mean? Was family the ones you were born to, or the ones who took you in? Did the first years of his life weigh more than the rest?
Strange thing about forgetting spells.
Rhy was his brother.
They fade on their own.
London was his home.
Unless we don’t let go.
“Kell?” called Lila, looking over her shoulder with those two-toned eyes. “You coming?”
He nodded. “I’m right behind you.”
His fingers closed over the paper, and with a brush of heat, it caught fire. He let it burn, and when the note was nothing but ashes, he tipped them over the side, letting the wind catch them before they ever hit the sea.
*
The crew stood on deck, gathered around a wooden crate—the makeshift table where Kell had set the bounty for which he’d paid three years.
“Tell me again,” said Lila, “why, with a ship full of shiny things, you bought yourself a ring.”