“And until we choose to break that bond,” she countered, “our power will be yours.”
“It is the only way,” pressed Holland. “One Antari’s magic wasn’t enough to entice Osaron, but together …”
“We can lure him in,” finished Kell. He looked down at the ring in his hand, then slid it on. Lila saw the moment their powers met. The shudder that passed like a chill between them, the air humming with their combined power.
Lila looked down at her own silver band. She remembered the power, yes, but also the terrifying sense of being exposed, and yet trapped, laid bare and subject to someone else’s will.
She wanted to help, but the idea of binding herself to another—
A shadow crossed her vision as Holland stepped toward her. She didn’t look up, didn’t want to see his expression, filled with disdain, or worse, whatever was now visible through the crack she’d made.
“It’s not easy, is it? To chain yourself to someone else?” A chill ran through her as he threw the words back in her face. She clenched her fist around the ring. “Even when it’s for a higher cause,” he went on, never raising his voice. “Even when it could save a city, heal a world, change the lives of everyone you know …” Her eyes flicked to Kell. “It’s a hard choice to make.”
Lila met Holland’s gaze, expecting—maybe even hoping—to find that cold, implacable calm, perhaps tinged with disgust. Instead, she found shades of sadness, loss. And somehow, strength. The strength to go on. To try again. To trust.
She put on the ring.
I
To the Nameless Saints who soothe the winds and still the restless sea …
Lenos turned his grandmother’s talisman between his hands as he prayed.
I beg protection for this vessel—
A sound shuddered through the ship, followed by a swell of cursing. Lenos looked up as Lila got to her feet, steam rising from her hands.
—and those who sail aboard it. I beg kind waters and clear skies as we make our way—
“If you break my ship, I will kill you all,” shouted Jasta.
His fingers tightened around the pendant.
—our way into danger and darkness.
“Damned Antari,” muttered Alucard, storming up the steps to the landing where Lenos stood, elbows on the rail.
The captain slumped down against a crate and produced a flask. “This is why I drink.”
Lenos pressed on.
I beg this as a humble servant, with faith in the vast world, in all its power.
He straightened, tucking the necklace back under his collar.
“Did I interrupt?” asked Alucard.
Lenos looked from the singe marks on the deck to Jasta bellowing from the wheel as the ship tipped suddenly sideways under the force of whatever magic the three Antari were working, and at last to the man who sat drinking on the floor.
“Not really,” said Lenos, folding his long limbs in beside him.
Alucard offered Lenos the flask, but he declined. He’d never been much of a drinker. Never thought the during was much worth the after.
“How do you know they’re listening?” asked Alucard, taking another sip. “These saints you pray to?”
The captain wasn’t a spiritual man, as far as Lenos could tell, and that was fine. Magic was a river carving its course, picking who to flow through and who to bend around, and for those it bent around, well, there was a reason for that, too. For one thing, they tended to have a better view of the water from the bank. Lenos shrugged, searching for the words. “It’s not … really … a conversation.”
Alucard raised a brow, his sapphire glittering in the dying light. “What then?”
Lenos fidgeted. “More like … an offering.”
The captain made a sound that might have been understanding. Or he might have simply been clearing his throat.
“Always were an odd one,” mused Alucard. “How did you even end up on my ship?”
Lenos looked down at the talisman still cradled in one palm. “Life,” he said, since he didn’t believe in luck—it was the absence of design, and if Lenos believed one thing, it was that everything had an order, a reason. Sometimes you were too close to see it, sometimes too far away, but it was there.
He thought about that, then added, “And Stross.”
After all, it had been the Spire’s gruff first mate who ran into Lenos in Tanek when he was fresh off the boat from Hanas, who’d taken a shine to him, for one reason or another, and marched him up onto the deck of a new ship, its hull shining, its sails a midnight blue. There an odd lot had gathered, but oddest to Lenos was the man perched atop the wheel.
“Taking in strays, are we?” the man had asked when he caught sight of Lenos. He had an easy way about him, the kind of smile that made you want to smile too. Lenos stared—the sailors in his village had all been sun scorched and scraggly. Even the captains looked like they’d been left out for a summer and a winter and a spring. But this man was young and strong and striking, dressed in crisp black with silver trim.
“The name’s Alucard Emery,” he’d said, and a murmur had gone through the gathered men, but Lenos didn’t have a clue what an Emery was, or why he was supposed to care. “This here’s the Night Spire, and you’re here because she needs a crew. But you’re not my crew. Not yet.”
He nodded at the nearest man, a towering figure, muscles wound like coarse ropes around his frame. “What can you do?”
A chuckle went through the group.
“Well,” said the broad man. “I’m decent at lifting.”
“Can read any map,” offered another.
“A thief,” said a third. “The best you’ll find.”
Each and every man aboard was more than a sailor. They each had a skill—some had several. And then Alucard Emery had looked at Lenos with that storm-dark gaze.
“And you?” he’d said. “What can you do?”
Lenos had looked down at his too-thin form, ribs protruding with every breath, his hands roughened only by a childhood playing on rocky banks. The truth was, Lenos had never been very good at anything. Not natural magic or pretty women, feats of strength or turns of phrase. He wasn’t even terribly skilled at sailing (though he could tie a knot and wasn’t afraid of drowning).
The only thing Lenos had a knack for was sensing danger—not reading it in a darkened dish, or spotting it in lines of light, but simply feeling it, the way one might a tremor underfoot, a coming storm. Sensing it, and steering to avoid it.
“Well?” prompted Alucard.
Lenos swallowed. “I can tell you when there’s trouble.”
Alucard had raised a brow (there was no sapphire winking from it, then, not until their first outing in Faro).
“Captain,” Lenos had added hastily, misreading the man’s surprise for insult.
Alucard Emery had flashed another kind of smile. “Well, then,” he’d said, “I’ll hold you to it.”
That was another night, another time, another ship.
But Lenos had always kept his word.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” he whispered now, looking out to sea. The water was calm, the skies were clear, but there was a weight in his chest like a breath held too long.
“Lenos.” Alucard chuckled thinly and got to his feet. “A piece of magic is parading as a god, a poisoned fog is destroying London, and three Antari are sparring aboard our ship,” said the captain. “I’d be worried if you didn’t.”
II
Bloody hell, thought Lila, as she doubled over on the deck.
After hours of practice, she was dizzy and Kell’s skin was slick with sweat, but Holland barely looked winded. She fought the urge to hit him in the stomach before Hano called out from the crow’s nest. The ship needed a breeze.
She slumped back onto a crate as the others went to help. She felt like she’d gone three rounds in the Essen Tasch, and lost every single one. Every inch of her body—flesh down to bone—ached from using the rings. How the other two Antari had the energy left to put wind in the sails, she had no idea.