IV
Kell could hear the footsteps, first one set and then two and then three—or maybe the third was just the pumping of his heart—as he raced through the alleys and side streets. He didn’t stop, didn’t breathe, not until he reached the Ruby Fields. Fauna met his gaze as he passed within, her grey brow furrowing—he almost never came by the front door—but she didn’t stop him, didn’t ask. The footsteps had fallen away a few blocks back, but he still checked the markings on the stairs as he climbed toward the room at the top, and on the room’s door—charms bound to the building itself, to wood and stone, designed to keep the room hidden from all eyes but his.
Kell shut the door and sagged back against the wood as candles flickered to life around the narrow room.
He’d been set up, but by who? And for what?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he needed to, and so he dragged the stolen parcel from his pocket. It was wrapped in a swatch of faded grey fabric, and when he unfolded the cloth, a rough-cut stone tumbled out into his palm.
It was small enough to nest in a closed fist, and as black as Kell’s right eye, and it sang in his hand, a low, deep vibration that called on his own power like a tuning fork. Like to like. Resonating. Amplifying. His pulse quickened.
Part of him wanted to drop the stone. The other part wanted to grip it tighter.
When Kell held it up to the candlelight, he saw that one side was jagged, as if broken, but the other was smooth, and on that smooth face a symbol glowed faintly.
Kell’s heart lurched when he saw it.
He’d never seen the stone before, but he recognized the mark.
It was written in a language few could speak and fewer still could use. A language that ran through his veins with his blood and pulsed in his black eye.
A language he had come to think of simply as Antari.
But the language of magic hadn’t always belonged to Antari alone. No, there were stories. Of a time when others could speak directly to magic (even if they couldn’t command it by blood). Of a world so bonded to power that every man, woman, and child became fluent in its tongue.
Black London. The language of magic had belonged to them.
But after the city fell, every relic had been destroyed, every remnant in every world forcibly erased as part of a cleansing, a purge—a way to ward against the plague of power that had devoured it.
That was the reason there were no books written in Antari. What few texts existed now were piecemeal, the spells collected and transcribed phonetically and passed down, the original language eradicated.
It made him shiver now, to see it drawn as it was meant to be, not in letters, but in rune.
The only rune he knew.
Kell possessed a single book on the Antari tongue, entrusted to him by his tutor, Tieren. It was a leather journal filled with blood commands—spells that summoned light or darkness, encouraged growth, broke enchantments—all of them sounded out and explained, but on its cover, there was a symbol.
“What does it mean?” he’d asked the tutor.
“It’s a word,” explained Tieren. “One that belongs to every world and none. It is the word for ‘magic.’ It refers to its existence, and its creation. …” Tieren brought a finger to the rune. “If magic had a name, it would be this,” he said, tracing the symbol’s lines. “Vitari.”
Now Kell ran his thumb over the stone’s rune, the word echoing in his head.
Vitari.
Just then, footsteps fell on the stairs, and Kell stiffened. No one should be able to see those stairs, let alone use them, but he could hear the boots. How had they followed him here?
And that’s when Kell saw the pattern on the swatch of pale fabric that had once been wrapped around the stone and now lay unfolded on his bed. There were symbols scrawled across it. A tracing spell.
Sanct.
Kell shoved the stone in his pocket and lunged for the window as the small door behind him burst open violently. He mounted the sill and jumped out, and down, hitting the street below hard and rolling to his feet as the intruders came crashing into his room.
Someone had set him up. Someone wanted him to bring a forbidden relic out of White London and into his city.
A figure leaped through the window in his wake, and Kell spun to face the shadows on his heels. He expected two of them, but found only one. The hooded stranger slowed, and stopped.
“Who are you?” demanded Kell.
The shadow didn’t answer him. It strode forward, reaching for the weapon at its hip, and in the low alley light Kell saw an X scarred the back of his hand. The mark of cutthroats and traitors. A knife-for-hire. But when the man drew his weapon, Kell froze. It was no rusted dagger, but a gleaming half-sword, and he knew the sigil on its hilt. The chalice and rising sun. The symbol of the royal family. It was the blade wielded by members of the royal guard. And only by them.
“Where did you get that?” growled Kell, anger rolling through him.
The cutthroat flexed his fingers around his half-sword. It began to glow dully, and Kell tensed. The swords of the royal guards weren’t just beautiful or sharp; they were enchanted. Kell himself had helped create the spellwork that ran through the metal, spellwork that dampened a magician’s power with only one cut. The blades were designed to put a stop to conflicts before they began, to remove the threat of magical retaliation. Because of their potential, and the fear of that potential in the wrong hands, the royal guards were told to keep the blade on them at all times. If one of them had lost their sword, they’d likely lost their life as well.
“Sarenach,” said the cutthroat. Surrender. The command caught Kell by surprise. Knives-for-hire took loot and blood, not prisoners.
“Put down that sword,” ordered Kell. He tried to will the weapon from the cutthroat’s grip, but it was warded. Another fail-safe to keep the blade from falling into the wrong hands. Which it already had. Kell swore and drew his own knife from its holster. It was a good foot shorter than the royal blade.
“Surrender,” said the cutthroat again, his voice strangely even. He tilted up his chin and Kell caught a glimmer of magic in the man’s eyes. A compulsion spell? Kell had only a moment to note the use of forbidden magic before the man lunged, the glowing weapon slicing through the air toward him. He jerked back, dodging the sword as a second figure appeared at the other end of the alley.
“Surrender,” said the second man.
“One at a time,” snapped Kell. He threw his hand into the air, and the street stones shuddered and then shot upward in a wall of rock and dirt, barring the second attacker’s path.
But the first kept coming, kept slashing, and Kell scrambled backward out of the sword’s arc. He almost made it; the blade caught his arm, slicing through fabric but narrowly missing his skin. He lunged away as the weapon cut again, but this time it found flesh, slashing across his ribs. Pain tore through Kell’s chest as blood welled and spilled down his stomach. The man pressed forward and Kell retreated a step and tried to will the street stones to rise between them. They shuddered and laid still.
“Surrender,” ordered the cutthroat in his too-even tone.
Kell pressed his hand to his shirtfront, trying to stem the blood as he dodged another slice. “No.” He spun the dagger in his hand, took it by the tip, and threw as hard as he could. The blade found its mark, and buried itself in the cutthroat’s shoulder. But to Kell’s horror, the man didn’t drop his weapon. He kept coming. Pain didn’t even register on his face as he pulled the knife free and cast it aside.
“Surrender the stone,” he said, dead-eyed.
Kell’s hand closed protectively around the talisman in his pocket. It hummed against his palm, and Kell realized as he held it that even if he could give it away—which he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, not without knowing what it was for and who was after it—he didn’t want to let it go. Couldn’t bear the thought of parting with it. Which was absurd. And yet, something in him ached to keep it.
The cutthroat came at him again.
Kell tried to take another step back, but his shoulders met the makeshift barricade.
There was nowhere to run.