“What’s your name?” asked Alucard, thought it was innocuous enough, but the man’s eyes—a pale brown, like weak tea—narrowed. His face snapped shut. And Alucard realized why he’d stopped running.
Before, he’d been too busy to notice the color of the young man’s magic. But now, Alucard saw the threads, bruising the air around his opponent’s shoulders. It was a color he almost never saw: a dark and warning violet.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alucard, waving his own question away. “Right now, we need to find your friend, Tes. Make sure she’s safe.” He regretted the words as soon as they were out. He’d just tipped his hand, admitted she wasn’t in the shop. The man’s brown eyes flicked up. Alucard pressed on. “If you come back with me, maybe you’ll see something—”
“Tes can look after herself.” He took a step back as he said it, shaking his head.
“I can’t let you go,” warned Alucard.
The man flashed him a pitying grin. “I don’t think you have a choice.”
They moved at the same time, each reaching for their magic, Alucard for the street stones, and the younger man for him. Alucard was fast—but for once, not fast enough. The ground beneath them shuddered, but before it could rise up, the other man slammed his hand down, and Alucard felt his own body buckle, fold.
Bone magic.
That was the power turning the air around him such a vivid shade.
Alucard’s limbs were forced to the ground, his head bowed so he couldn’t see anything but the street, his hands splayed on the stones. He gasped, trying to wrest his body back from the man’s hold, felt his jaw grind shut so he couldn’t call for help.
“I’m sorry,” said the man, and if Alucard weren’t being held against his will, he might have stopped to think how strange it was, that apology, stranger still that it sounded sincere. He heard the man’s boots skirt around him, careful to stay beyond Alucard’s line of sight.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I just wanted to bring her dumplings.”
His steps retreated down the alley, and the last thing Alucard heard was him pausing by the horse to pat its flank and say, “Good boy,” before slipping away.
As soon as he was gone, Alucard’s body was his again. Not gradually, like feeling coming back into numb fingers, but all at once, control slamming back into his limbs with all the force of a wave on the rocks.
Alucard rose to his feet, shaking out the unsettling sensation of having been a puppet on someone else’s strings. The horse stood, waiting patiently at the mouth of the alley.
“You could have stopped him,” he muttered, mounting the beast. But neither he nor the horse were going after the bone magician.
Not while the ghosted mark still burned behind his eyes, hanging there as it had in the ruined shop. A scar the size and shape of exactly one thing.
A door.
VIII
The house sat still and dark, exactly as it had the night before.
Lila leaned at the mouth of the alley across the street, and searched the edge of the coin again for some clue she might have missed, some hint or mention of a day to go with the blasted hour. But the words hadn’t changed.
SON HELARIN RAS ? NONIS ORA
The street around the house had come alive—carriages went up and down the road, and customers spilled in and out of shops, and the houses to either side showed signs of life—but the eleventh hour came and went, and no one approached the doors of 6 Helarin Way.
This was beginning to feel like a riddle, and as far as Lila was concerned, riddles could go hang themselves.
She was about to go, then stopped. If she was going to be standing vigil twice a day, at least she could save herself the walk. She unwound the bandage from her hand, the cut still fresh; a little pressure and it welled. She touched her fingers to the blood and made a small mark on the nearest wall. A vertical line, and two small crosses. A shortcut.
She wrapped her hand, and scowled at the empty house one last time. Six Helarin Way stared grimly back, its windows dark, its gate locked tight as teeth, its fa?ade taking on a rictus grin.
The longer she looked at it, the more she felt like it was mocking her.
Fire sparked in her palm. She briefly considered burning it down. The urge passed, until she felt the body in the shadows at her back.
Lila sighed, and drew a blade. “I warned you what would happen,” she said, “if you followed me again.”
She was about to throw the knife when a familiar voice replied, “Well, that sounds menacing.”
Lila decided to throw it anyway. To Alucard’s credit, he sidestepped the blade, and caught the metal edge between his fingers.
“I’m going to pretend,” he said, “that you didn’t know it was me, and were merely acting on instinct.”
“You do that,” said Lila, flicking her wrist. The blade plucked itself from Alucard’s hand and returned to hers. He joined her at the mouth of the alley.
“I admit, I was surprised to find you here.”
She could ask how he did, but she could guess. Those bloody crows.
Alucard was studying the houses on the road, and she caught a flicker of discomfort cross his face. The Emery estate wasn’t far from here. This had been his neighborhood, the streets where he was raised.
A couple passed by, startling a little when they saw the prince’s consort. He flashed a smile, but she could see the strain behind it.
Served him right, she thought, for following her.
He looked past her at the row of houses across the street.
“So,” he said casually. “What are we doing here?”
She resented the use of “we” and considered telling him to fuck off, but she was sick of looking at the stupid house. Perhaps a pair of fresh eyes would help.
“That one there,” she said, jerking her chin at it. “I don’t suppose it’s spelled somehow. Something you can see that I cannot.”
She didn’t often envy Alucard’s sight—in a world saturated with magic, it seemed to cause him headaches more than help—but she’d been glaring at the stone fa?ade for nearly an hour to no avail, and if it turned out the meeting had been happening all along, she really might just burn it down.
Alucard looked at the building, his eyes taking on a far-off focus as they scraped across its front. “There’s no veil,” he said. “Why?”
Lila dug the coin from her pocket and tossed it to him.
“A tip, for my fine company?” he asked, weighing the lin in his palm. “Believe it or not, Bard, I am not pressed for pocket change.”
She rolled her eyes. “That coin was found on one of the dead thieves, on Maris’s ship. Look at the edge.”
Alucard held it to the light. The metal was still faintly stained from the night before, soot gathered in the tiny grooves. “A message?” he ventured, squinting as he tried to make it out.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” she said. “It’s very small. And backwards.”
She pulled the kerchief from her pocket, the words printed in the right direction. He noticed the bandage wrapped around her wrist, and frowned. “Cut yourself?”
“The price of playing with knives,” she said dismissively. “Now look.” She tapped the writing. “It’s a meeting. And I’m willing to bet more than that coin it’s for the Hand.”
Alucard blew out a breath. “This must be how we haven’t caught on. You must admit,” he said, “it’s rather clever.”
“I’d appreciate it more if they’d bothered to give the day as well.”
“But they did.” He pointed to the little mark that separated the two halves of the message. On the kerchief, it registered as a small black circle.
“That,” said Lila, “is a dot.”
“Only for someone with no imagination. Or no education in Arnesian shorthand. In which case, that little dot, as you call it, is a moon.”
Lila’s stomach dropped.
“Or perhaps a moon-less,” he added. “It’s hard to know which school they’re using.”