The Fragile Threads of Power (Threads of Power, #1)

And even then, she didn’t stop.

None of the other children would go into the wood. They said it was dead, said it was haunted, said there were faces in the trees, eyes watching from the peeling grey bark. But Kosika wasn’t scared, or at least, not as scared of the dead forest as she was of those men, with their hungry eyes and shackle hands. She crossed the first line of trees, straight as bars on a cage, and kept going one row, two, three, before pressing herself back against a narrow trunk.

She closed her eyes, and held her breath, and tried to listen past the hammer of her heart. Listen for voices. Listen for footsteps. But the world was suddenly quiet, and all she heard was the murmur of wind through the mostly bare branches. The rustle of it on brittle leaves.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. A dozen wooden eyes stared back from the trees ahead. She waited for one of them to blink, but none of them did.

Kosika could have turned back then, but she didn’t. She’d crossed the edge of the woods, and it had made her bold. So she went deeper, walking until she couldn’t see the rooftops, or the streets, or the castle anymore, until it felt like she wasn’t in the city at all, but somewhere else. Somewhere calm. Somewhere quiet.

And then she saw him.

The man was sitting on the ground, his back against a tree, his legs out and his chin dropped against his chest, limp as a rag doll, but the sight of him still made her gasp, the sound loud as a snapping stick in the silent woods. She clapped a hand over her mouth and ducked behind the nearest tree, expecting the man’s head to jerk up, his hand to reach for a weapon. But he didn’t move. He must have been asleep.

Kosika chewed her lip.

She couldn’t leave—it wasn’t safe to go home, not yet—and she didn’t want to put her back to the man on the ground, in case he tried to surprise her, so she sank down against another tree, legs crossed, making sure she could see the sleeping stranger. She dug in her pockets, came up with the waxy bag of sugar.

She sucked on the cubes one at a time, eyes darting now and then to the man against the tree. She decided to save one of the sugar cubes for him, as thanks for keeping her company, but an hour passed, and the sun sank low enough to scrape the branches, and the air went from cool to cold, and the man still didn’t move.

She had a bad feeling, then.

“Os?” she called out, wincing as the sound of her voice broke the silence of the Silver Wood, the word bouncing off the hard trees.

Hello? Hello? Hello?

Kosika got to her feet and made her way toward the man. He didn’t look very old, but his hair was silver white, his clothes finely made, too nice to be sitting on the ground. He wore a silver half-cloak, and she knew, as soon as she got close enough, that he wasn’t sleeping.

He was dead.

Kosika had seen a dead body before, but it had been much different, limbs askew and insides spilled out onto the cobblestones. There was no blood on the man beneath the tree. He looked like he’d just gotten tired, and decided to sit down and rest, and never managed to get back up. One arm was draped in his lap. The other hung at his side. Kosika’s gaze followed it down to his hand where it touched the ground. There was something beneath his fingers.

She leaned closer, and saw that it was grass.

Not the hard, brittle blades that coated the rest of the Silver Wood, but soft, new shoots, small and green and spreading out beneath him like a cushion.

She ran her fingers over it, recoiling when her hand accidentally grazed his skin. The man was cold. Her eyes went to his half-cloak. It looked nice, and warm, and she thought of taking it, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch him again. And yet, she didn’t want to leave him, either. She took the last of the sugar cubes from the waxy bag and set it in his palm, just as a sound shattered the quiet.

The scrape of metal and the thud of boots.

Kosika leapt up, darting into the trees for cover. But they weren’t coming after her. She heard the steps slow, then stop, and she stopped, too, peering around a narrow trunk. From there, she couldn’t see the man on the ground, but she saw the soldiers standing over him. There were three of them, their silver armor glinting in the thin light. Royal guards.

Kosika couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she saw one kneel, heard another let out a ragged sob. A sound that splintered the woods, and made her wince, and turn her back, and run.





Part One

CLOCKS, LOCKS, AND CLEARLY STOLEN THINGS





I


RED LONDON

NOW

Master Haskin had a knack for fixing broken things.

The sign on his shop door said as much.

ES HAL VIR, HIS HAL NASVIR, it declared in neat gold font.

Once broken, soon repaired.

Ostensibly, his business was devoted to the mending of clocks, locks, and household trinkets. Objects guided by simple magic, the minor cogs that turned in so many London homes. And of course, Master Haskin could fix a clock, but so could anyone with a decent ear and a basic understanding of the language of spells.

No, most of the patrons that came through the black door of Haskin’s shop brought stranger things. Items “salvaged” from ships at sea, or lifted from London streets, or claimed abroad. Objects that arrived damaged, or were broken in the course of acquisition, their spellwork having rattled loose, unraveled, or been ruined entirely.

People brought all manner of things to Haskin’s shop. And when they did, they invariably encountered his apprentice.

She was usually perched, cross-legged, on a rickety stool behind the counter, a tangle of brown curls piled like a hat on her head, the unruly mass bound up with twine, or netting, or whatever she could find in a pinch. She might have been thirteen, or twenty-three, depending on the light. She sat like a child and swore like a sailor, and dressed as if no one had ever taught her how. She had thin quick fingers that were always moving, and keen dark eyes that twitched over whatever broken thing lay gutted on the counter, and she talked as she worked, but only to the skeleton of the owl that sat nearby.

It had no feathers, no flesh, just bones held together by silver thread. She had named the bird Vares—prince—after Kell Maresh, to whom it bore little resemblance, save for its two stone eyes, one of which was blue, the other black, and the unsettling effect it had on those it met—the result of a spell that spurred it now and then to click its beak or cock its head, startling unsuspecting customers.

Sure enough, the woman currently waiting across the counter jumped.

“Oh,” she said, ruffling as if she had feathers of her own. “I didn’t know it was alive.”

“It’s not,” said the apprentice, “strictly speaking.” In truth, she often wondered where the line was. After all, the owl had only been spelled to mimic basic movements, but now and then she’d catch him picking at a wing where the feathers would be, or notice him staring out the window with those flat rock eyes, and she swore that he was thinking something of his own.

The apprentice returned her attention to the waiting woman. She fetched a glass jar from beneath the counter. It was roughly the size of her hand, and shaped like a lantern with six glass sides.

“Here you are then,” she said as she set it on the table.

The customer lifted the object carefully, brought it to her lips, and whispered something. As she did, the lantern lit, the glass sides frosting a milky white. The apprentice watched, and saw what the woman couldn’t—the filaments of light around the object rippled and smoothed, the spellwork flowing seamlessly as the woman brought it to her ear. The message whispered itself back, and the glass went clear again, the vessel empty.

The woman smiled. “Marvelous,” she said, bundling the mended secret-keeper away inside her coat. She set the coins down in a neat stack, one silver lish and four red lin.

“Give Master Haskin my thanks,” she added, already turning away.

V. E. Schwab's books