Maris pursed her lips. “Clear one debt before you take another.”
Venom rose like bile in her throat, but the captain held up a hand to cut her off. She looked suddenly tired. “If I had anything that could restore Kell Maresh’s power, or ease his suffering, I would give it…” She almost said freely—Lila saw her shaping the word—but Maris had more sense than that.
Instead, the old woman shook her head, and said, “But I don’t.”
The words landed like a heavy door swung shut by the wind. And this time, when Maris waved her away, Lila turned and followed Valick out.
* * *
If Red London’s night market had been scraped off the avenue beside the Isle and piled onto a boat, tents and stalls crowding every inch of space, it still wouldn’t have held a candle to the Ferase Stras.
The ship was twice the size of her Barron, a maze of halls and decks and cabins, spaces piled like a stack of books on a too-small table.
Lila had always been good at making maps. Not the kind on paper, but the ones that lived in her head, maps of town alleys and city streets, multiple worlds consigned entirely to memory. She could walk a road and learn it with her feet, and never get turned around a second time—and yet, there was no point aboard the Ferase Stras. Maybe it was magic, a spell designed to alter memory, or maybe it was simply the chaos and clutter, the dazzling distraction of a hundred powerful things.
But Valick clearly knew his way.
She followed him down the stairs and through a corridor packed tight with rooms. More than once her steps slowed before a curtained alcove, hoping to steal a look at the contents within, but Valick’s voice called her on, around a corner, up one set of stairs and down another until they finally reached the only stretch of open space on board, the lower deck. The captain’s other nephew, Katros, leaned against the mainmast, carving a bit of wood into a Rasch piece. At the sight of Lila Bard, he straightened, eyes flicking once from the platform on the side of the ship where visitors were meant to board to the way from which she’d clearly come. But Lila’s gaze went straight to the deck.
Even in the lantern glow, she could see the damage. The stain of blood on the wooden boards, the fractal scorch of magic.
“What happened here?” she asked, following the tendrils of the shattered ward to a section of splintered rail. Katros and Valick both opened their mouths, but it was Maris who answered.
“I was robbed.”
She had clearly taken another route, and dressed on the way, trading the robe for a white linen tunic and pants, her silver hair pulled back into a braid. The old white dog trailed silently behind.
“Robbed?” Lila’s hand fell away from the rail. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It shouldn’t be,” said Maris, crossing her arms.
Lila wanted to ask how they’d done it, but questions were like coins to people like Maris, you had to be careful how you spent them. So instead, she asked the more pertinent question. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Three thieves came aboard my ship. One got away.”
Lila scuffed her shoe over the bloodstained deck. “And you want me to track them down?”
“The thief matters far less than the object they took—or who might have wanted to collect it.”
Katros held out a slip of paper with a drawing on it.
“It was damaged in the attack,” said Maris. “But it could still work.”
Lila studied the drawing. It looked like a detailed sketch of a box, its only decoration an iron ring set into its front. It looked simple enough, but when Lila was young, she’d stolen something that reminded her of it—a puzzle box, the kind designed to hide its own key. It was small and made of wood and brass, with pieces that slid and turned, hinges that shifted and clasps that would only come free if you moved all the bits in the right way and the right order.
It had taken her three hours to open that box.
The first two to try and solve the puzzle, the third to crush it with a rock.
This one looked basic enough, but then again, it was on the Ferase Stras. Not just that, but Maris cared enough for her to track it down, when it might not even work. Which meant the chance it did was enough to make the old woman call in her favor.
“What does it do?” asked Lila.
Maris sighed and gazed out past the ship, into the dark. It was a moonless night, the sea so black that they seemed to be floating in the sky. The old woman had a faraway shine in her eyes, and Lila had a feeling she was about to hear a story, whether she wanted one or not.
“Antari have always been rare. But there was a time when you could count them on more than one hand. A time when most people hadn’t only heard tell of their power, but seen it up close. Seen it, and wanted it for themselves. It’s hardly surprising. A drop of blood, a single phrase, and you can turn flesh to stone, can shatter walls, or seal them up, heal a mortal wound, or open doors within the world, and between them.”
“I’m well aware what I can do,” said Lila.
Maris shot her a warning look. “Everything you do can be done with a spell. That was the theory. So fabricators set out to design spellwork that could emulate your gifts.”
A bad feeling was beginning to curl in Lila’s gut, but this time, she didn’t interrupt.
“Antari magic,” continued Maris, “is the place where spell and element meet. It is simple, and elegant, and the craft needed to replicate it was none of those things. It was volatile, and complicated, and required devices to contain the magic, to keep the spells from falling apart, or unraveling in horrible ways.”
“But it worked,” guessed Lila.
“But it worked,” said Maris. “The object they stole is called a persalis. A doormaker.”
Lila’s bad feeling turned to horror. “Tell me this doesn’t make doors between worlds.”
“Thankfully, no,” said Maris. “Only Antari were ever able to manage that. But it does make doors within them. The iron ring in the front comes free and is used to mark the destination. The box creates a portal.”
Just like As Tascen, thought Lila. The spell that had allowed her to make a shortcut into the world, step from the street onto the ship.
“Unlike your magic,” continued Maris, “this portal stays open, no matter how many people pass through. As long as the spell is active, an entire army could move from one location into another.”
Horror hardened into anger. Lila’s jaw clenched. “Do you ever think,” she said, “that instead of storing the world’s most dangerous magic, you might simply destroy it, and save us all the headache?”
“If I had done that, there would have been no rings to share Antari power, and the three of you would have lost to Osaron, after which London would have fallen to his plague, followed swiftly, I imagine, by everywhere else. If you only think of the wrong hands magic can fall into, you forget that now and then there are right ones.”
Lila raked a hand through her hair. “So one thief made it off the ship. And the other two…?”
“Didn’t,” said Maris simply. She flicked her fingers at Katros, who produced a small pouch.
“Everything that was in their pockets,” he explained, passing it to Lila. She pulled the string and tipped the contents out into her palm. Nothing but a few red lin. Barely enough to pay for a meal.
“Tell me you have more than this,” she said, returning the coins to the pouch.
Maris cleared her throat. “He also had a mark burned into his skin. A handprint.”
At that, Lila muttered a quiet “Fuck.”
“Ever the poet,” said the captain of the Ferase Stras, and Lila thought, not for the first time, that she should have paid for the damned glass eye some other way.
“I suggest you find the box quickly,” added Maris. “Before someone puts it to use.”
“And here I thought I’d take my time.” Lila shoved the pouch of coins into her pocket. “Anything else?”