Tes folded her arms. “You want me to fix a thing, without knowing what it is or what it was meant to do?”
“It’s broken,” he wheezed. “That’s what it is. It’s meant to be whole. Can you fix it or not?”
That was a good question. She’d yet to find something she couldn’t fix, but then, she usually knew how it was meant to work. And yet, in theory at least, the threads would tell her. If she could read the pattern. If she could reconstruct it.
It would be a challenge. But Tes loved a challenge.
She gestured at the mound of parts. “Is this everything?” she asked, and the stranger hesitated.
“Everything you need,” he said, which wasn’t the same thing, but he clearly wasn’t well, and she didn’t need him fainting in her shop.
“I’ll do it,” Tes said. “Eight lin. Half up front.”
The man didn’t argue. He fumbled in his pockets, pulled out a handful of loose coins. They were all lin, red metal printed with a small gold star, and yet he plucked them out of his palm one at a time, holding each coin to the light as if to check its value before setting it on the counter.
Tes produced a black ticket, a gold H on one side and a number on the other, and slid it across the table so she didn’t have to touch him. In case it was the kind of curse that spread.
Her eyes were already drifting back to the parcel, the pieces, her mind racing ahead when he asked, “When will it be ready?”
“When it’s ready,” she said, and then, seeing the fear and panic that swept across his sickly face, she added, “Come back in three days.”
She would know by then if she could fix it, or not.
His head jerked like a puppet’s. “Three—days.” He seemed loath to leave the bundle, broken as it was. He backed away from her, as Nero had done, but there was no ease, no charm, only a cord drawn taut. And then it snapped, and he was gone.
Tes got up and followed in his wake, turning the sign to CLOSED and locking the door, despite the early hour. She scarfed down the remaining dumplings, and brewed a pot of strong black tea, and sat down before the stack of broken parts. She cracked her knuckles, and rolled her neck, and bundled the curls on top of her head.
“Well,” she said to the dead owl at her elbow. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Part Four
THE OPEN DOOR
I
Lila’s luggage hit the floor with a heavy thud.
“You know what I love?” she said, looking around. “You can change the name on the sign and the number of stairs. You can change the color of the walls and the view beyond the window. But no matter how many worlds you cross, a tavern inn is still a tavern inn.” She took a deep breath. “Sawdust and stale ale. Always makes me feel at home.”
Kell turned in a slow circle, taking in their room at the Setting Sun.
“Ir cas il casor,” he said. To each their own.
But in truth, he understood the point.
He had kept a room of his own here once, years before. It had been a respite—from palace life, and the weight of the king’s attention—but also a place to keep the things he’d picked up on his travels.
And no wonder it felt familiar to Lila as well. After all, nearly a decade ago, Lila had lived in a room on this very spot, albeit in another world. The Setting Sun stood in the same place as the Stone’s Throw in Grey London, the Scorched Bone in White.
Fixed points. That’s how Kell had always thought of them, those rare places where the worlds perfectly lined up, so that what existed physically in one also existed in another, as if called into being by the echo. A bridge at the same bend in the river. A well on the same hill. A tavern on the same corner.
In those places, the walls between the worlds were thin—at least they had always felt that way to him—and as Kell stood in the center of the floor, he imagined that if he looked up, he would see the pale ribs of the Scorched Bone; that if he took a step, the boards would groan over Ned Tuttle’s head; imagined he could feel those other places, the rain beyond the windows, the chill beneath the door, the shadow of something at the edge of his senses. Kell shivered, sure that he could feel—
A latch scraped free, dragging his attention back to the little room.
Lila had flung the window open. Beyond the peaked rooftops and carriage-filled roads, the Isle’s red glow reflected up against the low clouds as day faded into night. Somewhere in the port, the Grey Barron rocked in the gentle tide, tethered in its berth.
Kell fell back onto the bed, wincing as his body struck the stiff pallet. “And to think,” he muttered, “we chose this over the palace.”
Lila rested her boot on the wooden chest. “You could stay in the palace.”
“I could,” he said. Then, tucking his hands behind his head, “You could stay on the ship.”
“I could,” she said.
“So why don’t you?”
Lila looked up at the ceiling, and he thought she would tell the truth, then, spill the words she hated to say, the ones he needed to hear, that her place was with him as his was with her. But she only shrugged and said, “I can’t stand to be on a stationary ship, chained like a beast to the dock. Makes me feel trapped.” She turned toward the bed, cocking her head as her gaze raked over him.
“This reminds me,” she said, “of the night we met. Do you remember?”
“When you robbed me, and then used the stolen magic to conjure a double who tried to kill you?” Kell crossed his ankles. “How could I forget?”
She waved her hand. “I meant after the robbery, and before the spell. When I bound you to a bed.” A glint in her eye. “Just like this one.”
“Lila, don’t,” he said, but it was too late. The wood was already peeling away from the frame. He tried to sit up, but it wrapped around his wrists like fingers, and forced him back against the narrow cot.
Lila Bard smiled, and sank onto the edge of the bed.
“Let me go,” warned Kell, but her hand settled on his chest, the gesture firm, fingers splayed, as if laying claim to the body beneath. She met his gaze, and he couldn’t believe he’d ever thought those eyes a matching set. One was vivid, alive, the other flat. The difference between an open window and a locked door.
She leaned down until her hair grazed his cheek. Until her mouth hovered over his. His chest rose and fell beneath her palm.
“Let me go,” he said again, his voice dropping low. And this time, she did. But when the binds crumbled from his wrists, Kell didn’t pull away. He reached up, threading his fingers through her hair.
“Why didn’t you stay on the ship?” he asked again, because now and then, it was not enough to dance around the truth. He wanted to hear her say it. Even if she did not wear the ring. He wanted to know that she chose to be here, with him.
Lila held his gaze so long he could have counted the shards of light in her good eye. And then, at last, almost grudgingly, she said, “Because the bed would feel empty. Without you in it.”
Kell felt his mouth tug into a smile. But before he could savor the words, she was up again, and across the narrow room, a knife in one hand and a slip of paper in the other.
“Get changed,” she said. “I doubt Kay would be welcome at court.”
Kell rolled up to his feet. He went to the basin and filled it from a pitcher. The water came out warm, thanks to a spell etched into the spout, and Kell washed his face, and ran a wet hand through his copper hair. He smelled strongly of salt and sea, and had no doubt Rhy would comment on it.
He shrugged out of his coat, and turned it inside out, from left to right, and so Kay’s black mantle fell away, replaced by one Kell hadn’t worn in months—an elegant red coat, gold buttons running down the front. The edges were trimmed in gold thread and the inside was lined with gold silk, and the whole thing smelled of palace candles and sweet floral soap. It was a coat that belonged to Kell Maresh, famed Antari, prince of Arnes, brother to the king.