Over the years, a great number of people had tried to kill Calin Trell.
His body was a map of failed attempts, times he’d been stabbed and burned, hacked at and cursed. He’d broken most of his bones, lost a good deal of blood, and been buried more times than he could count.
Which was to say, it would take more than a fallen house to keep him down.
The girl had been quick, he’d give her that. The blast of wind had slammed his head into the wall, rattling his skull, and in that ringing second, he’d almost missed the follow-up assault—almost, but not quite. He’d had just enough time to throw his power out and up, blocking most of the stone and wood and metal as it came crashing down.
Now Calin stood among the settling debris, a mountain of rubble to every side. Blood ran into one eye where something sharp had found the skin over his brow, but otherwise, he was unscathed. Let Bex Galevans keep her steel, with all its flourishes, he thought. Earth work was blunt, but effective.
Speaking of Bex—he hauled himself up out of the makeshift hole, stood atop the heap that used to be Haskin’s shop, before the little bitch had brought the whole thing down on top of them. He shifted his feet, and the rocks and timber groaned beneath him. He paid no mind to the spectators now pouring into the street, some shocked, others merely curious. This was, after all, the shal, whose unofficial motto was: Mind your own business.
He looked around. No sign of Bex.
With any luck, she was dead beneath the wreckage.
Not that Calin ever had much luck.
He turned, scanning the buildings to either side, the alley and the road, and caught a twitch of movement, a girl-shaped shadow, sprinting away into the dark.
Calin smiled, blood and dust in his teeth.
He’d always been fond of the hunt.
He leapt down from his perch atop the ruins and landed hard, boots hitting the stone road. More blood dripped into his vision, and he wiped it away. The cut in his brow was deep—it would scar. One more mark to add to the tally.
Calin drew a blade from his belt, and started down the road.
* * *
Tes wove between the buildings in the dark.
She knew the shal better than the rest of London, knew it as well as anyone could when they weren’t born and raised among these narrow streets, knew it was a different place at night. The roads were always narrow, a warren of alleys, few wide enough for a carriage or a cart, but in the dark, those winding streets blocked out the light as well. Here and there, the Isle’s red glow tinted rooftops crimson, but no river or lantern could truly push the shadows back.
Luckily for Tes, and her strange eyes, the threads of power shone so bright that no place in the world was ever truly dark. But her feet were clumsy with panic, and unlike the rest of the city, the shal didn’t sleep at night; it came alive as the sun went down, despite the heavy dark, or perhaps because of it. Tes twisted her way through a midnight market, avoiding half a dozen low-lit stalls, only to collide with a group of bodies as they spilled out of a tavern, apologies tumbling out as she pushed past, Vares still shoved in her pocket, and the broken doormaker bundled against her chest.
The roads in the shal weren’t straight lines so much as circles, funneling you deeper in instead of out, as if the warren didn’t want to let you go, and while her head filled with the single, pressing need to run, her feet could only carry her so fast, so far, and she needed to get away, not just out of the shal, or even London, but somewhere no one could follow, and that was how she ended up kneeling in a darkened dead-end alley, the bundle open on the damp ground, the disassembled doormaker filling her vision.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she whispered as her hands flew over the threads.
She suddenly wished she hadn’t done such a thorough job taking it apart, but she’d always had a good memory for patterns once she’d made them work, and it was much easier to repeat a thing a second time than do it for the first.
The dead owl twitched and fluttered nervously in her pocket as if to say, Hurry, hurry.
“I know, Vares. I know.”
Her fingers moved quickly, reconstructing the pattern, tying off the knots she’d torn.
“Almost there.”
Something crashed behind her, and she jerked around, but it was just a drunkard, knocking a planter from a sill as he stumbled home. A few seconds later, a window slammed closed overhead. This time, she didn’t jump. Nor did she look up when she heard the footsteps trudging past the alley.
Not until they slowed. And stopped.
“Well, well,” said a voice like a mouth full of rocks.
Tes’s hands slid from the box as she turned to face him. Calin stood at the mouth of the alley, the green of his magic lighting him better than a streetlamp, glancing off the dagger in his hand, the lank hair plastered to his face. Dust and debris clung to his shoulders, and blood dripped from his temple to the corner of his mouth. His tongue swept across his lip, and found it.
“Bex was right,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “You are hard to kill.”
His gaze flicked to the alley behind her, which ended in a wall. “Nowhere to run,” he pointed out.
“You’d be surprised,” she said, meeting his gaze. “Erro.”
She heard the little box unfold, felt the door rise up behind her. Saw, out of the corner of her eye, the edge of the doorway carve itself across the air, felt the veil, and the draft coming through, carrying the scent of smoke and damp stone.
Calin’s eyes widened, his mouth twisting into a snarl as Tes stepped back, over the threshold. The world shuddered, and blurred, and through the veil, she saw the shape of him surging forward, his arm flung out.
“FERRO.”
The door obediently slammed shut, erasing Calin, and the shal, and the rest of London.
Tes stood, gasping for breath, not in an alley but on a lamplit street.
It was raining; not a heavy rain, but a light and steady drizzle, and the doormaker sat on the cobblestones at her feet. The night looked strange, and dim, but that made sense, it was a different night, a different world.
She’d done it. She was safe.
Tes let out a small, startled laugh that quickly died because it hurt.
She winced as a strange ache rolled through her stomach, warmth blooming across her front before sharpening into heat, and at first she thought it was just the aftermath of the blast, the chase, but when she looked down, she saw the strangest thing: a dagger’s hilt jutting out above her hip. But that was silly, she’d know if she’d been stabbed. She reached out, and touched the hilt, and as she did, the blade moved and the pain caught up, a blinding, burning thing beneath her ribs.
She acted on reflex—wrapped her hand around the blade, and pulled it out.
That, it turned out, was a horrible idea.
The pain turned white-hot, and Tes sagged to her knees in the street, stifling a scream.
Blood spilled between her fingers. She pressed down hard, even though it made her heart pound and another cry rise up her throat.
“Get up,” she hissed between clenched teeth, saying the words aloud to give them strength. Her body didn’t listen.
“Get up, get up, get up,” Tes chanted, as if it were a spell, and at the same time another voice called out, the words foreign, but almost familiar.
How strange, she thought, head spinning, it sounded like they were speaking High Royal. She and her sisters had all been taught, but it had been years now, language had gone stiff, unused, and she tried to translate now, but the pain made it hard to think. The voice shouted again, and this time, she swore she could make out the last word.
Street.