The air settled, but he was left fighting for breath.
Ezril was staring at him, but her expression held no surprise. “It must be frightening,” she said, “to be at war with your own magic.”
Kell stiffened. He had never told her about the rift. “My brother should learn to hold his tongue,” he said, forcing the air back into his lungs. He straightened, steadied. He needed to find Lila. “If you have nothing else to tell me—”
But as he moved to pass her, the Aven Essen caught his arm.
“It’s not the pain that frightens you. It’s what you are. And what you’re not. A priest removes their robes, and they are still a priest. But what is an Antari without their magic?”
“A prince,” said Kell curtly as he moved to pull away, but her fingers were solid, unyielding. The impishness was gone, replaced by an intensity, as hard and clear as glass.
“You must wonder why,” she said. “Why the power you’ve had all your life has turned against you now. Was it a spell gone wrong? Or have you broken the laws of magic one too many times?” Her words were a sharp knife in a steady hand, cutting straight through him. “All power has its limits. You are still a servant of magic, and magic demands balance. When that balance is upset, it demands a recompense. Perhaps you are being punished.”
Her hand drifted up, came to rest on his right cheek. Just beneath his black eye. Her expression rippled, priestly anger dissolving into something soft, almost sad.
“Or perhaps,” she said gently, “you are punishing yourself.”
Her hand dropped away from his skin.
“If you ever wish to tell me why, I will be here. After all,” she said, that playful light returning to her eyes, “I am your Aven Essen, too.”
But this time, Kell wasn’t fooled by the impish grin, the easy air.
“You never told me how you came to be named Aven Essen.”
“Trial by combat,” she said blithely. “I’m stronger than I look.”
That he did not doubt. Kell started away, stopping only when he reached the archway. He turned back. “You’re wrong about one thing.”
“Oh?”
“If you shed those robes, you would not be a priest. You’d be a noble. Ezril Nasaro.”
If she was surprised that he knew her family name, it didn’t show. “Neither the name nor the station are mine anymore. I shed my royal claim when I joined the Sanctuary.”
“Your family must have felt the loss. Their only daughter. Why did you choose to be a priest?”
She tipped her head, as if considering. “Why did you choose to be Antari?”
The answer, of course, was that he hadn’t. It had chosen him.
“All my life,” said Ezril, “I’ve felt the current of Magic. In the air, beneath my feet. I choose to walk in the stream, Master Kell, but Magic led me to it. There is a reason I am standing there. There is a reason you are, too. We are both a part of something larger than ourselves.”
The words hung like a weight around his shoulders, but the Aven Essen seemed lighter, buoyed by them. He turned, and left her in the courtyard, her white robes floating in the breeze.
V
Lila’s stomach growled.
She’d left the palace without breakfast, another thing for which she blamed the queen as she cut through the night market.
Despite its name, and the hour, a handful of stalls were beginning to stir and throw off sleep, unfolding tents and assembling their wares, while others still were open for business. A thin crowd trickled between the stalls, preferring the scenic path to the busier streets, or drawn by the scent of spice and sugar on the air.
She stopped at a baker with a tray of steaming sweet buns, bought a sack of four, eating as she walked. She ambled past a charm-maker, already hawking vials of glowing red drops from the Isle (an obvious forgery, since the water remained neither red nor incandescent once drawn from the river), and a handful of emerald and yellow and crimson tents, their flaps down, their contents hidden from view.
The glint of steel caught her eye, and she came to a stop before a stall of blades.
They were laid out by length. The shortest, meant to disappear into a palm. The longest, a sword that looked as though it took two hands to lift, let alone wield. Her fingers danced across the weapons, pausing over one the length of her forearm. It was a work of art, the metal thin as glass.
“You can test it, if you like,” said a lilting voice.
Lila looked up at the merchant. She was young, younger than most of the sellers in the market, and the point of her nose and chin reminded Lila of a fox. So did her hair, the brown curls threaded here and there with streaks of red.
Lila lifted the weapon. It was beautifully light, and perfectly balanced, and she could hear Kell asking how many knives could one person possibly need. She searched the metal for sigils, signs of spellwork. The last time she’d used a strange blade, it had murdered a man with his own magic.
“Any tricks?”
The merchant shook her head. “In the right hand,” she said, “a good blade needs no tricks.”
Lila smiled. “Is it wise,” she wondered, “to lay out your wares like this?”
The merchant looked down at the table, as if she’d only just noticed that the weapons weren’t sheathed, and the hilts and grips all faced out in invitation, the tips pointed in to the stall, and to her. “I haven’t been robbed yet.”
“Then you’re very lucky.”
The girl laughed. “I’m many things. Lucky has never been one.” She reached out and ran her finger thoughtfully along one of the swords. “It takes sweat and blood to make a blade like this. Use the two right, and the steel can’t be used against you.”
“So they are spelled,” said Lila.
The merchant shrugged. “A precaution.”
“A handy one,” mused Lila. “Don’t suppose you could apply the spell to an existing blade?”
The merchant shook her head. “No,” she said, “but I could make you a new one. I’d need a few days, and some of your blood.…”
The girl’s eyes had brightened when she said it.
Perhaps it was just the promise of a deal, or the challenge of the work, but Lila thought she caught a glint of steel in that gaze, just like the one that had drawn her to the stall. Her grip tightened on the knife, the cut along her hand still aching from the sacrifice she’d made to the queen.
Blood was a valuable thing. It anchored spells and strengthened curses. It made all magic stronger. According to Nadiya Loreni, it held countless secrets. And Lila had made her way through enough black markets in the past few years to know the value of that blood if it came from an Antari. Lila was glad she’d left the black eye back on the ship. She pretended to consider the merchant’s offer before returning the knife to the table.
“On second thought,” she said, “what fun is there, without a little risk?”
The merchant shrugged, but held her gaze. “If you change your mind…”
But Lila was already moving away from the stall, and the blades, and the fox-faced girl. She reached the far edge of the market, and turned right, away from the river and toward the shal, and Haskin’s.
Now all she needed was a pretense for visiting the shop. She patted her pockets, felt the familiar weight of her watch. Not her watch—the one Holland had found in her old rooms, along with Berras, the one he’d returned to her stained with blood, the one she’d given to Maris as payment years before—but a gift from her crew one summer festival, the surface engraved with a C. For Casero.
Captain.
She drew it out, ran a thumb over the silver shell before she clicked it open, listened to the steady, almost silent tick of seconds passing. And even though the hands inside were driven by a spell instead of cogs, it was easy to forget. Perhaps harder to break, she mused, but she was sure she could do it, was about to pry away the face when she saw the time, the minute hand slipping past the hour, both of them a breath off straight.
“Nonis ora,” she murmured.