Gathering of Shadows (A Darker Shade of Magic) (10 page)

But Kisimyr Vasrin was bolder than most.

She was also the reigning champion of the
Essen Tasch
, and the reason the tournament was being held in London. The Games weren’t for a fortnight, but there she was, holding court in a corner of the Blessed Waters, surrounded by her usual handsome entourage. The fighter spent most of the year traveling the empire, putting on displays and mentoring young magicians, if their pockets were deep enough. She’d first earned a spot on the coveted roster when she was only sixteen, and over the last twelve years and four tournaments, she’d climbed the ranks to victor.

At only twenty-eight, she might even do it again.

Kisimyr tugged lazily at a stone earring, one of three in each ear, a wolfish smile on her face. And then her gaze drifted up, past her table and the room, and landed on Kell. Her eyes were a dozen colors, and some insisted she could see inside a person’s soul. While Kell doubted her unique irises endowed her with any extraordinary powers (then again, who was he to talk, with the mark of magic drawn like ink across one eye?), the gaze was still unnerving.

He tipped his chin up and let the tavern light catch the glossy black of his right eye. Kisimyr didn’t even look surprised. She simply toasted him, an almost imperceptible motion as she brought a glass of that pitch-black liquid to her lips.

“Are you going to sit,” asked Rhy, “or stand sentry?”

Kell broke the gaze and turned toward his brother. Rhy was stretched across the bench, his feet up, fingering the brim of Kell’s hat and muttering about how much he’d liked his own. Kell knocked the prince’s boots aside so he could sit.

He wanted to ask about the tournament roster, about Alucard Emery—but even unspoken, the name left a sour taste in his mouth. He took a long sip of ale, but it did nothing to clear the bile.

“We should go on a trip,” said Rhy, dragging himself upright. “Once the tournament is over.”

Kell laughed.

“I’m serious,” insisted the prince, his words slurring slightly.

He knew Rhy was, but he also knew it would never happen. The crown didn’t let Kell travel beyond London, even when he ventured to different worlds. They claimed it was for his own safety—and maybe it was—but he and Rhy both knew that wasn’t the only reason.

“I’ll talk to Father….” said Rhy, trailing off as if the subject were already fading from his mind. And then he was up again, sliding out of the booth.

“Where are you going?” asked Kell.

“To fetch us another round.”

Kell looked down at Rhy’s discarded glass, and then his own, still half-full.

“I think we’ve had enough,” said Kell. The prince spun on him, clutching the booth.

“So now you speak for both of us?” he snapped, eyes glassy. “First body, now will?”

The barb struck, and Kell felt suddenly, horribly tired. “Fine,” he growled. “Poison us both.”

He rubbed his eyes and watched his brother go. Rhy had always had a penchant for consumption, but never with the sole intent of being too drunk to be useful. Too drunk to think. Saints knew, Kell had demons of his own, but he knew he couldn’t drown them. Not like this. Why he kept letting Rhy try, he didn’t know.

Kell felt in the pockets of his coat and found a brass clip with three slim cigars.

He’d never been much of a smoker—then again, he’d never been much of a drinker, either—and yet, wanting to take back at least a measure of control over what he put in his body, he snapped his fingers and lit the cigar with the small flame that danced above his thumb.

Kell inhaled deeply—it wasn’t tobacco, like in Grey London, or the horrible char they smoked in White, but a pleasant spiced leaf that cleared his head and calmed his nerves. Kell blew the breath out, his eyes sliding out of focus in the plume of smoke.

He heard steps and looked up, expecting Rhy, only to find a young woman. She bore the marks of Kisimyr’s entourage, from the coiled dark hair to the gold tassels to the cat’s-eye pendant at her throat.

“Avan,”
she said, with a voice like silk.

“Avan,”
said Kell.

The woman stepped forward, the knees of her dress brushing the edge of the booth. “Mistress Vasrin sends her regards, and wishes me to pass on a message.”

“And what message is that?” he asked, taking another drag.

She smiled, and then before he could do anything—before he could even exhale—she reached out, took Kell’s face in her hand, and kissed him. The breath caught in Kell’s chest, heat flushed his body, and when the girl pulled back—not far, just enough to meet his gaze—she blew out a breath of smoke. He almost laughed. Her lips curled into a feline smile, and her eyes searched his, not with fear or even surprise, but with something like excitement. Awe. And Kell knew this was the part where he should feel like an impostor … but he didn’t.

He looked past her to the prince, still standing at the bar.

“Was that all she said?” asked Kell.

Her mouth twitched. “Her instructions were vague,
mas aven vares
.”

My blessed prince.

“No,” he said, frowning. “Not a prince.”

“What, then?”

He swallowed. “Just Kell.”

She blushed. It was too intimate—societal norms dictated that even if he shed the royal title, he should be addressed as
Master
Kell. But he didn’t want to be that, either. He just wanted to be himself.

“Kell,” she said, testing the word on her lips.

“And your name?” he asked.

“Asana,” she whispered, the word escaping like a sound of pleasure. She guided him back against the bench, the gesture somehow forward and shy at the same time. And then her mouth was upon his. Her clothes were cinched at the waist in the current fashion, and he tangled his fingers in the bodice lacings at the small of her back.

“Kell,” someone whispered in his ear.

Only it wasn’t Asana, but Delilah Bard. She did that, crept into his thoughts and robbed him of focus, like a thief. Which was exactly what she was. What she’d
been
, before he let her out of her world, and into his. Saints knew what—or where—she was these days, but in his mind she would always be the thief, stealing through at the most inopportune moments.
Get out
, he thought, his grip tightening on the girl’s dress. Asana kissed him again, but he was being dragged somewhere else, outside, on the path in the cool October night, and another set of lips was pressing against his, there and then gone, a ghost of a kiss.

“What was that for?”

A knife’s edge smile. “For luck.”

He groaned in frustration, and pulled Asana against him, kissing her deeply, desperately, trying to smother Lila’s intrusion as Asana’s lips brushed his throat.

“Mas vares,”
she breathed against his skin.

“I’m not …” he began, but then her mouth was on his again, stealing the argument along with his air. His hand had vanished somewhere in her mane of hair. There it was now, at the nape of her neck. Her own hand splayed against his chest, and then her fingers were running down over his stomach and—

Pain.

It glanced across jaw, sudden and bright.

“What is it?” asked Asana. “What’s wrong?”

Kell ground his teeth. “Nothing.”
I am going to kill my brother.

He turned his thoughts from Rhy to Asana, but just as his mouth found hers again, the pain returned, raking over his hip.

For a single, hazy moment, Kell wondered if Rhy had simply found himself another enthusiastic conquest. But then the pain came a third time, this time against his ribs, sharp enough to knock his breath away, and the possibility withered.

“Sanct,”
he swore, dragging himself from Asana’s embrace and out of the booth with murmured apologies. The room swayed as he stood too fast, and he braced himself against the booth and searched the room, wondering what kind of trouble Rhy had gotten himself into now.

And then he saw the table near the bar, where the three men had sat talking. They were gone. Two doors to the Blessed Waters: the front and the back. He chose the second set, and guessed right, bursting out into the night with a speed that quite frankly surprised him, given how much he—and Rhy—had had to drink. But pain and cold were sobering things, and as he skidded to a stop in an alley dusted with snow, he could feel the magic already rushing hotly through his veins, ready for the fight.

The first thing Kell saw was the blood.

Then the prince’s knife on the cobblestones.

The three men had Rhy cornered at the end of the alley. One of them had a gash on his forearm. Another along his cheek. Rhy must have gotten in a few slashes before he’d lost the weapon, but now he was doubled over, one arm wrapped around his ribs and blood running from his nose. The men obviously didn’t know who he was. It was one thing to speak ill of a royal, but to lay hands on him….

“Teach you to cut up my face,” growled one.

“An improvement,” grumbled Rhy through gritted teeth. Kell couldn’t believe it: Rhy was
goading
them on.

“… looking for trouble.”

“Sure to find it.”

“Wouldn’t … be so sure …” The prince coughed.

His head drifted up past the men to Kell. He smiled thinly and said through bloody teeth, “Well, hello there,” as if they’d just chanced upon one another. As if he weren’t getting the shit kicked out of him behind the Blessed Waters. And as if, at this moment, Kell didn’t have the urge to let the men have at Rhy for being stupid and self-destructive enough to pick this fight in the first place (because Kell had no doubt that the prince had started it). The urge was compounded by the fact that, though the thugs didn’t know it, they couldn’t actually
kill
him. That was the thing about the spell scorched into their skin.
Nothing
could kill Rhy. Because it wasn’t
Rhy’s
life that held him together anymore. It was
Kell’s.
And as long as Kell lived, so would the prince.

But they could hurt him, and Kell wasn’t angry enough to let that happen.

“Hello, Brother,” he said, crossing his arms.

Two of the men turned toward Kell.

“Kers la?”
taunted one. “A pet dog, come to nip at our heels?”

“Don’t look like he’s got much bite,” said the other.

The third didn’t even bother turning around. Rhy had said something to insult him—Kell didn’t catch the words—and now he angled a kick at the prince’s stomach. It never connected. Kell clenched his teeth and the man’s boot froze in midair, the bones in his leg willed still.

“What the—”

Kell wrenched with his mind, and the man went flying sideways into the nearest wall. He collapsed to the ground, groaning, and the other two looked on with surprise and horror.

“You can’t—” one grumbled, though the fact that Kell
could
was less shocking than the fact that he
had.
Bone magic was a rare and dangerous skill, forbidden because it broke the cardinal law: that none shall use magic, mental or physical, to control another person. Those who showed an affinity were strongly encouraged to
unlearn
it. Anyone caught doing it was rewarded with a full set of limiters.

An ordinary magician would never risk the punishment.

Kell wasn’t an ordinary magician.

He tipped his chin up so the men could see his eyes, and took a measure of grim satisfaction as the color bled from their faces. And then footsteps sounded, and Kell turned to find more men pouring into the alley. Drunk and angry and armed. Something stirred in him.

His heart raced, and magic surged through his veins. He felt something on his face, and it took him a moment to realize that he was
smiling.

He drew his dagger from the hidden sheath against his arm and with a single fluid motion cut his palm. Blood fell to the street in heavy red drops.

“As Isera,”
he said, the words taking shape in his blood and on the air at the same time. They vibrated through the alley.

And then, the ground began
to freeze.

It started at the drops of blood and spread out fast like frost over the stones and underfoot until a moment later everyone in the alley was standing atop a single solid pane of ice. One man took a step, and his feet went out from under him, arms flailing for balance even as he fell. Another must have had better boots on, because he took a sure step forward. But Kell was already moving. He crouched, pressed his bloody palm to the street stones, and said,
“As steno.”

Break.

A cracking sound split the night, the quiet shattering with the pane of glassy ice. Cracks shot out from Kell’s hand, fissuring the ground to every side, and as he stood, the shards came with him. Every piece not pinned by boot or body rose into the air and hung there, knifelike edges facing out from Kell like wicked rays of light.

Suddenly everyone in the alley grew still, not because he was willing the bones in their bodies, but because they were afraid. As they should be. He didn’t feel drunk now. Didn’t feel cold.

“Hey now,” said one, his hands drifting up. “You don’t have to do this.”

“It’s not fair,” growled another softly, a blade of ice against his throat.

“Fair?” asked Kell, surprised by the steadiness in his voice. “Is three against one fair?”

“He started it!”

“Is eight against two fair?” continued Kell. “Looks to me like the odds are in
your
favor.”

The ice began to inch forward through the air. Kell heard hisses of panic.

“We were just defending ourselves.”

“We didn’t know.”

Against the back wall, Rhy had straightened. “Come on, Kell….”

“Be still, Rhy,” warned Kell. “You’ve caused enough trouble.”

The jagged shards of ice hovered to every side, and then drifted on the air with slow precision until two or three had found each man, had charted a course for throat and heart and gut. The shards and the men that faced them waited with wide eyes and held breath to see what they would do.

What
Kell
would do.

A flick of his wrist, that’s all it would take, to end every man in the alley.