Gathering of Shadows (A Darker Shade of Magic) (19 page)

Kell set the coin on the counter by his empty glass, and left.

VI

Growing up, Lila had always hated taverns.

She seemed bound to them by some kind of tether; she would run as hard as she could, and then at some point she’d reach the end of the line and be wrenched back. She’d spent years trying to cut that tie. She never could.

The Inroads stood at the end of the docks, its lanterns haloed by the tendrils of the sea fog that crept into the port. A sign above the door was written in three languages, only one of which Lila recognized.

The familiar sounds reached her from within, the ambient noise of scraping chairs and clinking glass, of laughter and threats and fights about to break out. They were the same sounds she’d heard a hundred times at the Stone’s Throw, and it struck her as odd that those sounds could exist here, in a black market town at the edge of an empire in a magical world. There was, she supposed, a comfort to these places, to the fabric that made them, the way that two taverns, cities apart—
worlds
apart—could feel the same, look the same, sound the same.

Alucard was holding the door open for her.
“Tas enol,”
he said, sliding back into Arnesian.
After you.

Lila nodded and went in.

Inside, the Inroads looked familiar enough; it was the
people
who were different. Unlike the black market, here the hoods and hats had all been cast off, and Lila got her first good look at the crews from the other ships along the dock. A towering Veskan pushed past them, nearly filling the doorway as he went, a massive blond braid falling down his back. He was bare-armed as he stepped out into the winter cold.

A huddle of men stood just inside the door, talking in low voices with smooth foreign tongues. One glanced at her, and she was startled to see that his eyes were gold. Not amber, like the prince’s, but bright, almost reflective, their metallic centers flecked with black. Those eyes shone out from skin as dark as the ocean at night, and unlike the Faroan she’d seen in the market, this man’s face was studded with dozens of pieces of pale green glass. The fragments traced lines over his brows, followed the curve of his cheek, trailed down his throat. The effect was haunting.

“Close your mouth,” Alucard hissed in her ear. “You look like a fish.”

The light in the tavern was low, shining up from tables and hearths instead of down from the ceiling and walls, casting faces in odd shadow as the candles glanced off cheeks and brows.

It wasn’t terribly crowded—she’d only seen four ships in the port—and she could make out the
Spire’s
men, scattered about and chatting in groups of two or three.

Stross and Lenos had snagged a table by the bar and were playing cards with a handful of Veskans; Olo watched, and broad-shouldered Tav was deep in conversation with an Arnesian from another ship.

Handsome Vasry was flirting with a Faroan-looking barmaid—nothing unusual there—and a wiry crewman named Kobis sat at the end of a couch, reading a book in the low light, clearly relishing the closest thing he ever found to peace and quiet.

A dozen faces turned as Lila and Alucard moved through the room, and she felt herself shrink toward the nearest shadow before she realized none of them were looking at her. It was the captain of the
Night Spire
who held their attention. Some nodded, others raised a hand or a glass, a few called out a greeting. He’d obviously made a few friends during his years at sea. Come to think of it, if Alucard Emery had made
enemies
, she hadn’t met one yet.

An Arnesian from the other rig waved him over, and rather than trail after, Lila made her way to the bar and ordered some kind of cider that smelled of apple and spice and strong liquor. She was several sips along before she turned her attention to the Veskan man a few feet down the bar.

The
Spire
crew called Veskans
“choser”
—
giants
—and she was beginning to understand why.

Lila tried not to stare—that is, she tried to stare without looking like she was staring—but the man was
massive
, even taller than Barron had been, with a face like a block of stone circled by a rope of blond hair. Not the bleached whitish blond of the Dane twins, but a honey color, rich in a way that matched his skin, as though he’d never spent a day in the shade.

His arms, one of which leaned on the counter, were each the size of her head; his smile was wider than her knife, but not nearly as wicked; and his eyes, when they shifted toward her, were a cloudless blue. The Veskan’s hair and beard grew together around his face, parting only for his wide eyes and straight nose, and made his expression hard to read. She couldn’t tell if she was merely being sized up, or challenged.

Lila’s fingers drifted toward the dagger at her hip, even though she honestly didn’t want to try her hand against a man who looked more likely to
dent
her knife than be impaled on it.

And then, to her surprise, the Veskan held up his glass.

“Is aven,”
she said, lifting her own drink.
Cheers.

The man winked, and then began to down his ale in a single, continuous gulp, and Lila, sensing the challenge, did the same. Her cup was half the size of his, but to be fair, he was more than twice the size of her, so it seemed an even match. When her empty mug struck the counter an instant before his own, the Veskan laughed and knocked the table twice with his closed fist while murmuring appreciatively.

Lila set a coin on the bar and stood up. The cider hit her like a pitching deck, as if she were no longer on solid ground but back on the
Spire
in a storm.

“Easy now.” Alucard caught her elbow, then swung his arm around her shoulders to hide her unsteadiness. “That’s what you get for making friends.”

He led her to a booth where most of the men had gathered, and she sank gratefully into a chair on the end. As the captain took his seat, the rest of the crew drifted over, as if drawn by an invisible current. But of course, the current was Alucard himself.

Men laughed. Glasses clanked. Chairs scraped.

Lenos cheated a glance at her down the table. He was the one who’d started the rumors, about her being the Sarows. Was he still afraid of her, after all this time?

She drew his knife—now hers—from her belt and polished it on the corner of her shirt.

Her head spun from that first drink, and she let her ears and attention drift through the crew like smoke, let the Arnesian words dissolve back into the highs and lows, the melodies of a foreign tongue.

At the other end of the table, Alucard boasted and cheered and drank with his crew, and Lila marveled at the way the man shifted to fit his environment. She knew how to adapt well enough, but Alucard knew how to
transform.
Back on the
Spire
, he was not only captain but king. Here at this table, surrounded by his men, he was one of them. Still the boss, always the boss, but not so far above the rest. This Alucard took pains to laugh as loud as Tav and flirt almost as much as Vasry, and slosh his ale like Olo, even though Lila had seen him fuss whenever she spilled water or wine in his cabin.

It was a performance, one that was entertaining to watch. Lila wondered for perhaps the hundredth time which version of Alucard was the real one, or if, somehow, they were all real, each in its own way.

She also wondered where Alucard had found such an odd group of men, when and how they’d been collected. Here, on land, they seemed to have so little in common. But on the
Spire
, they functioned like friends, like
family
. Or at least, how Lila imagined family would act. Sure they bickered, and now and then even came to blows, but they were also fiercely loyal.

And Lila? Was she loyal, too?

She thought back to those first nights, when she’d slept with her back to the wall and her knife at hand, waiting to be attacked. When she’d had to face the fact that she knew almost nothing about life aboard a ship, and grappled every day to stay on her feet, clutching at scraps of skill and language and, on the occasion it was offered, help. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Now they treated her more or less as if she was one of them. As if she
belonged.
A small, defiant part of her, the part she’d done her best to smother on the streets of London, fluttered at the thought.

But the rest of her felt ill.

She wanted to push away from the table and walk out, walk away, break the cords that tied her to this ship and this crew and this life, and start over. Whenever she felt the weight of those bonds, she wished she could take her sharpest knife and cut them free, carve out the part of her that wanted, that cared, that warmed at the feeling of Alucard’s hand on her shoulder, Tav’s smile, Stress’s nod.

Weak
, warned a voice in her head.

Run
, said another.

“All right, Bard?” asked Vasry, looking genuinely concerned.

Lila nodded, fixing a sliver of a smile back on her face.

Stross slid a fresh drink her way, as if it was nothing.

Run.

Alucard caught her eye and winked.

Christ, she should have killed him when she had the chance.

“All right, Captain,” shouted Stross over the noise. “You’ve got us waiting. What’s the big news?”

The table began to quiet, and Alucard brought his stein down. “Listen up, you shabby lot,” he said, his voice carrying in a wave. The group fell to murmurs and then silence. “You can have the night on land. But we sail at first light.”

“Where to next?” asked Tav.

Alucard looked right at Lila when he said it. “To London.”

Lila stiffened in her seat.

“What for?” asked Vasry.

“Business.”

“Funny thing,” called Stross, scratching his cheek. “Isn’t it about time for the tournament?”

“It might be,” said Alucard with a smirk.

“You
didn’t
,” gasped Lenos.

“Didn’t what?” asked Lila.

Tav chuckled. “He’s gone and entered the
Essen Tasch
.”

Essen Tasch, thought Lila, trying to translate the phrase.
Element … something.
What was it? Everyone else at the table seemed to know. Only Kobis said nothing, simply frowned down into his drink, but he didn’t look confused, only concerned.

“I don’t know, Captain,” said Olo. “You think you’re good enough to play that game?”

Alucard chuckled and shook his head. He brought his glass to his lips, took a swig, and then slammed the stein down on the table. It shattered, but before the cider could spill, it sprang into the air, along with the contents in every other glass at the table, liquid freezing as it surged upward. The frozen drinks hung for a moment, then tumbled to the wooden table, some lodging sharp-end down, others rolling about. Lila watched the frozen spear that had once been her cider fetch up against her glass. Only the icicle that had been Alucard’s drink stayed up, hovering suspended above his ruined glass.

The crew whooped and applauded.

“Hey,” growled a man behind the bar. “You pay for everything you break.”

Alucard smiled and lifted his hands, as if in surrender. And then, as he flexed his fingers, the shards of glass strewn across the table trembled and drew themselves back together into the shape of a stein, as if time itself were beginning to reverse. The stein formed in one of Alucard’s hands, the cracks blurring and then vanishing as the glass re-fused. He held it up, as if to inspect it, and the shard of frozen cider still hovering in the air above his head liquefied and spilled back into the unbroken glass. He took a sip and toasted the man behind the bar, and the crew burst into a raucous cheer, hammering the table, their own drinks forgotten.

Only Lila sat motionless, stunned by the display.

She’d seen Alucard do magic, of course—he’d been teaching her for months. But there was a difference—a chasm, a world—between levitating a knife and
this.
She hadn’t seen anyone handle magic like this. Not since Kell.

Vasry must have read her surprise, because he tipped his head toward hers. “Captain’s one of the best in Ames,” he said. “Most magicians only got a handle on one element. A few are duals. But Alucard? He’s a
triad
.” He said the word with awe. “Doesn’t go around flashing his power, because great magicians are rare out on the water, rarer than a bounty, so they’re likely to be caught and sold. Of course that wouldn’t be the first coin on his head, but still. Most don’t leave the cities.”