Gathering of Shadows (A Darker Shade of Magic) (53 page)

“That was quite a match today,” said a voice. A moment later Alucard appeared, falling in step beside her.

She thought of their words that morning, of the hurt in his voice when he asked why she’d done it, stolen Elsor’s identity, put herself—put them
all
—at risk. And there it was again, that treacherous desire to apologize, to ask for her place back on his ship, or at least in his graces.

“Following me again?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”

Alucard tipped his head back. “I had no taste for it tonight. Besides,” he said, his gaze falling, “I wanted to see what you did that was so much better than balls.”

“You wanted to make sure I didn’t get into trouble.”

“I’m not your father, Bard.”

“I should hope not. Fathers shouldn’t try to seduce their daughters to learn their secrets.”

He shook his head ruefully. “It was
one time.”

“When I was younger,” she said absently, “I used to walk the docks back in London—my London—looking at all the ships that came in. Some days I imagined what mine would look like. Other days I just tried to imagine one that would take me away.” Alucard was staring at her. “What?”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever volunteered a piece of information.”

Lila smiled crookedly. “Don’t get used to it.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, Lila’s pockets jingling. The Isle shone red beside them, and in the distance, the palace glowed.

But Alucard had never been good with silence. “So this is what you do instead of dancing,” he said. “Haunt the docks like some sailor’s ghost?”

“Well, only when I get bored of doing
this
.” She pulled a fist from her pocket and opened it to reveal a collection of jewelry, coins, trinkets.

Alucard shook his head, exasperated. “Why?”

Lila shrugged. Because it was familiar, she might say, and she was good at it. Plus, the contents of people’s pockets were far more interesting in
this
London. She’d found a dream stone, a fire pebble, and something that looked like a compass, but wasn’t. “Once a thief, always a thief.”

“What’s this?” he asked, plucking the sliver of white stone from amid the tangle of stolen gems.

Lila tensed. “That’s mine,” she said. “A souvenir.”

He shrugged and dropped the shard back onto the pile. “You’re going to get caught.”

“Then I better have my fun while I still can,” she said, pocketing the lot. “And who knows, maybe the crown will pardon me, too.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath.” Alucard had begun rubbing his wrists and, realizing it, stopped and smoothed his coat. “Well, you may content yourself with haunting docks and robbing passersby, but I’d rather have a hot drink and a bit of finery, so …” He gave a sweeping bow. “Can I trust you to stay out of trouble, at least until tomorrow?”

Lila only smirked. “I’ll try.”

* * *

Halfway back toward the Wandering Road, Lila knew she was being followed.

She could hear their steps, smell their magic on the air, feel her heart pick up in that old familiar way. So when she glanced back and saw someone in the narrow road, she wasn’t surprised.

She didn’t run.

She should have, should have cut onto a main road when she first noticed them, put herself in public view. Instead, Lila did the one thing she’d promised Alucard she’d try not to do.

She found trouble.

When she reached the next turn in the road, an alley, she took it. Something glinted at the far end, and Lila took a step toward it before she realized what it was.

A knife.

She twisted out of the way as it came sailing toward her. She was fast, but not quite fast enough—the blade grazed her side before clattering to the ground.

Lila pressed her palm against her waist.

The cut was shallow, barely bleeding, and when her gaze flicked back up, she saw a man, his edges blurring into the dark. Lila spun, but the entrance to the alley was being blocked by another shape.

She shifted her stance, trying to keep her eyes on both at once. But as she stepped into the deeper shadow of the alley wall, a hand grasped her shoulder and she lurched forward as a third figure stepped out of the dark.

Nowhere to run. She took a step toward the shape at the alley’s mouth, hoping for a drunken sailor, or a thug.

And then she saw the gold.

Ver-as-Is wasn’t wearing his helmet, and without it she could see the rest of the pattern that traced up above his eyes and into his hairline.

“Elsor,” he hissed, his Faroan accent turning the name into a serpentine sound.

Shit
, thought Lila. But all she said was, “You again.”

“You cheating scum,” he continued in slurring Arnesian. “I don’t know how you did it, but I saw it.
I felt
it. There was no way you could have—”

“Don’t be sore,” she interrupted. “It was just a ga—”

She was cut off as a fist connected with her wounded side and she doubled over, coughing. The blow hadn’t come from Ver-as-Is, but one of the others, their gemmed faces masked by dark cloth. Lila’s grip tightened on the metal-lined mask in her hand and she struck, slamming the helmet into the nearest man’s forehead. He cried out and staggered back, but before Lila could strike again, they were on her, six hands to her two, slamming her into the alley wall. She stumbled forward as one wrenched her arm behind her back. Lila dropped to one knee on instinct and rolled, throwing the man over her shoulder, but before she could stand a boot cracked across her jaw. The darkness exploded into shards of fractured light, and an arm wrapped around her throat from behind, hauling her to her feet.

She scrambled for the knife she kept against her back, but the man caught her wrist and twisted it viciously up.

Lila was trapped. She waited for the surge of power she’d felt in the arena, waited for the world to slow and her strength to return, but nothing happened.

So she did something unexpected—she laughed.

She didn’t feel like laughing—pain roared through her shoulder, and she could barely breathe—but she did it anyway, and was rewarded by confusion spreading like a stain across Ver-as-Is’s face.

“You’re pathetic,” she spat. “You couldn’t beat me one-on-one, so you come at me with three? All you do is prove how weak you really are.”

She reached for magic, for fire or earth, even for bone, but nothing came. Her head pounded, and blood continued to trickle from the wound at her side.

“You think yours are the only people who can spell metal?” Ver-as-Is hissed, bringing the knife to her throat.

Lila met his gaze. “You’re really going to kill me, just because you lost a match.”

“No,” he said. “Like for like. You cheated. So will I.”

“You’ve already lost!” she snapped. “What’s the fucking point?”

“A country is not a man, but a man is a country,” he said, and then, to his men, “Get rid of him.”

The other two began to drag her toward the docks.

“Can’t even do it yourself,” she chided. If the jab landed, he didn’t let it show, just turned and began to walk away.

“Ver-as-Is,” she called after him. “I’ll give you a choice.”

“Oh?” He glanced back, pale-green eyes widening with amusement.

“You can let me go right now, and walk away,” she said, slowly. “Or I will kill you all.”

He smiled. “And if I let you go, I suppose we will part as friends?”

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m going to kill
you
either way. But if your men let me go now, I won’t kill them as well.”

For a moment, she thought she felt the arm at her throat loosen. But then it was back, twice as tight.
Shit
, she thought, as Ver-as-Is came toward her, spinning the knife in his hand.

“If only words were weapons …” he said, bringing the blade down. The handle crashed against her temple, and everything went black.

IV

Lila woke like a drowning person breaking the surface of water.

Her eyes shot open, but the world stayed pitch-black. She opened her mouth to shout, and realized it was already open, a cloth gag muffling the sound.

There was a throbbing ache in the side of her head that sharpened with every motion, and she thought she might be sick. She tried to sit up, and she quickly discovered that she couldn’t.

Panic flooded through her, the need to retch suddenly replaced by the need to breathe. She was in a box. A very small box.

She went still, and she exhaled shakily when the box didn’t shift or sway. As far as she could tell, she was still on land. Unless, of course, she was
under
it.

The air felt suddenly thinner.

She couldn’t tell if the box was
actually
a coffin, because she couldn’t see the dimensions. She was lying on her side in the darkness. She tried again to move and realized why she couldn’t—her hands and feet had both been tied together, her arms wrenched behind her back. Her wrists ached from the coarse rope that circled them, her fingers numb, the knots tight enough that her skin was already rubbing raw. The slightest attempt to twist free caused a shudder of needle-sharp pain.

I will kill them
, she thought.
I will kill them all.
She didn’t say the words aloud because of the gag … and the fact that there wasn’t much air in the box. The knowledge made her want to gasp.

Stay calm.

Stay calm.

Stay calm.

Lila wasn’t afraid of many things. But she wasn’t fond of small, dark spaces. She tried to survey her body for knives, but they were gone. Her collected trinkets were gone. Her shard of stone was gone. Anger burned through Lila like fire.

Fire.

That’s what she needed.
What could go wrong with fire in a wooden box?
she wondered drily. Worst case, she would simply burn herself alive before she could get out. But if she was going to escape—and she
was
going to escape, if only to kill Ver-as-Is and his men—then she needed to be free of the rope. And rope burned.

So Lila tried to summon fire.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright …

Nothing. Not even a spark. It couldn’t be the knife wound; that had dried, and the spell dried with it. That was how it worked.
Was
that how it worked? It seemed like it should work that way.

Panic. More panic. Clawing panic.

She closed her eyes, and swallowed, and tried again.

And again.

And again.

* * *

“Focus,” said Alucard.

“Well it’s a little hard, considering.” Lila was standing in the middle of his cabin, blindfolded. The last time she’d seen him, he was sitting in his chair, ankle on knee, sipping a dark liquor. Judging by the sound of a bottle being lifted, a drink being poured, he was still there.

“Eyes open, eyes shut,” he said, “it makes no difference.”

Lila strongly disagreed. With her eyes open, she could summon fire. And with her eyes shut, well, she couldn’t. Plus, she felt like a fool. “What exactly is the point of this?”

“The point, Bard, is that magic is a sense.”

“Like sight,” she snapped.

“Like
sight,” said Alucard. “But not sight. You don’t need to see it. Just feel it.”

“Feeling is a sense, too.”

“Don’t be flippant.”

Lila felt Esa twine around her leg, and resisted the urge to kick the cat. “I hate this.”

Alucard ignored her. “Magic is all and none. It’s sight, and taste, and scent, and sound, and touch, and it’s also something else entirely. It is the power in all powers, and at the same time, it is its own. And once you know how to sense its presence, you will never be without it. Now stop whining and focus.”

* * *

Focus
, thought Lila, struggling to stay calm. She could feel the magic, tangled in her pulse. She didn’t need to see it. All she needed to do was reach it.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to trick her mind into thinking that the darkness was a choice. She was an open door. She was in control.

Burn
, she thought, the word striking like a match inside her. She snapped her fingers and felt the familiar heat of fire licking the air above her skin. The rope caught, illuminating the dimensions of the box—small, very small, too small—and when she turned her head, a grisly face stared back at her, which resolved into the demon’s mask right before Lila was thrown by searing pain. When the fire hovered above her fingers, it didn’t hurt, but now, as it ate through the ropes, it
burned.