But nothing happened. The wall stayed where it was, and so did Kell.
Pain tore white-hot through his side from the royal blade, the spellwork cutting him off from his power. No, pleaded Kell silently. Blood magic was the strongest kind in the world. It couldn’t be disabled, not by a simple piece of spellwork. It was stronger. It had to be stronger. Kell closed his eyes.
“As Travars,” he said again.
He shouldn’t have to say anything else, shouldn’t have to force it, but he was tired and bleeding and fighting to focus his eyes, let alone his power, and so he added “Please.”
He swallowed and brought his forehead to rest against the stones and heard the steps getting closer and closer and said, again, “Please let me through.”
The stone hummed in his pocket, a whispered promise of power, of aid, and he was about draw it out and call upon its strength, when the wall finally shuddered and gave way beneath his touch.
The world vanished and an instant later reappeared, and Kell collapsed to the cobblestoned street, the subtle, steady light of Red London replaced by the dank, smoke-filled Grey London night. He stayed a moment on his hands and knees, and actually considered losing consciousness right there in the alley, but finally managed to get to his feet. When he did, the city slanted dangerously around him. He took two steps, and promptly collided with a man in a mask and a broad brim hat. Distantly, Kell knew it was strange, to be wearing a disguise, but he was hardly in a position to judge appearances, given his current state.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, pulling his coat close around him to hide the blood.
“Where’d you come from?” asked the man, and Kell looked up and realized that under that disguise it wasn’t a man at all. It was a woman. Not even that. A girl. All stretched out like a shadow, like Kell, but one even later in the day. Too long, too thin. But she was dressed like a man, boots and britches and a cloak (and under that, a few glinting weapons). And, of course, the mask and the hat. She seemed out of breath, as though she’d been running. Strange, thought Kell again.
He swayed a little on his feet.
“You all right there, gent?” asked the girl in disguise.
Footsteps sounded in the street beyond the alley, and Kell tensed, forcing himself to remember that he was safe now, safe here. The girl cast a quick glance back before returning her attention to him. He took a step toward her, and his legs nearly buckled beneath him. She went to catch him, but he caught himself against the wall first.
“I’ll be okay,” he whispered shakily.
The girl tipped her chin up, and there was something strong and defiant in her eyes and the lines of her jaw. A challenge. And then she smiled. Not with her whole mouth, just the edges, and Kell thought—in a far-off, woozy way—that under different circumstances, they might have been friends.
“There’s blood on your face,” she said.
Where wasn’t there blood? Kell brought his hand to his cheek, but his hand was damp with it, too, so it wasn’t much help. The girl came closer. She drew a small, dark kerchief from her pocket and reached out, dabbing his jaw with it before pressing the fabric into his hand.
“Keep it,” she said. And then she turned and strode away.
Kell watched the strange girl go, then slumped back against the alley wall.
He tipped his head back and stared up at the Grey London sky, starless and bleak over the tops of the buildings. And then he reached into his pocket for the Black London stone, and froze.
It wasn’t there.
He dug furiously through his pockets, every one of them, but it was no good. The talisman was gone. Breathless and bleeding and exhausted, Kell looked down at the kerchief clutched in his hand.
He couldn’t believe it.
He’d been robbed.
SIX
THIEVES MEET
I
A London away, the city bells struck eight.
The sound came from the sanctuary at the city’s edge, but it rang out over the glittering Isle and through the streets, pouring in open windows and out open doors and down alleys until it reached the Ruby Fields and, just beyond, the frozen figure of a man in the dark.
A man with an X on the back of his hand and a stolen royal sword still raised above his head. A man trapped in ice, or stone, or something stranger.
As the bells trailed off, a jagged crack formed in the shell over the man’s face. And then another, down his arm. And a third, along the blade. Small fissures that deepened quickly, spreading like fingers through the casing.
“Stop,” the young Antari had ordered his attacker, and the attacker had not listened, but the magic had. It had poured out of the black stone in the Antari’s hand, coiled around the man, and hardened into a shell.
And now, the shell was breaking.
Not as a shell should break, the surface fracturing and the shards crumbling away, raining down upon the street. No, this shell broke apart and yet never let go of the man beneath. Instead, it clung to him as it melted, not down his body, but into it. Seeping in through his clothes and his skin until it was gone—or not gone. Absorbed.
The once-frozen man shuddered, then took a breath. The royal half-sword slipped from his fingers and clattered to the stones as the last shimmering drops of magic glistened like oil on his skin before sinking in, the veins darkening, tracing over him like ink. The man’s head hung forward, eyes open, but empty. And fully black, pupils blown and spreading through irises and into whites.
The compulsion spell already cast on him had stripped the man’s resistance and allowed the other magic to slip right in, through vein and brain and muscle, taking hold of everything it touched, the once-red core of life now burning pure and dark.