A bowl of apples sat in the center of the table, and Holland reached out, chains scraping the wood. Still the cook didn’t move. So the gesture was pointed, thought Holland, turning to go.
But his way was blocked.
Jasta stood in the doorway, half a head taller than Holland, her dark eyes leveled on him. There was no kindness in that gaze, and no sign of the others behind her.
Holland frowned. “That was fast….”
He trailed off at the sight of the blade in her hand. One manacled wrist leaned on the table, the apple in his other hand, a short length of chain between. He’d lost the splinter he’d kept between metal and skin, but a paring knife sat on the counter nearby, its handle within reach. He didn’t move toward it, not yet.
It was a narrow room, and Ilo was still washing and humming as if nothing were amiss, pointedly ignoring the rising tension.
Jasta held her blade loosely, with a comfort that gave Holland pause.
“Captain,” he said carefully.
Jasta looked down at her knife. “My brother is dead,” she said slowly, “because of you. Half my crew is gone because of you.”
She stepped toward him.
“My city is in peril because of you.”
He held his ground. She was close now. Close enough to use the blade before he could stop her without things getting messy.
“Perhaps two Antari will be enough,” she said, bringing the tip of the knife to rest against his collar. Her gaze held his as she pressed down, testing, the knife sinking just enough to draw blood before a new voice echoed down the hall. Hastra. Followed by Lenos. Steps tumbling briskly down the stairs.
“Perhaps,” she said again, stepping back, “but I’m not willing to risk it.”
She turned and stormed out. Holland rocked back against the counter, wiping the blood from his skin as Hastra and Lenos appeared and Ilo took up another song.
I
GREY LONDON
Ned Tuttle woke to the sound of someone knocking.
It was late morning, and he’d fallen asleep at a table in the tavern, the grooves of the table’s pentagram now etched like sheet folds into the side of his face.
He sat up, lost for a moment between where he was and where he’d been.
The dreams were getting stranger.
Every time, he found himself somewhere else—on a bridge overlooking a black river, looking up at a palace of marble and crimson and gold—and every time he was lost.
He’d read about men who could walk through dreams. They could project themselves into other places, other times—but when they walked, they were able to speak to people, and learn things, and they always came away wiser. When Ned dreamt, he just felt more and more alone.
He moved like a ghost through crowds of men and women who spoke languages he’d never heard, whose eyes swam with shadows and whose edges burned with light. Sometimes they didn’t seem to see him, and other times they did, and those were worse, because then they’d reach for him, claw at him, and he’d have to run, and every time he ran, he ended up lost.
And then he’d hear that particular voice; the murmur and the susurrus, low and smooth and steady as water over rocks, the words muffled by some unseen veil between them. A voice that reached just like those shadow hands, wrapping fingers around his throat.
Ned’s temples were pounding in time with the door as he reached for the glass on the table that had so recently served as his bed. Realizing the glass was empty, he swore and took up the bottle just beyond his fingers, swigging in a way that would have earned him a reproach if he were still at home. The table itself was scattered with parchment, ink, the elemental kit he’d bought from the gentleman who’d bought it from Kell. This last item rattled sporadically as if possessed (and it was, the bits of bone and stone and drops of water trying to get out). Ned thought groggily that it might have been the source of the knocking, but when he put his hand firmly on the box, the sound still echoed from the door.
“Coming,” he called hoarsely, pausing a moment to steady his aching head, but when he rose and turned toward the tavern door, his jaw dropped.
The door was knocking itself, rocking forward and back in its frame, straining against the bolt. Ned wondered if there was a strong wind outside, but when he threw the shutters, the tavern sign hung still as death in the early morning light.
A shiver passed through him. He had always known this place was special. He’d heard the rumors from patrons back when he was one of them, and now they’d lean forward on their stools and ask him, as if he knew any more than they.
“Is it true …” they’d start, followed by a dozen different questions.
“That this place is haunted?”
“That it’s built on a ley line?”
“That it sits in two worlds?”
“That it belongs to neither?”
Is it true, is it true, and Ned only knew that whatever it was, it had drawn him, and now it was drawing something else.
The door kept up its phantom knocking as Ned stumbled up the stairs and into his room, searching through the drawers until he found his biggest bundle of sage and his favored book of spells.
He was halfway down the stairs again when the noise stopped.
Ned returned to the tavern, crossing himself for good measure, and set the book on the table, turning through the pages until he found one to banish negative forces.
He went to the hearth, stoked the last embers of the night’s fire, and touched the end of the sage bundle until it caught.
“I banish the darkness,” he intoned, sweeping the sage through the air. “It is not welcome,” he went on, tracing the windows and doors. “Begone foul spirits, and demons, and ghosts, for this is a place of …”