“Hano!” called Jasta, and the girl flitted away again without waiting for an answer. The boat came unmoored, rocking beneath them. Bard smiled, and Alucard felt his balance shift, and then return.
Holland, meanwhile, tipped his head back and drew a deep, steadying breath, eyes up to the sky as if that would keep him from being ill.
“Come on,” said Kell, taking the other Antari’s arm. “Let’s find the hold.”
“I don’t like that one,” said Alucard as Bard came to stand at his side.
“Which one?” she asked dryly, but she cut him a glance, and must have seen something in his face because she sobered. “What do you see when you look at Holland?”
Alucard drew in a breath, and blew it out in a cloud. “This is what magic looks like,” he said twirling his fingers through the plume. Instead of dispersing, the pale air twisted and coiled into thin ribbons of mist against the seamless stretch of night and sea.
“But Holland’s magic is …” He splayed his fingers, and the ribbons of fog splintered, frayed. “He isn’t weaker for it. If anything, his light is brighter than yours or Kell’s. But the light is uneven, unsteady, the lines all broken, re-formed, like bones that didn’t set. It’s …”
“Unnatural?” she guessed.
“Dangerous.”
“Splendid,” she said, folding her arms against the cold. A yawn escaped, like a silent snarl through clenched teeth.
“Get some rest,” he said.
“I will,” said Bard, but she didn’t move.
Alucard turned automatically toward the wheel before remembering he wasn’t the captain of this ship. He hesitated, like a man who’s gone through a door to fetch something, only to forget what he’d come for. At last, he went to help Lenos with the sails, leaving Bard at the ship’s rail.
When he looked back ten, fifteen, twenty minutes later, she was still there, eyes trained on the line where water met sky.
V
Rhy rode out as soon as they were gone.
There were too many souls to find, and the thought of staying in the palace another minute made him want to scream. Soon the dark would be upon them, upon him, the fall of night and the confinement. But for now, there was still light, still time.
He took two men, both silvers, and set out into the city, trying to keep his attention from drifting to the eerie palace floating next to his, the strange procession of men and women climbing its steps, trying to keep himself from dwelling on the strange black substance that turned stretches of road into glossy, icelike streaks and climbed bits of wall like ivy or frost. Magic overwhelming nature.
He found a couple hunkered down in the back of their house, too afraid to leave. A girl wandering, dazed and coated in the ash of someone else, family or friend or stranger, she wouldn’t say. On the third trip, one of the guards came galloping toward him.
“Your Highness,” called the man, blood mark smearing with the sweat on his brow as he reined in his horse. “There’s something you need to see.”
They were in a tavern hall.
Two dozen men, all dressed in the gold and red of the royal guard. And all sick. All dying. Rhy knew each and every one, by face if not by name. Isra had said that some of them were missing. That the blood marks had failed. But they hadn’t vanished. They were here.
“Your Highness, wait!” called the silver as Rhy plunged forward into the hall, but he was not afraid of the smoke or the sickness. Someone had pushed the tables and chairs out of the way, cleared the space, and now his father’s men—his men—were lying on the floor in rows, spaces here and there where a few had risen up, or fallen forever.
Their armor had been stripped off and set aside, propped like a gallery of hollow spectators along the walls as, on the floor, the guards sweated and writhed and fought demons he couldn’t see, the way Alucard had aboard the Spire.
Their veins stood out black against their throats, and the whole hall smelled vaguely of burning skin as the magic scorched its way through them.
The air was thick with something like dust.
Ash, realized Rhy.
All that was left of those who’d burned.
One man was slumped against the wall by the doors, sweat sheening his face, the sickness just beginning to set in.
His beard was trimmed short, his hair streaked with grey, and Rhy recognized him at once. Tolners. A man who’d served his father before he was king. A man assigned to serve Rhy. He’d seen the guard this morning in the palace, safe and well within the wards.
“What have you done?” he asked, grabbing the guard by the collar. “Why did you leave the palace?”
The man’s vision slid in and out of focus. “Your Majesty,” he rasped. Trapped in the fever’s hold, he mistook Rhy for his father. “We are—the royal guard. We—do not hide. If we are not—strong enough—to brave the dark—we do not—deserve to serve—” he broke off, wracked by a sudden, violent chill.
“You fool,” snapped Rhy, even as he eased Tolners back into his chair and pulled the man’s coat close around his shivering form. Rhy turned on the room of dying guards, raking an ash-slicked hand through his hair, feeling furious, helpless. He couldn’t save these men. Could only watch as they fought, failed, died.
“We are the royal guard,” murmured a man on the floor.
“We are the royal guard,” echoed two more, taking it up as a chant against whatever darkness fought to take them.