Kell set his cup down with a crack. “You could have told us this before we left London.”
“I could have,” said Alucard. “It must have slipped my mind. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll think of something. Perhaps Maris will settle for your coat.”
Kell’s knuckles were white on the handle of his cup as the captain strode away. By the time the door swung shut, Lila was already on her feet.
“Where are you going?” snapped Kell.
“Where do you think?” She didn’t know how to explain—they had a deal, she and Alucard, even if they would never say it. They watched each other’s back. “He shouldn’t go alone.”
“Leave him,” muttered Kell.
“He has a way of getting lost,” she said, buttoning her coat. “I’m—”
“I said stay—”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Lila bristled. “Funny thing, Kell,” she said coldly. “That sounded like an order.” And before he could say anything else, Lila turned up her collar against the wind and marched out.
* * *
Within minutes, Lila lost him.
She didn’t want to admit it—she’d always prided herself on being a clever tail, but the streets of Rosenal were narrow and winding, full of hidden breaks and turns that made it too easy to lose sight—and track—of whoever you were trying to follow. It made sense, she supposed, in a town that catered mostly to pirates and thieves and the sort who didn’t like to be tracked.
Somewhere in that maze, Alucard had simply disappeared. Lila had given up any attempts at stealth after that, let her steps fall loud, even called his name, but it was no use; she couldn’t find him.
The sun was setting fast over the port, the last light quickly giving way to shadow. In the twilight, the edges between light and dark began to blur, and everything was rendered in flattened layers of grey. Dusk was the only time Lila truly felt the absence of her second eye.
If it had been a little darker, she would have hauled herself up onto the nearest roof and scanned the town that way, but there was just enough daylight to turn the act into display.
She stopped at the intersection of four alleys, certain she’d already come this way, and was about to give up—to turn back toward the tavern and her waiting drink—when she heard the voice.
That same voice, its melody carrying on the breeze.
How do you know when the Sarows is coming …
A flick of her wrist, and a knife dropped into her palm, her free hand already reaching for the one beneath her coat.
Footsteps sounded, and she turned, bracing for the attack.
But the alley was empty.
Lila started to straighten just as a weight hit the ground behind her—boots on stone—and she spun, jumping back as a stranger’s blade sang through the air, narrowly missing her stomach.
Her attacker smiled that rotting grin, but her eyes went to the tattoo of the dagger across his throat.
“Delilah Bard,” he growled. “Remember me?”
She twirled her blades. “Vaguely,” she lied.
In truth, she did. Not his name, that she’d never caught, but she knew the tattoo worn by the cutthroats of the Copper Thief. They had sailed under Baliz Kasnov, a ruthless pirate she’d murdered—somewhat carelessly—weeks before, as part of a bet with the crew of the Night Spire. They’d scoffed at the idea that she could take an entire ship herself.
She’d proven them wrong, won the bet, even spared most of the Thieves.
Now, as two more men dropped from the rooftops behind him, and a third emerged from the lengthening shadows, she decided that act of mercy had been a mistake.
“Four on one hardly seems fair,” she said, putting her back to the wall as two more men slunk toward her, tattoos like dark and jagged wounds beneath their chins.
That made six.
She’d counted them once before, but then she’d been counting down instead of up.
“Tell you what,” said the first attacker. “If you beg, we’ll make it quick.”
Lila’s blood sang the way it always did before a fight, clear and bright and hungry. “And why,” she said, “would I want to rush your deaths?”
“Cocky bitch,” growled the second. “I’m gonna fu—”
Her knife hissed through the air and embedded itself in his throat. Blood spilled down his front as he clawed at his neck and toppled forward, and she made it under the next man’s guard before the body hit the ground, driving her serrated blade up through his chin before the first blow caught her, a fist to the jaw.
She went down hard, spitting blood into the street.
Heat coursed through her limbs as a hand grabbed her by the hair and hauled her to her feet, a knife under her chin.
“Any last words?” asked the man with the rotting teeth.
Lila held up her hands, as if in surrender, before flashing a vicious smile.
“Tyger, Tyger,” she said, and the fire roared to life.
VI
Kell and Holland sat across from each other, swathed in a silence that only thickened as Kell tried to drown his annoyance in his drink. Of all the reasons for Lila to leave, of all the people for her to go with, it had to be Emery.
Across the room a group of men were deep in their cups and singing a sea shanty of some kind.
“… Sarows is coming, is coming, is coming aboard …”
Kell finished his glass, and reached for hers.
Holland was drawing his fingers through a spill on the table, the glass in front of him untouched. Now that they were back on solid ground, the color was returning to his face, but even dressed down in winter greys with a cap pulled over his brow, there was something about Holland that drew the eye. The way he held himself, perhaps, mixed with the faintest scent of foreign magic. Ash and steel and ice.