Gathering of Shadows (A Darker Shade of Magic) (17 page)

No, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Instead, Caster stayed empty, a reminder of the world she’d left behind. A world she’d never see again.

Lila straightened and let her gaze wander through the market, and when it landed, it was not on weapons, or trinkets, but on herself.

The stall just to her left was filled with mirrors: different shapes and sizes, some framed and some simply panes of coated glass.

There was no vendor in sight, and Lila stepped closer to consider her reflection. She wore a fleece-lined short cloak against the cold, and one of Alucard’s hats (he had enough to spare), a tricorne with a feather made of silver and glass. Beneath the hat, her brown eyes stared back at her, one lighter than the other and useless, though few ever noticed. Her dark hair now skimmed her shoulders, making her look more like a girl than she cared to (she’d let it grow for the con aboard the
Copper Thief
), and she made a mental note to cut it back to its usual length along her jaw.

Her eyes traveled down.

She still had no chest to speak of, thank god, but four months aboard the
Night Spire
had effected a subtle transformation. Lila had always been thin—she had no idea if it was natural, or the product of too little food and too much running for too many years—but Alucard’s crew worked hard and ate well, and she’d gone from thin to lean, bony to wiry. The distinctions were small, but they made a difference.

She felt a chill prickle through her fingers, and she looked down to find her hand touching the cold surface of the mirror. Odd, she didn’t remember reaching out.

Glancing up, she found her reflection’s gaze. It considered her. And then, slowly, it began to shift. Her face aged several years, and her coat rippled and darkened into Kell’s, the one with too many pockets and too many sides. A monstrous mask sat atop her head, like a beast with its mouth wide, and flame licked up her reflection’s fingers where they met the mirror, but it did not burn. Water coiled like a snake around her other hand, turning to ice. The ground beneath her reflection’s feet began to crack and split, as if under a weight, and the air around her reflection shuddered. Lila tried to pull her hand away, but she couldn’t, just as she couldn’t tear her gaze from her reflection’s face, where her eyes—
both
of them—turned black, something swirling in their depths.

The image suddenly let go, and Lila wrenched backward, gasping. Pain scored her hand, and she looked down to see tiny cuts, drops of blood welling on each of her fingertips.

The cuts were clean, the line made by something sharp. Like glass.

She held her hand to her chest, and her reflection—now just a girl in a tricorne hat—did the same.

“The sign says
do not touch
,” came a voice behind her, and she turned to find the stall’s vendor. He was Faroan, with skin as black as the rock walls, his entire outfit made from a single piece of white silk. He was clean-shaven, like most Faroans, but wore only two gems set into his skin, one beneath each eye. She knew he was the stall’s vendor because of the spectacles on his nose, their glass not simply glass, but mirrors, reflecting her own pale face.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking back to the glass, expecting to see the place where she’d touched it, where it had
cut
her, but the blood was gone.

“Do you know what these mirrors do?” he asked, and it took her a moment to realize that even though his voice was heavily accented, he was speaking
English.
Except that no, he wasn’t, not exactly. The words he spoke didn’t line up with the ones she heard. A talisman shone at his throat. At first she’d taken it as some kind of fabric pin, but now it pulsed faintly, and she understood.

The man’s fingers went to the pendant. “Ah, yes, a handy thing, this, when you’re a merchant at the corner of the world. Not strictly legal, of course, what with the laws against deception, but …” He shrugged, as if to say,
What can you do?
He seemed fascinated by the language he was speaking, as if he knew its significance.

Lila turned back to the mirrors. “What do they do?”

The vendor considered the glass, and in his spectacles she saw the mirror reflected and reflected and reflected. “Well,” he said, “one side shows you what you want.”

Lila thought of the black-eyed girl and suppressed a shudder. “It did not show me what I want,” she said.

He tipped his head. “Are you certain? The form, perhaps not, but the idea, perhaps?”

What was the idea behind what she’d seen? The Lila in the mirror had been …
powerful.
As powerful as Kell. But she’d also been different. Darker.

“Ideas are well and good,” continued the merchant, “but actualities can be … less pleasant.”

“And the other side?” she asked.

“Hmm?” His mirrored spectacles were unnerving.

“You said that
one side
shows you what you want. What about the other?”

“Well, if you still want what you see, the other side shows you how to get it.”

Lila tensed. Was that what made the mirrors forbidden? The Faroan merchant looked at her, as if he could see her thoughts as clearly as her reflection, and went on. “Perhaps it does not seem so rare, to look into one’s own mind. Dream stones and scrying boards, these things help us see inside ourselves. The first side of the mirror is not so different; it is almost ordinary….” Lila didn’t think she’d ever see
this
kind of magic as ordinary. “Seeing the threads of the world is one thing. Plucking at them is another. Knowing how to make music from them, well … let us say this is not a simple thing at all.”

“No, I suppose it’s not,” she said quietly, still rubbing her wounded fingers. “How much do I owe you, for using the first side?”

The vendor shrugged. “Anyone can see themselves,” he said. “The mirror takes its tithe. The question now, Delilah, is do you want to see the second side?”

But Lila was already backing away from the mirrors and the mysterious vendor. “Thank you,” she said, noting that he hadn’t named the price, “but I’ll pass.”

She was halfway back to the weapons stall before she realized she’d never told the merchant her name.

Well
, thought Lila, pulling her cloak tight around her shoulders,
that was unsettling.
She shoved her hands in her pockets—half to keep them from shaking, and half to make sure she didn’t accidentally touch anything else—and made her way back to the weapons stall. Soon she felt someone draw up beside her, caught the familiar scent of honey and silver and spiced wine.

“Captain,” she said.

“Believe it or not, Bard,” he said, “I am more than capable of defending my own honor.”

She gave him a sideways look and noted that the satchel was gone. “It’s not your honor that concerns me.”

“My health, then? No one’s killed me yet.”

Lila shrugged. “Everyone’s immortal until they’re not.”

Alucard shook his head. “What a delightfully morbid outlook, Bard.”

“Besides,” continued Lila, “I’m not particularly worried about your honor
or
your life, Captain. I was just looking out for my cut.”

Alucard sighed and swung his arm around her shoulders. “And here I was beginning to think you cared.” He turned to consider the knives on the table in front of them, and chuckled.

“Most girls covet dresses.”

“I am not most girls.”

“Without question.” He gestured at the display. “See anything you like?”

For a moment, the image in the mirror surged up in Lila mind, sinister and black-eyed and thrumming with power. Lila shook it away, looked over the blades, and nodded at a dagger with a jagged blade.

“Don’t you have enough knives?”

“No such thing.”

He shook his head. “You continue to be a most peculiar creature.” With that, he began to lead her away. “But keep your money in your pockets. We
sell
to the Black Market of Sasenroche, Bard. We don’t buy from it.
That
would be very wrong.”

“You have a skewed moral compass, Alucard.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“What if I stole it?” she asked casually. “Surely it can’t be wrong to
steal
an item from an illegal market?”

Alucard choked on a laugh. “You could try, but you’d fail. And you’d probably lose a hand for your effort.”

“You have too little faith in me.”

“Faith has nothing to do with it. Notice how the vendors don’t seem particularly concerned about guarding their wares? That’s because the market has been warded.” They were at the edge of the cavern now, and Lila turned back to consider it. She squinted at the stalls. “It’s strong magic,” he continued. “If an object were to leave its stall without permission, the result would be … unpleasant.”

“What, did you try to steal something once?”

“I’m not that foolish.”

“Maybe it’s just a rumor then, meant to scare off thieves.”

“It’s not,” said Alucard, stepping out of the cavern and into the night. The fog had thickened, and night had fallen in a blanket of cold.

“How do you know?” pressed Lila, folding her arms in beneath her cloak.

The captain shrugged. “I suppose …” He hesitated. “I suppose I’ve got a knack for it.”

“For what?”

The sapphire glinted in his brow. “Seeing magic.”

Lila frowned. People spoke of
feeling
magic, of
smelling
it, but never of
seeing
it. Sure, one could see the effects it had on things, the elements it possessed, but never the magic itself. It was like the soul in a body, she supposed. You could see the flesh, the blood, but not the thing it contained.

Come to think of it, the only time Lila had ever
seen
magic was the river in Red London, the glow of power emanating from it with a constant crimson light. A source, that’s what Kell had called it. People seemed to believe that that power coursed through everyone and everything. It had never occurred to her that someone could see it out in the world.

“Huh,” she said.

“Mm,” he said. He didn’t offer more.

They moved in silence through the stone maze of streets, and soon all signs of the market were swallowed by the mist. The dark stone of the tunnels tapered into wood as the heart of Sasenroche gave way again to its facade.

“What about me?” she asked as they reached the port.

Alucard glanced back. “What about you?”

“What do you see,” she asked, “when you look at me?”

She wanted to know the truth. Who was Delilah Bard?
What
was she? The first was a question she thought she knew the answer to, but the second … she’d tried not to bother with it, but as Kell had pointed out so many times, she shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be alive, for that matter. She bent most of the rules. She broke the rest. And she wanted to know why. How. If she was just a blip in the universe, an anomaly, or something
more.

“Well?” she pressed.

She half expected Alucard to ignore the question, but at last he turned, squaring himself to her.

For an instant, his face crinkled. He so rarely frowned that the expression looked wrong on him. There was a long silence, filled only by the thud of Lila’s pulse, as the captain’s dark eyes considered her.

“Secrets,” he said at last. And then he winked. “Why do you think I let you stay?”

And Lila knew that if she wanted to know the truth, she’d have to give it, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet, so she forced herself to smile and shrug. “You like the sound of your own voice. I assumed it was so you’d have someone to talk to.”

He laughed and put an arm around her shoulders. “That, too, Bard. That, too.”

V

The city looked positively bleak, shrouded in the dying light, as if everything had been painted over with only black and white, an entire palette dampened to shades of grey. Chimneys sent up plumes of smoke and huddled forms hurried past, shoulders bent against the cold.

And Kell had never been so happy to be there.

To be invisible.

Standing on the narrow road in the shadow of Westminster, he drew a deep breath, despite the hazy, smoke-and-cold-filled air, and relished the feeling. A chill wind cut through and he thrust his hands in his pockets and began to walk. He didn’t know where he was going. It didn’t matter.