Gathering of Shadows (A Darker Shade of Magic) (5 page)

Gast.
She knew that word already.
Thief.

“Ta vasar mas eran gast.”

You killed my best thief.

Lila smiled despite herself, adding the new words to her meager arsenal.

“Vasar es,”
said one of the men, pointing at Lila.
Kill her.
Or perhaps,
Kill him
, since Lila was pretty sure they hadn’t figured out yet that she was a girl. And she had no intention of informing them. She might have been a long way from home, but some things didn’t change, and she’d rather be a man, even if that meant a dead one. And the crew seemed to be gunning for that end, as a murmur of approval went through the group, punctuated by
vasar.

The captain ran a hand over his hair, obviously considering it. He raised a brow at Lila as if to say,
Well? What would you have me do?

Lila had an idea. It was a very stupid idea. But a stupid idea was better than no idea, at least in theory. So she dragged the words into shape and delivered them with her sharpest smile.
“Nas,”
she said, slowly. “An
to eran gast
.”

No.
I
am your best thief.

She held the captain’s gaze when she said it, her chin high and proud. The others grumbled and growled, but to her they didn’t matter, didn’t exist. The world narrowed to Lila and the captain of the ship.

His smile was almost imperceptible. The barest quirk of his lips.

Others were less amused by her show. Two of them advanced on her, and in the time it took Lila to retreat a matching step, she had another knife in hand. Which was a feat, considering the leather strap that bound her wrists. The captain whistled, and she couldn’t tell if it was an order for his men, or a sound of approval. It didn’t matter. A fist slammed into her back and she staggered forward into the captain, who caught her wrists and pressed a groove between her bones. Pain shot up her arm, and the knife clattered to the deck. She glared up into the captain’s face. It was only inches from her own, and when his eyes bore into hers, she felt them searching.

“Eran gast?”
he said. “
Anesh
…” And then, to her surprise, the captain let her go. He tapped his coat. “
Casero
Alucard Emery,” he said, drawing out the syllables. Then he pointed at her with a questioning look.

“Bard,” she said.

He nodded, once, thinking, and then turned to his waiting crew. He began addressing them, the words too smooth and fast for Lila to decipher. He gestured to the body on the plank, and then to her. The crew did not seem pleased, but the captain was the captain for a reason, and they listened. And when he was finished, they stood, still and sullen. Captain Emery turned and made his way back across the deck to a set of stairs that plunged down into the ship’s hull.

When his boot touched the first step, he stopped and looked back with a new smile, this one sharp.

“Nas vasar!”
he ordered.
No killing.

And then he gave Lila a look that said,
Good luck
, and vanished belowdecks.

* * *

The men wrapped the body in canvas and set it back on the dock.

Superstition, she guessed, about bringing the dead aboard. A gold coin was placed on the man’s forehead, perhaps as payment for disposal. From what Lila could tell, Red London wasn’t a particularly religious place. If these men worshipped anything, they worshipped magic, which she supposed would be heresy back in Grey London. But then again, Christians worshipped an old man in the sky, and if Lila had to say which one seemed more real at the moment, she’d have to side with magic.

Luckily, she’d never been devout. Never believed in higher powers, never attended church, never prayed before bed. In fact, the only person Lila had ever prayed to was herself.

She considered nicking the gold coin, but god or not, that seemed wrong, so she stood on the deck and watched the proceedings with resignation. It was hard to feel bad about killing the man—he would have killed her—and none of the other sailors seemed terribly broken up over the loss itself … but then again, Lila supposed she was in no place to judge a person’s worth by who would miss them. Not with the closest thing she’d had to family rotting a world away. Who had found Barron? Who had buried him? She shoved the questions down. They wouldn’t bring him back.

The huddle of men trudged back aboard. One of them walked straight up to Lila, and she recognized her knuckle-hilted dagger in his grip. He grumbled something under his breath, then raised the knife and buried its tip in a crate beside her head. To his credit, it wasn’t
in
her head, and to hers, she didn’t flinch. She brought her bound wrists around the blade and pulled down in a single sharp motion, freeing herself from the cord.

The ship was almost ready to set sail, and Lila appeared to have earned a place on it, though she wasn’t entirely sure if it was as prisoner, cargo, or crew. A light rain began to fall, but she stayed on deck and out of the way as the
Night Spire
cast off, her heart racing as the ship drifted out into the middle of the Isle and turned its back on the glittering city. Lila gripped the rail at the
Spire’s
stern and watched Red London shrink in the distance. She stood until her hands were stiff with cold, and the madness of what she was doing settled into her bones.

Then the captain barked her name—“Bard!”—and pointed at a group struggling with the crates, and she went to lend a hand. Just like that—only not just like that, of course, for there were many taut nights and fights won, first against and then beside the other men, and blood spilled and ships taken—Lila Bard became a member of the
Night Spire’s
crew.

IV

Once aboard the
Night Spire
, Lila barely said a word (Kell would have been thrilled). She spent every moment trying to learn Arnesian, cobbling together a vocabulary—but as fast as she was on the uptake, it was still easier to simply listen than engage.

The crew spent a fair amount of time tossing words her way, trying to figure out her native tongue, but it was Alucard Emery who found her out.

Lila had only been on board a week when the captain stumbled across her one night cussing at Caster, her flintlock, for being a waterlogged piece of shit with its last bullet jammed in the barrel.

“Well, this is a surprise.”

Lila looked up and saw Alucard standing there. At first she thought her Arnesian must be improving, because she understood his words without thinking, but then she realized he wasn’t speaking Arnesian. He was speaking
English.
Not only that, but his accent had the crisp enunciation and smooth execution of someone fluent in the royal tongue. Not like the court-climbers who fumbled over words, offering them up like a party trick. No, like Kell, or Rhy. Someone who had been raised with it balanced on their lips.

A world away, in the grey streets of Lila’s old city, that fluency would mean little, but here, it meant neither of them were simple sailors.

In a last-ditch effort at salvaging her secret, Lila pretended not to understand him. “Oh don’t go dumb on me now, Bard,” he said. “You’re just becoming interesting.”

They were alone on the stretch of ship, tucked beneath the lip of the upper deck. Lila’s fingers drifted to the knife at her waist, but Alucard held up a hand.

“Why don’t we take this conversation to my chambers?” he asked, eyes glinting. “Unless you want to make a scene.”

Lila supposed it would be better
not
to slit the captain’s throat in plain sight.

No, it could be done in private.

* * *

The moment they were alone, Lila spun on him. “You speak Eng—” she started, then caught herself. “High Royal.” That was what they called it here.

“Obviously,” said Alucard before sliding effortlessly into Arnesian. “But it is not
my
native tongue.”

“Tac,”
countered Lila in the same language. “Who says it is mine?”

Alucard gave her a playful grin and returned to English. “First, because your Arnesian is awful,” he chided. “And second, because it’s a law of the universe that all men swear in their native tongue. And I must say, your usage was quite colorful.”

Lila clenched her teeth, annoyed at her mistake as Alucard led her into his cabin. It was elegant but cozy, with a bed in a nook along one wall and a hearth along the other, two high-backed chairs before a pale fire. A white cat lay curled on a dark wooden desk, like a paperweight atop the maps. It flicked its tail at their arrival and opened one lavender eye as Alucard crossed to the desk, riffling through some papers. He scratched the cat absently behind the ears.

“Esa,” he said, by way of introduction. “Mistress of my ship.”

His back was to Lila now, and her hand drifted once more to the knife at her hip. But before she could reach the weapon, Alucard’s fingers twitched and the blade jumped from its sheath and flew into his hand, hilt striking against palm. He hadn’t even looked up. Lila’s eyes narrowed. In the week she’d been aboard, she hadn’t seen anyone do magic. Alucard turned toward her now with an easy grin, as if she hadn’t been about to assault him. He tossed the knife casually onto the desk (the sound made Esa flick her tail again).

“You can kill me later,” he said, gesturing to the two chairs before the fire. “First, let’s talk.”

A decanter sat on a table between the chairs, along with two glasses, and Alucard poured a drink the color of berries and held it out to Lila. She didn’t take it.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’m fond of High Royal,” he said, “and I miss having someone to speak it with.” It was a sentiment Lila understood. The sheer relief of talking after so long silent was like stretching muscles after poor sleep, working the stiffness out. “I wouldn’t want it to rust while I’m out at sea.”

He sank into one of the chairs and downed the drink himself, the gem in his brow glinting in the hearth light. He tipped the empty glass at the other chair and Lila considered him, and her options, then lowered herself into it. The decanter of purple wine sat on the table between them. She poured herself a glass and leaned back, imitating Alucard’s posture, her drink braced on the arm of the chair, legs stretched out, boots crossed at the ankle. The picture of nonchalance. He twisted one of his rings absently, a silver feather curled into a band.

For a long moment, they considered each other in silence, like two chess players before the first move. Lila had always hated chess. Never had the patience for it.

Alucard was the first to move, the first to speak. “Who are you?”

“I told you,” she said simply. “My name is Bard.”

“Bard,”
he said. “There’s no noble house by that name. Which family do you truly hail from? The Rosec? The Casin? The Loreni?”

Lila snorted soundlessly but didn’t answer. Alucard was making an assumption, the only assumption an Arnesian
would
make: that because she spoke English, or High Royal—she must be noble. A member of the court, taught to flash English words like jewels, intent on impressing a royal, claiming a title, a crown. She pictured the prince, Rhy, with his easy charm and his flirtatious air. She could probably have kept his attention, if she’d wanted to. And then her thoughts drifted to Kell, standing like a shadow behind the flamboyant heir. Kell, with his reddish hair and his black eye and his perpetual frown.

“Fine,” cut in Alucard. “An easier question. Do you have a first name, Miss Bard?” Lila raised a brow. “Yes, yes, I know you’re a woman. You might actually pass for a very pretty boy back at court, but the kind of men who work on ships tend to have a bit more …”

“Muscle?” she ventured.

“I was going to say facial hair.”

Lila smirked despite herself. “How long have you known?”

“Since you came aboard.”

“But you let me stay.”

“I found you curious.” Alucard refilled his glass. “Tell me, what brought you to my ship?”

“Your men.”

“But I saw you that day. You
wanted
to come aboard.”

Lila considered him, then said, “I liked your ship. It looked expensive.”