A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2)

by V.E. Schwab

Delilah Bard had a way of finding trouble.

I am Delilah Bard, she thought as the ropes cut into her skin. l am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands. And a ship full of men cannot do what I can. I don’t need any of you. I am one of a damned kind.

If there is a god, she thought, a celestial body, a heavenly power, or anyone above—or below—who might just like to see me live another day, for pity’s or entertainment’s sake, now would be a good time to intercede.

He flashed up in her vision like a flare, auburn hair and that constant furrow between his eyes: one blue, one black. Antari. Magic boy. Prince.

And then she straightened and found herself standing in a circle of sailors. No, not sailors, of course.

Pirates. Grimy, sea stained and sun bleached, their skin darkened and their clothes faded, each and every one of them with a knife tattooed across his throat. The mark of the pirates of the Copper Thief. She counted seven surrounding her, five tending to the rigging and sails, and assumed another half dozen below deck. Eighteen. Round it up to twenty.

The pirates smiled greedily, and Lila knew what they were thinking. They had more than twice that number, and a ship that hid like a shadow in the dark. If they could catch the fleeing bounty … she could feel Baliz Kasnov’s deep-set eyes scrutinizing her. She stared back at him and wondered, absently, if he could do any magic. Most ships were warded with a handful of spells—things to make their lives safer and more convenient—but she had been surprised to find that most of the men she met at sea had little inclination for the elemental arts. Alucard said that magical proficiency was a valued skill, and that true affinity would usually land one gainful employment on land. Magicians at sea almost always focused on the elements of relevance—water and wind—but few hands could turn the tide, and in the end most still favored good old-fashioned steel. Which Lila could certainly appreciate, having several pieces currently hidden on her person.

Most of the men were frowning, but in the center, a tall figure stood, wearing a black sash and an amused smile, his tawny brown hair swept back and a sapphire in his brow. Alucard Emery. Her captain.

“Mas aven,” growled the first mate, Stross, in disbelief. “Not fucking possible,” said the cook, Olo, surveying the bodies scattered across the deck.

Handsome Vasry and Tavestronask (who went simply by Tav) both applauded, Kobis watched with crossed arms...

She’d never met a man who loved his job more than Alucard Emery. He relished it the way children relish a game, the way men and women relish acting, throwing themselves into their plays with glee and abandon. There was a measure of theatre to everything Alucard did. She wondered how many other parts he could play. Wondered which, if any, were not a part, but the actor beneath. His eyes found hers in the dark. They were a storm of blue and grey, at times bright and at others almost colorless. He tipped his head wordlessly in the direction of his chambers, and she followed.

“Well, Bard,” he said, sliding into English as soon as they were alone. “Are you going to tell me how you managed it?” “What fun would that be?” she challenged, sinking into one of the two high-backed chairs before his hearth, where a pale fire blazed, as it always did, and two short glasses sat on the table, waiting to be filled. “Mysteries are always more exciting than truths.”

Walking away had been easy. Not looking back was harder.

She had no disguise, only her clothes, which were a man’s cut, and her dark hair, which fell into her eyes, and her own features, which she drew into sharp lines. Lowering her voice, she hoped she could pass for a slender young man. Masks could be worn in darkened alleys and to masquerade balls, but not in taverns. Not without drawing more attention than they were worth.

Reckless, whispered a voice in her head, and she was rather disconcerted to find that where once the voice had sounded like Barron, it now sounded like Kell.

Lila ambled down the street, the gambler’s stolen purse hanging from one hand. Being a good thief wasn’t just about fast fingers. It was about turning situations into opportunities. She hefted the purse, smiling at its weight. Her blood sang triumphantly.

The captain of the Night Spire was striking. And strikingly young. His skin was sea tanned but smooth; his hair, a rich brown threaded with brass, was pinned back with an elegant clasp. His eyes, a blue so dark they were almost black, went from the body on the plank, to the crowd of gathered men, to Lila. A sapphire glittered in his left brow.

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.

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.”

“I’m not a very good teacher,” said Alucard. “But I’m a fast learner.” Alucard tipped his head, considering. Then he took up Kell’s box and released the clasp, letting it fall open in his palm. “What do you want to know?” Lila returned to the chair and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Everything.”

Her body was warm from wine and pleasant company, and as the ship swayed gently beneath her feet, the sea air wrapping around her shoulders, and the waves murmuring their song, that lullaby she’d wanted for so long, Lila realized she was happy.

She slid the silver clasp, and the game board fell open in front of her, the elements in their grooves—earth and air, fire and water and bone—waiting to be moved. Lila flexed her fingers. She knew that most people could only master a single element, maybe two, and that she, being of another London, shouldn’t be able to master any. But Lila never let odds get in her way. Besides, that old priest, Master Tieren, had told her that she had power somewhere in her bones. That it only needed to be nurtured. Now she held her hands above either side of the drop of oil in its groove, palms in as if she could warm herself by it. She didn’t know the words to summon magic. Alucard insisted that she didn’t need to learn another tongue, that words were more for the user than the object, meant to help one focus, but without a proper spell, Lila felt silly. Nothing but a mad girl talking to herself in the dark. No, she needed

something, and a poem, she had figured, was kind of like a spell. Or at least, it was more than just its words.

all things grew in gardens. Plenty of plants grew wild. And Lila had always thought of herself more as a weed than a rose bush.

The poem continued in her head as the heat tickled her palms. Kell would say it was impossible. What a useless word, in a world with magic. What are you? Kell had asked her once. What am I? She wondered now, as the fire rolled across her knuckles like a coin. She let the fire go out, the drop of oil sinking back into its groove. The flame was gone, but Lila could feel the magic lingering in the air like smoke as she took up her newest knife, the one she’d won off Lenos. It was no ordinary weapon. A month back, when they’d taken a Faroan pirate ship called the Serpent off the coast of Korma, she’d seen him use it. Now she ran her hand along the blade until she found the hidden notch, where the metal met the hilt. She pushed the clasp, and it released, and the knife performed a kind of magic trick. It separated in her hands, and what had been one blade now became two, mirror images as thin as straight-edged razors. Lila touched the bead of oil and ran her finger along the backs of both knives. And then she balanced them in her hands, crossed their sharpened edges—Tyger Tyger, burning bright—and struck. Fire licked along the metal, and Lila smiled.

Kell felt the power welling in him, wanting out—felt all the energy and the tension and the anger and the fear clawing for escape—but he forced himself to focus on his breathing, to find his center, to make a conscious act of the process that had become so natural. He wound back the mental clock until he was ten again, sitting on the floor of the monastic cell in the London Sanctuary, Master Tieren’s steady voice in his head. Magic is tangled, so you must be smooth. Magic is wild, so you must be tame. Magic is chaos, so you must be calm.

Are you calm, Kell?

Kell rose slowly to his feet, and raised his head. Beyond the concentration circle, the darkness twisted and the shadows loomed. In the flickering torchlight, sparring forms seemed to take the faces of enemies. Tieren’s soothing voice faded from his head, and Holland’s cold tone took its place. Do you know what makes you weak? The Antari’s voice echoed in his head. Kell stared into the sha...

Kell sagged back into the cold stone wall of the room, breathless and dizzy from the force of so much magic. Sweat trickled into his eyes—one blue, the other solid black—as he let the silence of the space settle over him.

Rhy raised a brow at the remains of Kell’s training. “I always thought being an Antari meant you didn’t need to practice, that it all came”—he gestured absently—“naturally.” “The ability comes naturally,” replied Kell. “The proficiency takes work. Just as I explained during every one of your lessons.” The prince shrugged. “Who needs magic when you look this good?”

The prince had never been skilled at standing still, but Kell thought he’d gotten worse. There was a new restlessness to his motions, a taut energy that mirrored Kell’s. And yet, Rhy’s was different. Manic. Dangerous. His moods were darker and their turn sharper, cutting the span of a second. It was all Kell could do to keep up.

There had been a time when Arnesians worshipped him as blessed, fell over themselves trying to bow low enough; while he never relished that display, this was worse. There was a measure of reverence in her eyes, but also fear and, worse, distrust. She looked at him as if he were a dangerous animal. As if any sudden movement might cause him to strike.

Red London might have been the jewel of the Arnesian empire, but it still had poor people, and suffering—and yet, here in Splendor, the ostra could play pretend, craft utopias out of money and magic.

“This would be a good deal more fun,” observed Rhy, “if you’d stop scowling at everyone.” Kell gave him a withering look. “They fear me.” “They worship you,” said Rhy with a wave of his hand. “The majority of this city thinks you’re a god.” Kell cringed at the word. Antari magicians were rare—so rare that they were seen by some as divine, chosen. “And the rest think I’m a devil.” Rhy sat forward. “Did you know that in Vesk, they believe you turn the seasons and control the tide, and bless the empire?” “If you’re appealing to my ego—” “I’m simply reminding you that you will always be singular.” Kell stilled, thinking of Holland. He told himself that a new Antari would be born, or found, eventually, but he wasn’t sure if he believed it. He and Holland had been two of a disappearing kind. They had always been rare, but they were rapidly approaching extinct. What if he really was the last one? Kell frowned. “I would rather be normal.”

“My point,” continued Rhy, “is that for every ten who worship you, one wants to see you burn. Those are simply the odds when it comes to people like us.”

And yet, Kell loathed the greedy way the ostra eyed the prince. The women’s batting lashes held too little warmth and too much cunning. The men’s appraising looks now held too little kindness and too much hunger. One or two shot a glance toward Kell, a ghost of that same hunger, but none were brave enough to approach. Good. Let them whisper, let them look. He felt the strange and sudden urge to make a scene, to watch their amusement harden into terror at the sight of his true power.

Like most of the city, they were talking of the Essen Tasch—the Element Games—and Kell paid them little mind at first, since the ostra were usually more concerned with the balls and banquets than the competitors. And when they did speak of the magicians, it was in the way people talked of exotic beasts.

“They say he hasn’t got a lick of magic in him,” continued the first man, obviously drunk. No sober man would speak such things so loudly. “Figures,” muttered the second. “S’unfair,” said the third. “‘Cause you know if he weren’t up in that pretty palace, he’d be beggin’ like a dog.” The sickening thing was, the man was probably right. This world was ruled by magic, but power followed no clear line or lineage; it flowed thick in some and thin in others. And yet, if magic denied a person power, the people took it as a judgment. The weak were shunned, left to fend for themselves. Sometimes they took to the sea—where elemental strength mattered less than simple muscle—but more often they stayed, and stole, and ended up with even less than they’d had to start with. It was a side of life Rhy had been spared only by his birth.

She stood out, not simply because she was one of the only women, but because he knew her. They had only met twice, but he recognized her instantly, from the catlike smile to the black hair twisted into coiling ropes behind her head, each woven through with gold. It was a bold thing, to wear such precious metal in a place of thugs and thieves. But Kisimyr Vasrin was bolder than most.

He’d never been much of a smoker—then again, he’d never been much of a drinker, either—and yet, wanting to take back at least a measure of control over what he put in his body, he snapped his fingers and lit the cigar with the small flame that danced above his thumb. Kell inhaled deeply—it wasn’t tobacco, like in Grey London, or the horrible char they smoked in White, but a pleasant spiced leaf that cleared his head and calmed his nerves. Kell blew the breath out, his eyes sliding out of focus in the plume of smoke.

“Kell,” someone whispered in his ear. Only it wasn’t Asana, but Delilah Bard. She did that, crept into his thoughts and robbed him of focus, like a thief. Which was exactly what she was. What she’d been, before he let her out of her world, and into his. Saints knew what—or where—she was these days, but in his mind she would always be the thief, stealing through at the most inopportune moments.

His heart raced, and magic surged through his veins. He felt something on his face, and it took him a moment to realize that he was smiling.

The jagged shards of ice hovered to every side, and then drifted on the air with slow precision until two or three had found each man, had charted a course for throat and heart and gut. The shards and the men that faced them waited with wide eyes and held breath to see what they would do. What Kell would do. A flick of his wrist, that’s all it would take, to end every man in the alley. Stop, a voice said, the word almost too soft to hear. Stop. And then suddenly, much louder, the voice was Rhy’s, the words tearing from his throat. “KELL, STOP.” And the night snapped back into focus and he realized he was standing there holding eight lives in his hand, and he’d almost ended them. Not to punish them for attacking Rhy (the prince had probably provoked them) and not because they were bad men (though several of them might have

been). But just because he could, because it felt good to be in control, to be the strongest, to know that when it came down to it, he would be the one left standing.

But the truth was, Kell couldn’t forget the way he’d felt during the fight, the small defiant part of him that had undeniably enjoyed it. He couldn’t forget the smile that had belonged to him and yet to someone else entirely.

Sitting there with only the river’s light, his tired mind

drifted, as it invariably did, back to Delilah Bard. When Kell thought of her, she was not one girl, but three: the too-skinny street thief who’d robbed him in an alley, the blood-streaked partner who’d fought beside him, and the impossible girl who’d walked away and never looked back. Where are you, Lila, he mused. And what kind of trouble are you getting into?

When it did, he dreamed of her. Dreamed of her standing on his balcony, goading him to come out and play. He dreamed of her hand tangling in his, a pulse of power twining them together. He dreamed of them racing through foreign streets, not the London ones they’d navigated, but crooks and bends in places he’d never been, and ones he might never see. But there she was, at his side, pulling him toward freedom.