The Fragile Threads of Power （Threads of Power, #1）
V. E. Schwab
For the ones
who still
believe in magic
Magic is the river that waters all things.
It lends itself to life, and in death calls it back,
and so the stream appears to rise and fall,
when in truth, it never loses a single drop.
—TIEREN SERENSE,
ninth Aven Essen of the London Sanctuary
WHITE LONDON
SEVEN YEARS AGO
It came in handy, being small.
People talked of growing up like it was some grand accomplishment, but small bodies could slip through narrow gaps, and hide in tight corners, and get in and out of places other bodies wouldn’t fit.
Like a chimney.
Kosika shimmied down the last few feet and dropped into the hearth, sending up a plume of soot. She held her breath, half to keep from inhaling ash and half to make sure no one was home. Lark had said the place was empty, that no one had come or gone in more than a week, but Kosika figured it was better to be silent than sorry, so she stayed crouched in the fireplace a few moments, waiting, listening until she was sure she was alone.
Then she scooted onto the edge of the hearth and slipped off her boots, tying the laces and hanging them around her neck. She hopped down, bare feet kissing the wooden floor, and set off.
It was a nice house. The boards were even, and the walls were straight, and though the shutters were all latched, there were a lot of windows, and thin bits of light got in around the edges, giving her just enough to see by. She didn’t mind robbing nice houses, especially when people just up and left them unattended.
She went to the pantry first. She always did. People who lived in houses this nice didn’t think of things like jam and cheese and dried meat as precious, never got hungry enough to worry about running out.
But Kosika was always hungry.
Sadly, the pantry shelves were sparse. A sack of flour. A pouch of salt. A single jar of compote that turned out to be bitter orange （she hated bitter orange）。 But there, in the back, behind a tin of loose tea, she found a waxy paper bag of sugar cubes. More than a dozen of them, small and brown and shining like crystals. She’d always had a sweet tooth, and her mouth began to water even as she tucked one in her cheek. She knew she should only take one or two and leave the rest, but she broke her own rules and shoved the whole bag in her pocket, sucking on the cube as she went off in search of treasure.
The trick was not to take too much. People who had enough didn’t notice when one or two of their things went missing. They figured they’d simply misplaced them, put them down and forgotten where.
Maybe, she told herself, the person who’d lived here was dead. Or maybe they had simply gone on a trip. Maybe they were rich, rich enough to have a second home in the country, or a really big ship.
She tried to imagine what they were doing as she padded through the darkened rooms, opening cupboards and drawers, looking for the glint of coins, or metal, or magic.
Something twitched at the edge of her sight, and Kosika jumped, dropping into a crouch before she realized it was only a mirror. A large, silvered looking glass, propped on a table. Too big to steal, but still she drifted toward it, had to stand on her toes to see her face reflected back. Kosika didn’t know how old she was. Somewhere between six and seven. Closer to seven, she guessed, because the days were just starting to get shorter, and she knew she was born right at the point where summer gave way to fall. Her mother said that was why she looked like she was caught between, neither here nor there. Her hair, which was neither blond nor brown. Her eyes, which were neither green nor grey nor blue.
（Kosika didn’t see why a person’s looks even mattered. They weren’t like coin. They didn’t spend.）
Her gaze dipped. Below the mirror, on the table, there was a drawer. It didn’t have a knob or a handle, but she could see the groove of one thing set into another, and when she pressed against the wood, it gave, a hidden clasp released. The drawer sprang out, revealing a shallow tray, and two amulets, made of glass or pale stone, one bound in leather and the other in thin strands of copper.
Amplifiers.
She couldn’t read the symbols scratched into the edges, but she knew that’s what they were. Talismans designed to capture power, and bind it to you.
Most people couldn’t afford magic-catchers—they just carved the spells straight into their skin. But marks faded, and skin sagged, and spells turned with time, like rotten fruit, while a piece of jewelry could be taken off, exchanged, refilled.
Kosika lifted one of the amulets, and wondered if the amplifiers were worth less, or even more, now that the world was waking up. That’s what people called the change. As if the magic had just been sleeping all these years, and the latest king, Holland, had somehow shaken it awake.