It was a dangerous gamble, and as the woman rounded the counter and pulled out the bin, Tes watched for signs of suspicion, or anger, braced for the feeling of steel slicing through skin. But all the woman did was lift the contents from the bin.
A box.
Roughly the same size and shape as the one bundled beneath the counter between her feet. Only this box would never open doors to other worlds. It was a simpler thing, meant to capture and play sounds, like the one she kept beside her bed to help her sleep.
She’d salvaged it from a market a week before, wanted to see if she could modify the spell to hold a voice, thought it might be nice if Vares could talk as well as listen.
“Doesn’t look very broken,” said the woman.
“The box is just a container,” said Tes. “That part was easy to fix.” The same had been true for the doormaker. “It’s the spellwork inside that’s hard.”
“Well then,” said the woman, placing the box on the counter. “I suggest you get to work.”
Tes took a deep breath. “I need both hands.”
The woman tipped her head, as if considering. Then the metal released, withdrew, returning to the cuff on her arm. Tes rubbed her hand, flexed her fingers, tried to hide how badly they were shaking. Her thoughts spun as she looked down at the box on the table in front of her.
“This will take time,” she said.
Please go, please go, please go, thudded her heart, loud as the drums she’d heard in that other London.
The woman turned, as if to leave, then grabbed a chair and dragged it across the shop floor to the counter. She spun it around and sat, arms crossed along the back.
“We’ll wait.”
III
Lila Bard should have listened to her gut.
After all, it had gotten her this far.
Six Helarin Way wasn’t in the shal. Far from it. Helarin Way lay on the city’s northern bank, nearer the ostra and vestra than the dregs of London. It was an affluent borough, with elegant, well-appointed shops, all of which sat dark at this hour, though the streets were still well lit, lanterns burning with warm, enchanted light.
There was no date etched into the coin, no way to know if the time printed on the edge had come and gone, or lay ahead. But the Ferase Stras had been attacked less than a week before, and one of the thieves had been carrying this coin. She had to hope it wasn’t a keepsake, but an invitation—one that hadn’t yet expired.
SON HELARIN RAS ? NONIS ORA
Eleventh hour. According to the clock on the corner and the watch in her pocket, it was half past eleven now. She quickened her step, boots sounding first on stone, and then on wood as she crossed the bridge onto the northern bank.
This part of London moved at its own pace, time turned to honey by the moneyed elite. It played home to performance halls and smoking parlors, dinner clubs and grand estates, places where the city’s wealth and power were both on full display. She saw no painted hands, and yet, the coin rolled in her fingers, letters pressed against her skin.
As she neared Helarin Way, Lila forced her steps to slow and lengthen into a more casual stride, turned up her collar and straightened her spine, carrying herself with a confidence she always felt, but rarely showed, taking on the airs of the people she’d passed as she made her way to the address.
With any luck, it would be the pleasure garden Tanis spoke of, the Hand all gathered neat within, her hunt begun and ended in a single night. But when she got there, she found only a darkened house.
Not a vestran estate, with grounds and a gate, though hardly a hovel. Three stories, with dark iron ringing its doorway and trimming the balconies above, the roof a series of gold-tipped peaks.
She kept walking, past the house to the corner, where she paused beneath an awning, and considered the fa?ade, waited to see if anyone else came or went. Lanterns burned in other windows, but 6 Helarin Way was dark, and not the shallow dark that fell when a house’s tenants had simply gone to bed. It had the hollow dark peculiar to abandoned places.
Lila chewed the inside of her cheek.
Perhaps she was too late. But she didn’t think so. No, she thought, whatever was meant to happen here, it wasn’t happening tonight.
She turned down the road, toward the river, and the inn, and the narrow bed that waited, when she felt a body moving in her wake.
Lila slowed, craning to hear footsteps, but they must have been timing their strides to hers, because she heard only her own boots, the far-off canter of hooves, and the murmur of voices drawn high and thin on the breeze.
And that was what made them stand out. The silence of them was too heavy, too solid, like stuffing in a pillow. Kell had told her once that if she tried, she could feel the magic present in another body, and she didn’t tell him that she’d been able to feel that long before she knew it was magic.