“Then why do they still treat me like a doll?”
“They treat you like a queen,” countered Nasi, huffing in exasperation. “That is what you are. The symbol of their strength. The power that restored the world.”
“It is Holland Vosijk’s power. They should pray to him.”
“Holland Vosijk is dead,” said Nasi grimly. “And you are not.” She stepped close, laid a hand on the shoulder of Kosika’s bloodstained cloak. “You resent them because they do not live and breathe the stories of the Summer Saint, as you do. But they do not follow the Saint. They follow you. As far as they’re concerned, you are the reason the crops grow in their fields. You are the reason they can summon wind into their sails.” Nasi rolled her free hand, and a flame bloomed in the air. “You are the reason they can call fire to their hearths.” Her fingers closed, and the flame went out. “You are their queen, and tonight they celebrate, but today they bled, because you willed it.”
“They bled because it serves them.”
“It serves us all. Isn’t that the point?”
Kosika looked down at her own hands, crusted in blood. “And if the magic dried up again? If the power bled out of the world? Would they still follow me?”
“Oh, no,” said Nasi cheerfully, “then they would surely turn on you.” Only she could say such a thing with lightness in her voice. “This is London, after all. But you and I both know they will not need to. Because you would open your veins into the Sijlt before anyone tried to cut your throat.”
Kosika tried to manage a smile, but it fell short. “Go back down,” she told Nasi, nodding at the stairs. “Enjoy the feast. Make sure the Vir don’t go mad with power in my absence.”
“You should eat,” said her friend, and Kosika bristled, even as her stomach growled in protest, full of nothing but sugared buns and cider.
“Fine,” she said. “Send something up.”
She turned, only to feel Nasi’s hand catch hers, then the weight of something pressing into her palm.
“Happy birthday,” said Nasi, leaning in to kiss her cheek, and Kosika let herself blush, only a little, before she looked down and saw what the gift was: a marble figure, like the ones on the kol-kot board in the corner of her room. Kosika knew the rules now, had even beat Nasi half a dozen times. The figure was modeled on the game’s most important piece. The single faceless king.
Only this wasn’t a faceless king.
It was a queen.
It was her.
From the white cloak to the braided crown to the eyes cast in gemstone, one light brown, the other solid black. Her spirits lightened as her fingers curled over the token. She looked up to thank Nasi, but the girl was already vanishing down the spiral steps, toward the noise and revel of the feast.
Kosika turned the talisman in her hands as she continued up to her room, past the second landing and the third to the royal tower, past the two guards posted outside her door.
At last, in the quiet, she shrugged off the bloodstained cloak and pulled the jeweled pins from her hair, leaving the finery laid out like a ghost on the bed. She passed the silver ash tree that grew in the center of her room, brushed her fingers against the bark on her way to the game board that waited as it always did on its low, round table.
She sank onto a cushioned stool. The game was set, each king with a wall of soldiers in front, a set of priests behind. Kosika took up the silver-and-white king, faceless beneath his crown, then dropped it in the drawer, and set her own piece in its place. Her fingertips were tracing her stone features when something—someone—moved in the room behind her.
“Kosika,” said a voice, low and smooth.
She turned, and there he was, dressed in charcoal, one hand on the post of her bed and the other on the stained cloak, his long fingers as graceful as they’d been when she curled them around the single sugar cube in the Silver Wood.
“Hello, Holland.”
Part Seven
THE HAND THAT HOLDS THE BLADE
I
Red London
The city was full of pleasure gardens.
Some made the most of the long summer nights, and others burned away the winter chill, some were intimate and others grand, and all were dazzling in their own way.
But few held a candle to the Veil.
Like the rest, it catered to a wealthy clientele, and was known not only for its luxury but also its discretion, welcoming patrons with a wall of polished masks, to don as they came in. But unlike the others, it had no grounds, no walls, no roof, no roots. Instead, the Veil descended on a different house each night, and only its most devoted members knew where it would bloom.