Holland’s palms fell from hers.
But the sapling remained, heavy in her outstretched hands. Kosika marveled at it, felt her eyes prick with tears. She knelt, and set the sapling on the floor. Holland’s voice spilled over her.
“We are bound together,” he said. “Your magic was once mine. My legacy is yours. I will guide your hands, if you let me.”
Her head rose, and this time, there was no hesitation. No doubt. “I am your servant.”
“Then I will be your saint,” he answered, green eye bright, and black eye infinite. “And together, we will do wondrous things.”
VII
RED LONDON
NOW
Rock shifted beneath Alucard’s boots.
“Careful, sir,” said Velastro. “It’s not exactly stable.”
The soldiers had carved a makeshift path through the building’s wreckage, heaping the splintered wood and broken stone into piles and shifting the bulk of the debris out to the edges, where the walls had been before they fell.
Two soldiers had cordoned off the ruins, and were still searching the debris, while a third was making the rounds for information, which was a harder task—this was the shal, after all, a place known both for its dislike of the crown and its desire to keep its business to itself. But good coin spent in every quarter, and Alucard had supplied a bag of it in the hopes that bribery would do what civic duty wouldn’t.
“Anesh?” asked Velastro, trailing in his wake. “What do you think?”
“You were right to come to me,” said Alucard. Whether or not this had been the work of the Hand, there was nothing normal about the building’s fall. The damage had been total, the tearing down so complete it couldn’t have been accidental. There were no lingering roofbeams, no fragments of wall left standing.
This had been a demolition—the work of someone burying their tracks.
Velastro beamed at the praise, and Alucard resisted the urge to pat the eager young soldier on the head. Instead, he turned, and squinted, the debris a tangle of threads in his sight.
His eyes were accustomed to seeing too much, but usually there was an order to it. As he stepped over a broken beam, around the warped remains of shelves, it all blurred together, so much he almost missed it.
It—whatever it was—was lodged in one of the head-high piles, only a thin piece poking out the top. At first he thought it was a sliver of metal, catching the sun, but as he stepped closer he realized there was no object, only a line of light, burned onto the air itself.
“Stand back,” he ordered.
As soon as the soldiers were clear, Alucard swept his hand, felt the familiar rush of magic rising to his fingers as they dragged through the air, and the pile of earth and rock answered, emitting a dull scrape as it was pushed sideways, revealing bare floor. And a shape, carved into the air. A set of perfect lines, squared off into a frame.
Alucard swore under his breath. No, not a random act at all.
“What is that?” asked Velastro.
Alucard tore his gaze from the mark. “You can see it, too?” he asked, surprised.
Velastro’s head wobbled a little, as if it couldn’t decide between a yes and a no. “I can see it, and I can’t.” And then he used a word Alucard hadn’t heard in years, not since his time at sea.
Trosa.
Ghost.
Sailors had all kinds of stories. Of the Sarows, who stole over ships like fog, and the garost, who reached up from the deep and scraped its nails along the hull, and the trosa, spectral vessels that followed in a ship’s wake, lurking at dawn and dusk on the horizon but never drawing closer.
But Velastro wasn’t a sailor, and to him the word meant something else.
“That’s what we used to call them,” he explained, “when we were kids. The echoes you see when you stare too long at a bright light and then close your eyes, and it’s still there. No matter how many times you blink.”
Alucard reached out, fingers grazing the air over the mark. He half expected to feel some resistance when he touched it, but whatever magic had been in play, it was spent, leaving only this scar, its vivid lines carved into the air, the edges burned white.
“A remnant,” he murmured.
Just then, another soldier rode up on a royal mount. Alucard’s fingers fell away from the mark as she dismounted, tucking her helmet beneath her arm.
“Well,” he said, “what have you managed to buy with our coin?”
“More than you’d think,” said the soldier, “and less than you’d like.” She surveyed the wreckage, contained as it was to only one house, and explained that before this place fell down, it had been a repair shop, run by a man named Haskin.