Her hand fell from the knob just as something twitched between the wood and the surrounding wall.
A thread. Black-and-white, emitting that impossible glow.
Just like the one she’d seen the night before.
Now that Tes wasn’t bleeding to death, the sight of it tickled her memory. She’d seen its like before, that lightless shine that seemed to eat itself. It reminded her of the shadow that clung to the cabinet in her father’s shop, the one that held the relics of Black London. Even if it wasn’t, she knew better than to handle things she didn’t understand.
She retreated from the floating strand, when suddenly it reached for her. The magic itself twitched forward, shooting toward her with such sudden speed and force that Tes recoiled, staggered back away from the questing thread.
Her heel caught on a chair leg, which scraped against the floor, and Ned’s head shot up, his head swiveling around until he saw her.
He sighed in relief. “Oh good,” he said. “You’re alive.”
Tes glanced back to the door, half expecting the tendril to surge out into the room. But it was gone. She turned her attention to Ned, and cobbled together her rusty High Royal.
“Thanks to you,” she said, the words strange in her mouth.
He rose to his feet and began to talk very fast, the words blurring together.
“Please,” she said. “Slow down. This isn’t … my language.”
Ned cocked his head to one side. “Oh, huh, I never thought of that. It makes sense, I suppose. Other worlds, and such. But Kell always spoke the King’s English.”
Tes started at the name. “Kell Maresh?”
But of course, it had to be. There was only one Kell who could move between worlds.
Ned nodded enthusiastically. “Do you know him?”
Tes snorted. People didn’t know the crimson Antari, Kell Maresh, adopted brother to King Rhy. Most never even met him. The closest she had ever come was when she named the owl Vares after him. But Ned was staring at her expectantly, as if it were a perfectly fair question.
“No,” she said. “I’ve never met the prince.”
“Prince?” Ned’s eyes went wide. “As in, heir to a throne?”
Tes nodded. Ned whistled softly. “He never told me.” He began to pace. “You sure we’re talking about the same Kell? Red hair? One fully black eye? And there’s his companion, Lila Bard—but she’s no princess. Have you met her?”
In fact, Tes had met the other Antari, once, when she first got to London.
It hadn’t gone well.
“Speaking of,” said the man, rambling on. “You don’t have one—a black eye, I mean—but you’re still here—how did you do that? I thought only those magicians with the black eyes could cross the threshold. Of course Lila doesn’t have one either, but then, that’s because one of hers is glass, not that you’d ever know.…”
The room was spinning and he was talking too fast again. Tes sank into his vacant chair and pressed her fingers to her temples. What she really needed was a very large, very hot, very strong cup of—
“Tea?” offered Ned.
She looked up. “You have tea?”
He bobbed his head. “Can’t get by without the stuff. You look like you could use some. I could, too. Long night. Of course, not quite so long as yours…”
He swept across the room, his long legs carrying him quickly behind the counter, and into an alcove. She heard the rattle of a kettle, a match being struck, a stove.
Vares sat on the table, the threads of the owl’s magic bright against the backdrop of the empty room. Tes reached out and ran her finger lightly down one string and the bird fluttered happily, as if she’d stroked the feathers he didn’t have.
Ned reappeared with a rattling tray. “How do you take it?” he asked.
She didn’t understand the question. “In a cup?”
He laughed—it was a gentle sound—then set a pot and two cups on the table, as well as a saucer of milk and a bowl of sugar. It had never occurred to Tes to foul the beautiful bitter strength of her tea with cream and sweetness, but maybe the tea here needed it. She watched as he put three cubes of sugar and a splash of milk in his cup. She put nothing in hers.
If the tea was bad enough, she decided, she would try it.
But the tea wasn’t bad enough. It wasn’t bad at all.
It was … different, of course. Different, but just as strong as she liked it. It was nice to know, that worlds might change, but this, at least, was constant. She wrapped her fingers around the steaming cup, and drank, and for the first time since she’d fixed the doormaker, and stepped into another world, and killers had come and threatened to cut off her hands, and her shop was destroyed and she was stabbed and forced to flee into another world, Tes felt her eyes burn with tears.