Tes followed her from the docks, and along the riverbank, trailing half a block behind, and as she did, she marveled, not at the way Bard moved, slicing easily through the street, but at the way no one seemed to notice an Antari walking in their midst. To them, Lila Bard was just another body, a little odd, perhaps, dressed as she was in men’s clothes, but they were fine enough, and she wore them with an ease that made them come across as commonplace.
Tes followed, half expecting the Antari to stop and look over her shoulder at any moment, check her surroundings, to sense the weight of the girl in her wake, but she never did. Bard walked on, in the general direction of the royal palace, and for a panicked instant, Tes feared she was headed there, to the one place she had no way to follow. But then the Antari continued past, into a crowded square.
She strolled across the square, past vendors selling loaves of bread, and fruit, and tea—Tes resisted the urge to stop and purchase a cup from the whistling pot, the steam strong and black—before continuing on.
Bard seemed to be heading, of all places, toward the shal.
Tes’s pulse quickened as she trailed in the magician’s wake—half hoping and half fearing that she was being led back there, but soon the Antari turned again, this time up a narrow road.
At last, two blocks later, Bard stopped, and slipped inside a tavern inn. THE SETTING SUN, announced the sign over the door. Tes paused on the step. She counted to ten, pulled her hair back and up, even though it sent a wave of pain through her injured side, adjusted the box under her arm.
And went in.
The room was almost empty, only a handful of bodies scattered among the tavern tables, coils of blue and green and golden magic lighting the air around their shoulders.
No silver.
She scanned the tavern, and caught the hem of Lila Bard’s black coat just as her boots vanished up a narrow set of stairs.
Tes drifted toward them as the innkeeper—a narrow-faced woman with a shock of white hair and threads the color of wet grass—looked up from behind the counter.
“You lost?”
Tes hesitated, then put a lin on the bar. “Just thirsty.”
The innkeeper swept the coin into her pocket, and eyed Tes, clearly trying—and failing—to guess her age. “Ale or water?”
Tes bit her lip. “Do you have tea?”
The woman nodded, and shuffled away, and Tes’s gaze flicked back to the stairs. No sign of the Antari, but there was only one set of steps, so she had to hope that this was close enough, if trouble came to call. She crouched and set the doormaker on the wooden floor beneath her feet, in the shadow of the counter. The innkeeper returned and set a steaming mug of tea on the bar, and Tes was just about to reach for it when another hand came down on top of the cup.
“You know,” said a dry voice. “It’s rude to follow people.”
Tes looked up at the figure now sitting on the stool beside her, ringed in silver light. Lila Bard lifted the mug of tea, took a long sip, humming thoughtfully. “I told someone recently that the next time I was followed, I would send them back in pieces. Obviously, you didn’t get the message. Though I must admit, you don’t look like a crow—”
Tes blinked. “A what?”
“And yet here you are, shadowing me.” She studied Tes a moment longer. Her eyes were the same shade of brown, but this close, Tes had time to see that one had the faintest glassy shine, before both narrowed and the Antari said, “I know you.”
Tes cringed.
It was true, they had met once, three years before. Tes had been new to freedom, to London, to need, and so perplexed by the sight of the Antari as she passed her in the street, she couldn’t help herself.
“You tried to pick my pocket.”
That wasn’t strictly true. It wasn’t the contents of her pocket Tes had wanted. It was the silver-bright light of the magic itself, the way it pulsed and twined, but more than that, it was the closeness of it.
Until that moment, she’d thought there was only one Antari in the world, Kell Maresh, the crimson prince, and even then, she’d only seen him once, and at a distance, his silver threads so bright they blurred the shape of him within. But here was another, and her hand seemed to move before her thoughts, reaching for the Antari’s magic, hoping to steal a thread, just one.
She hadn’t been quick enough.
Or perhaps, the Antari had just been quicker.
Lila Bard’s hand had caught her wrist, grabbed it with such force she thought the bones inside would break.
“Please,” she’d said. “I need my hand.”