Caring could drown you, if you let it.
But it could also help you float.
Not that she’d ever let the bastards know.
“Another round?” asked Tav, scraping the cards back into a pile.
Stross shook his head. “I’m tired,” he said, rising to his feet, and finishing his drink.
“Tired of losing, you mean,” said Tav, even as he stood and dropped a handful of coins on the table. They looked to Lila. “You coming, Captain?”
She looked around, shook her head. “Not yet.”
Tav hesitated, and Stross weighed her with a look, and seemed about to sit down again when she waved them both away. “Oh, fuck off,” she said, “and let me have a drink in peace.”
If Kell were there, he’d make a fuss, insist on sticking around until she was done, trail her like a moody shadow back to the boat. But Kell wasn’t there, and Stross knew better than to tell her to be safe, or careful. They all knew she could take care of herself.
“Your orders,” said Tav, tipping an invisible cap.
Lila watched the two men go, and flagged down another drink.
* * *
The coat slumped to the cabin floor.
The mask, he flung against the wall. The swords came next, the leather holsters stiff beneath his bloodstained hands, but piece by piece, Kay fell away, leaving only Kell.
Vasry and Raya had parted like a tide when he swept past. They didn’t bother making small talk, or asking how the mission went. The evidence was right there, sinking in the bay. Right there, in the bloodstained steps he left on the Barron’s deck.
Seven years of practice, and still he slipped. No matter how long or hard Kell trained, there were times when his body still forgot.
He dragged the sodden shirt over his head, wincing at the pain that lanced across his shoulder, the wound left by the broadsword’s bite. He made his way to the basin, gaze sliding to the large mirror propped behind it. In the glass, his hair fell into his face, a single streak of silver cutting through the red. In the glass, his bare skin was a tapestry of scars. Blood welled from the fresh cut along his collarbone, sliding in a narrow ribbon down his chest. It followed the line of his necklace until it reached the three coins that still hung at the end of the chain. Tokens that had once carried him to other Londons. Other worlds.
As Travars, he thought grimly, as blood dripped from the coins into the basin, staining the water pink, then red.
Kell’s hand drifted up, almost absently, toward the tokens, and then past them, to the angry sword wound, which he knew his brother must have felt.
It was a marvel he hadn’t heard from Rhy—or worse, from Alucard.
He glanced down at the red ring on his right hand, as if expecting the thought to summon the king of Arnes or his consort, but the band stayed dark and cold. As did the black one beside it. The red ring bore the royal seal—the chalice and rising sun. The black one bore a ship.
They were rare and precious things, these rings, not one of a kind, but two. Each had a twin, a perfect replica designed to rest on another finger.
It was a clever piece of magic, gifted to him by the queen four years before, a way to link two people, no matter where they were. One simply had to touch the surface of the ring and say the words as vera tan—I need you—and its twin would burn with light and heat. Place both rings upon a scrying board, and the distance between them disappeared, the flat black surface turned to glass; not a door, but at least a window, a way to see and speak.
His brother had married well, Kell thought, not for the first time.
The red ring that he wore belonged of course to Rhy Maresh, who said he’d only wear it if it matched his other finery. The black one, Kell had given to Lila. Or rather, he’d tried. It hadn’t gone well. She’d paled when he’d offered her the charm, recoiled as if it were a serpent, or a bottle of poison he was asking her to drink, and too late, he remembered the customs of her world, the meaning of such a ring to someone in Grey London.
He’d shown her the one on his own hand, tried to explain how the bands were linked, how in case of trouble, she could call on him, but her gaze had gone flat and mocking.
“If I’m in trouble,” she’d said, “I’ll get myself out.”
He had shouted, then, and so had she. He had called her stubborn and she had called him selfish, he had called her frightened and she had called him a fool, and in the end, she had stormed out, and he had slammed the door, and the waves had sloshed angrily against the ship, and he knew she’d cast her ring into the sea.
They did not talk about it after that.