No. Not a thing. A horse.
The wind saw it now. It was a giant stone horse cobbled together from brick, rubble, mortar, and concrete. And it glowed with a courageous light. The center of it pulsed like a white star. The black clouds scattered, rushing back toward the sky.
The trickster’s laugh fell free, and then, with a smile, he said, “It could’ve been anything, but you like horses. How many times have we ridden the carriages in Central Park? I thought we’d go on another ride.”
Then, when the giant stone horse reared back and flashed its hooves in the air, the trickster leaped onto its back. He flicked his hand and covered them in a thick, impenetrable mist.
Leaning over the horse’s neck, he said, “The city is under attack. Will you fight with us?”
The trickster asked for valor. He pleaded for courage. He begged for help in remaining free.
The horse reared and then dove toward the East River. It flew over the black water, its hooves barely touching the waves. The trickster leaned low, and the lucky one dove into his pocket. They raced south, hurrying to fight horror with courage.
89
He was darker than night; blacker than a fathomless abyss. He was lost in swirling black waters, without air or hope. It was a place so deep and so dark there was no up or down. There was no right or wrong. There was no light.
Some claimed you could find the brightest light in the darkest hour, but the solemn one had rejected the light and extinguished the flicker in his own heart.
He’d cut through the Clarks. He’d stormed through the Bards. Once, he’d been called the Knife. He’d been called the Butcher. The Devil’s Hand.
Now, he wasn’t called anything. What he was didn’t have a name.
The wind tracked the slice of his hungry knives and watched as conjurer after conjurer fell. The rocklike one had asked for a storm of blood. He’d asked that the solemn one kill every Bard and Clark cousin in the city.
The rocklike one wanted a war, and the solemn one was his means to starting it.
There was a chance—a good chance—the solemn one wouldn’t survive. A blade became dull if used without sharpening.
But when had that ever mattered to the rocklike one?
He’d always treated the solemn one as disposable. He’d always looked on him with contempt. When he was young, the solemn one had often wondered if it was because of the sprinkle of conjurer in his blood. Later, he’d decided it couldn’t be that—it had to be something wrong with him. Not his blood, but him. After all, if the rocklike one approved of creatures as loathsome as slipshots or as base as growlings, why couldn’t he give his approval to a nine with a tiny sprinkling of conjurer?
The girl had never cared, but the solemn one wanted the rocklike one’s approval too. Even while he hated him, he wanted his approbation.
The solemn one had never learned that needing, and needing to be needed, could be poisonous to humans.
The outside sky was pitch-black, but the lights of the Bard penthouse were bright. It was a party. Why? Because the Bards loved parties.
The father wasn’t there, but there was a room full of cousins. The mother was there too. The wind was surprised. She was beautiful like an orchid, but thin and fragile too. The funeral had broken the fragile stem of her strength. Her son’s wedding to a Clark had snapped it in half.
Now, the bright, metallic lights glittered on her long, sequined dress. She held a glass of champagne and laughed brittlely. The music was overly loud. The talking was forced and boisterous. Even the food smell was overpowering.
Every now and then, the Bard’s wife glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows and flinched. But everyone else at the party ignored the gathering clouds and the lightning strikes.
The penthouse elevator dinged. The sound was buried under the music.
Everyone except the mother ignored the man who stepped out of the sliding doors.
If the wind could count, it would say the solemn one killed every conjurer in the room within fifteen seconds. But the wind couldn’t count, so it decided it was better to say everyone except the mother was dead before an oak leaf could fall from its limb and hit the ground.
Some conjured. Some tried to defend themselves. It didn’t matter. The solemn one slid through their defenses. He moved like death itself.
The Bard’s wife froze. Terror gripped her. Her champagne glass slipped through her fingers and shattered against the floor. Without looking, the solemn one spun and threw a knife across the room.
It hit the mother in her chest before he’d fully turned.
She gasped and fell against the window, sliding down to the floor.
