He knew very well how little the Prince Regent liked him being here, and the last thing Kell wanted was an audience, a cluster of ears and eyes and mouths reporting the details of his visit back to the throne.Ībove the counter and the basin hung a mirror in a gilded frame, and Kell checked his reflection quickly-his hair, a reddish brown, swept down across one eye, and he did not fix it, though he did take a moment to smooth the shoulders of his coat-before passing through a set of doors to meet his host. He’d chosen the anteroom specifically to avoid them. In the hall beyond, he could hear the shuffle of feet, the low murmur of servants and guards. He rinsed his bloody hand, as well as the silver crown he’d used for passage, then slipped the cord it hung on over his head, and tucked the coin back beneath his collar. But not pleasant.Ī marble counter ran against the wall, and on it a basin of water waited for him, as it always did. Disan was, on the whole, a very pleasant place. In fact, Kell had just come through the stone wall of a courtyard belonging to a wealthy gentleman in a town called Disan. Which was a problem because there was no Windsor Castle a day’s journey from Red London. Windsor’s distance from London was terribly inconvenient considering the fact that, when traveling between worlds, Kell could only move between a place in one and the same exact place in another.

He’d never bothered to mark the door from this side, simply because he never went back this way. Like a footprint in sand, already fading. On the wall behind him, he could just make out the ghosted symbol made by his passage. Oh, kings, thought Kell as he fastened the buttons on the coat. Just because he adopted a more modest palette when he was abroad (wishing neither to offend the local royalty nor to draw attention) didn’t mean he had to sacrifice style. Well, a simple black jacket elegantly lined with silver thread and adorned with two gleaming columns of silver buttons. So when Kell passed through the palace wall and into the anteroom, he took a moment to steady himself-it took its toll, moving between worlds-and then shrugged out of his red, high-collared coat and turned it inside out from right to left so that it became a simple black jacket. There were ones that blended in and ones that stood out, and one that served no purpose but of which he was just particularly fond.

Not all of them were fashionable, but they each served a purpose. The first thing he did whenever he stepped out of one London and into another was take off the coat and turn it inside out once or twice (or even three times) until he found the side he needed. It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two, which would be unexpected, but several, which was, of course, impossible.

A darker magic