Kell’s hand found the coin in his pocket, and he turned it over and over absently to keep his fingers warm. He assumed they were walking toward a graveyard, but instead the king led him to a church.
“St. George’s Chapel,” he explained, stepping through.
It was impressive, a towering structure, full of sharp edges. Inside, the ceiling vaulted over a checkered stone floor. George handed off his outer coat without looking; he simply assumed someone would be there to take it, and they were. Kell looked up at the light pouring in through the stained-glass windows, and thought absently that this wouldn’t be such a bad place to be buried. Until he realized that George III hadn’t been laid to rest up here, surround by sunlight.
He was in the vault.
The ceiling was lower, and the light was thin, and that, paired with the scent of dusty stone, made Kell’s skin crawl.
George took an unlit candelabrum from a shelf. “Would you mind?” he asked. Kell frowned. There was something hungry in the way George asked. Covetous.
“Of course,” said Kell. He reached out toward the candles, his fingers hovering above before continuing past them to a vase of long-stemmed matches. He took one, struck it with a small, ceremonial flourish, and lit the candles.
George pursed his lips, disappointed. “You were all too eager to perform for my father.”
“Your father was a different man,” said Kell, waving the match out.
George’s frown deepened. He obviously wasn’t used to being told no, but Kell wasn’t sure if he was upset at being denied in general, or being denied magic specifically. Why was he so intent on a demonstration? Did he simply crave proof? Entertainment? Or was it more than that?
He trailed the man through the royal vault, suppressing a shudder at the thought of being buried here. Being put in a box in the ground was bad enough, but being entombed like this, with layers of stone between you and the world? Kell would never understand the way these Grey-worlders sealed away their dead, trapping the discarded shells in gold and wood and stone as if some remnant of who they’d been in life remained. And if it did? What a cruel punishment.
When George reached his father’s tomb, he set the candelabrum down, swept the hem of his coat into his hand, and knelt, head bowed. His lips moved silently for a few seconds, and then he drew a gold cross from his collar and touched it to his lips. Finally he stood, frowning at the dust on his knees and brushing it away.
Kell reached out and rested his hand thoughtfully on the tomb, wishing he could feel something—anything—within. It was silent and cold.
“It would be proper to say a prayer,” said the king.
Kell frowned, confused. “To what end?”
“For his soul, of course.” Kell’s confusion must have showed. “Don’t you have God in your world?” He shook his head. George seemed taken aback. “No higher power?”
“I didn’t say that,” answered Kell. “I suppose you could say we worship magic. That is our highest power.”
“That is heresy.”
Kell raised a brow, his hand slipping from the tomb’s lid. “Your Majesty, you worship a thing you can neither see nor touch, whereas I worship something I engage with every moment of every day. Which is the more logical path?”
George scowled. “It isn’t a matter of logic. It is a matter of faith.”
Faith. It seemed a shallow substitution, but Kell supposed he couldn’t blame the Grey-worlders. Everyone needed to believe in something, and without magic, they had settled for a lesser god. One full of holes and mystery and made-up rules. The irony was that they had abandoned magic long before it abandoned them, smothered it with this almighty God of theirs.
“But what of your dead?” pressed the king.
“We burn them.”
“A pagan ritual,” he said scornfully.
“Better than putting their bodies in a box.”
“And what of their souls?” pressed George, seeming genuinely disturbed. “Where do you think they go, if you don’t believe in heaven and hell?”
“They go back to the source,” said Kell. “Magic is in everything, Your Majesty. It is the current of life. We believe that when you die, your soul returns to that current, and your body is reduced again to elements.”
“But what of you?”
“You cease to be.”
“What is the point, then?” grumbled the king. “Of living a good life, if there is nothing after? Nothing earned?”
Kell had often wondered the same thing, in his own way, but it wasn’t an afterlife he craved. He simply didn’t want to return to nothing, as if he’d never been. But it would be a cold day in Grey London’s hell before he agreed with the new king on anything. “I suppose the point is to live well.”
George’s complexion was turning ruddy. “But what stops one from committing sins, if they have nothing to fear?”
Kell shrugged. “I’ve seen people sin in the name of god, and in the name of magic. People misuse their higher powers, no matter what form they take.”
“But no afterlife,” grumbled the king. “No eternal soul? It’s unnatural.”
“On the contrary,” said Kell. “It is the most natural thing in the world. Nature is made of cycles, and we are made of nature. What is unnatural is believing in an infallible man and a nice place waiting in the sky.”
George’s expression darkened. “Careful, Master Kell. That is blasphemy.”