One

The summons to the Fortune’s Den arrived the same way it always had: clutched in the talons of a once dead raven. Its eyes glowed with the light of the magic animating its body, white orbs casting halos on the windowpane as it tapped the glass with its beak. Once, twice, thrice. Then a pause, followed by another set of three strikes, as steady as a just wound clock.

Hearing it clearly across the small space of his apartment, Mars grumbled and sat up on the straw-stuffed mat, disturbing the tiger-striped cat snoozing atop his chest. Rooftop hissed before settling down in the divot left by Mars’s body. As the raven knocked again, Mars scowled at it. What was the point of having a hideout when Una’s messengers could find him regardless? No matter where he went in the city, the little shits could track him down, all thanks to the ampoule filled with his blood that he’d given his mistress ten years before, on the day he’d started working for her. She kept it inside a locked room deep in the bowels of her gambling hall, the headquarters of her business enterprise. Through a potent mix of magic and science, the ravens tracked blood to blood with the efficiency of a shark.

“Tell your lady I don’t work for her anymore!” Mars shouted at the creature. The raven stared coolly back at him, its dead, frozen gaze coaxing gooseflesh down his arms. Or perhaps that was just the cold air biting his bared chest, the blanket having slipped off his shoulders.

Rising unsteadily to his feet, his body sore from lying too long on a hard surface, Mars stumbled toward the window, shooing the raven away. “Go on, get out of here, bird.”

How he wished he’d succeeded in stealing that ampoule away from Una. He’d tried, the day after he’d completed his last contract, the day before he told her he was done working for her for good. But the blood she kept—one vial from each of her mercenaries—was too well guarded, even for him, the Shadow Fox, the very best agent in Una’s employ. In the end, he’d had no choice but to walk away without it, knowing it was just a matter of time before she used it to find him. And yet weeks had passed since then, months. Long enough that he’d started to believe she might have forgotten about him.

Apparently not.

The bird tapped the pane again, and it would keep on tapping until it either delivered its message or the magic that fueled its existence ran out. Mars briefly contemplated the latter option, but knew he lacked the patience to see it through. Una’s ravens ran on an entire shard of Ice, enough magic to last a week.

“All right, you little bastard, you win.” Mars yanked the window open, letting in a chill, salty breeze and the sound of gulls crying down in the harbor. This high up, he could see ships bobbing in the water like toys in a child’s bath, the sea stretching out to a horizon blurred by the reddish streaks of the setting sun. He’d slept an entire day away without meaning to.

The raven held out its right leg mechanically. A card was clutched in its talons, the paper as black as its feathers. This close, the bird’s lifelessness was more apparent—the glossy coating of paraffin wax on its feathers, the metal hinges reinforcing its joints, and the brass knob embedded in its chest hiding the Ice compartment. Yet these anomalies paled next to the smoldering stench of its rotting flesh as the Ice slowly burned its way through the vessel housing it. Mars felt the magic at work in there like an itch beneath his skin, quickening the flow of blood in his veins.

Holding his breath, he grasped the card in one hand and with the other pushed the bird backward off the ledge. The raven flapped its wings, slicing him across the knuckles with one of its talons as it fell. A second later it rolled over midair, caught an updraft, then soared away, back to the Fortune’s Den.

“Prick,” Mars said.

At least Una had sent a raven, rather than a dozen guards to forcibly haul him back to her. For a moment, he considered tossing the card out the window as well, but he couldn’t quite convince his fingers to let go. He resisted looking at it, though, his eyes fixed on the harbor as thoughts rolled like waves in his head. More than a hundred docks, most of them with ships lashed to their long sides, cut narrow slashes through the dark water. People bustled about, setting the moorings, storing the nets. He ought to head down to the pier and book passage on a ship. Riven might be a small island nation, but positioned as it was between the great powers of Vest in the east and Osway in the west, it was crucial for trade and safe passage through the Murmurry Sea, which even in high summer was plagued with storms and rough waves. Mars had not yet saved the total amount of money he intended to before leaving the island forever, but he could afford to fall short of his goal if it meant escaping before Una sent even less polite messengers after him.

Yet the idea of walking past the fish markets right now turned his stomach. For the past ten months, he’d spent his days there, up to his armpits in slimy guts and scales as he sweat and bled and stank his way through each day working for any fishmonger or fishwife willing to pay. Even now, after a good scrubbing with lye soap, he could still smell the stench seeping out from beneath his fingernails. No, he could wait until morning.

Are you sure? a voice whispered in his head. It was the same one that had taunted him since he left Una’s service. The voice of perpetual doubt, his closest companion these days, ever since his last job with Una had torn his world apart.

A breeze caressed his face, teasing the tips of the dark hair hanging unbound past his shoulders, hiding the shaved sides of his head. He brushed the hair back roughly, some of the strands catching on the frayed edges of the leather cuff fastened to his wrist. He needed to replace the cuff, along with the one on his other wrist, but he’d been putting it off. After all, he would no longer have need for such accoutrements once he left Riven and the Rift of magic that lay beneath it—its presence both the blessing and the bane of his existence.

Slowly, and with a dull thud in his chest, Mars turned the card over and stared at the symbols etched on its black surface. Una never conveyed her messages in words, which could be read by anyone who might intercept one of her messengers. Instead, she used symbols that only the foxes of the Fortune’s Den were trained to read. In this case, a serpent coiled around a horned helmet with two wolves flanking either side. The picture was exquisitely rendered by an artist’s hand. Una took pleasure in all things beautiful and spared no expense, even for this scrap of cardstock destined for the fire once read. Then again, a lot of the jobs coming into the Fortune’s Den required a unique card, and in all his years as a fox there, Mars had never seen one like this. It wasn’t the combination of symbols so much—the horned helmet telling him the purpose of the job was intelligence gathering, while the wolves indicated multiple threats and the serpent a target both sly and dangerous. No, it was the coloring. Ice white. All save for the poison green of the serpent’s eyes, an indulgence by the artist, no doubt. One meant to catch the gaze and draw it in.

Ice white. Not gold or silver or bronze, but Ice. The color told the foxes the payout of the contract being offered, and while Mars had worked plenty of bronze and silver and even a couple of golds in his time with Una, he’d never once come across a job valued in Ice. The notion stole his breath away.

Una knows you well.

Mars shifted his gaze to the floorboard in the corner of the room, the second one from the end. It looked like all the rest around it, old and dirty, the nails loosened by time and wear. But beneath it lay a locked box, one guarded by the traps that were his specialty. Every herring he’d scrimped and saved and bled for these past ten months was tucked away inside it. Almost enough for passage off the island, and to set him up wherever he landed. A pittance compared to what Una was offering him, but it was honest money for honest work.

Rooftop rammed her head into his arm, distracting Mars from his thoughts. Acquiescing to the cat’s demands, he raised a hand to scratch behind her ear. For a second, he let the cat’s purr vibrate through his fingers.

No, he decided, Una didn’t know him at all. She only believed she did. Mars was leaving this land of magic and mercenaries behind once and for all. He wanted to live in a place so far from the sea, he never had to smell fish again. A place where dead things stayed dead, where no one would condemn him just because of the scars on his wrists, where the memories that haunted his nightmares would finally fade.

Only . . . the night was young, and he wide awake. He examined the image on the card once more, rendered in Ice white, the serpent’s green eyes seeming to fix on his with a stare so lifelike, he half expected it to slither off the page. Ignoring the summons might only result in Una sending guards, and there was no harm in hearing her out.

His gaze shifted from the card to the line of blood across his knuckles where the raven had scratched him. It seemed a shame to waste even so small an amount of blood, and with the certainty that no one below would see him, he offered it to the Rift, summoning fire to his fingertips. As the card burned, the blood on his hand dried into dust and was no more.