The flat-roofed houseboat drifted on water as stagnant as a swamp. It had been painted in bold colors, red and yellow and blue, though the stretch along the waterline showed signs of peeling. Curtains hung limply in four square windows. The banks of fog enfolding the houseboat never came closer than fifty paces, leaving a clear eye at the center. Beyond the outer edges of the fog, the White Sea raged. Waves crashed and foamed. The wind howled like a banshee. But the waters within this calm eye were as still as a dark mirror, reflecting the quilt of stars overhead.
A woman sat on the deck, thin legs folded beneath her. She had large calloused feet with long, pointed toenails. She wore a leather vest and wide, loose trousers. A tattoo of a grey cat marked one wrinkled cheek, so faded with time the lines had grown blurry. The other cheek bore a similarly weathered image of a fanged eel.
On the placid surface, a net twitched. Moments later, a dragonet swam into the meshed strands. With a jerk, hands the color of strong tea yanked the net into the boat.
Sakhet-ra-katme examined the fish with satisfaction. She whispered a word of thanks to Khaf-Hor, who would welcome the dragonet home to his sinuous embrace, and used her knife to swiftly cut its head off. Sakhet ate half herself and gave the other half to a young pelican who waited patiently at her side. She tossed the head to a stormy petrel. Once she would have kept this delicate morsel for herself, but her appetite wasn’t what it used to be.
Dozens more birds crowded the small deck and flat roof. Murres, puffins and guillemots. Auks and terns and cormorants and gannets. They watched her with bright, clever eyes. There were always birds hanging about. The houseboat of Sakhet-ra-katme offered a place of safety in their long migration across the sea. When storms blew them far off course, the birds knew that if they could find the fogbank, they would be given sanctuary. The old daēva shared her fish and let them rest. In turn, they carried the occasional message and allowed her to see through their eyes. Sakhet-ra-katme traveled the world this way without leaving her houseboat, though she glimpsed things in disjointed bits and pieces and usually from high above.
In all, it was a happy arrangement. It took a great deal of power to maintain the fog and quiet place in the White Sea, but the great eel Khaf-Hor loved Sakhet and had made it his gift to her long before when she decided to live apart.
She used a fishbone to pick her teeth clean and hauled up another catch—a pair of blue tang this time—which she gave to her companions. The newly arrived birds were all battered and bedraggled. Sakhet sensed a monstrous storm system to the southeast that was just beginning to tire itself out, like a child after a temper tantrum. Apparently, someone had pissed off Anuketmatma. Sakhet had great respect for the little cat—one would be foolish not to—but in her heart she’d always preferred Khaf-Hor, who might not be cute but was much less temperamental.
Each day, she watched Artemis grow closer. The restless moon spent most of her year-long orbit traveling the inky depths of space, but she was well into her return journey now and soon she would fill the sky with ethereal white light, exerting her powerful pull on the tides.
The Marakai welcomed Artemis with caution. Her influence, combined with the other two moons, could generate ocean swells to rival the Valkirin range. But tucked away in her fog-shrouded pond, Sakhet still enjoyed seeing Artemis in all her glory. She might not bother counting the years anymore, but the Wanderer was the only visible sign of the passing seasons.
Now she lowered the net and listened. With her sharply pointed nose and plumage of white hair, Sakhet-ra-katme looked like a bird herself, an impression enhanced by the sudden cocking of her head and perfect stillness of her limbs. Something was coming through the fog. Sakhet could feel the ripples in the Nexus.
Friend or foe?
She stirred a handful of black kelp into a pot and swirled it around, watching as the chai steeped and grew darker. In her pocket was a packet of powder, but she did not add it to the pot. Not yet.
Sakhet held out her palm. One by the one, the birds hopped up to her hand and accepted a thought-message. Some would go to Halldóra at Val Tourmaline, others to Tethys Dessarian of the Danai, and the last to Kallisto of the Cult of Dionysus in Delphi. Sakhet sent three birds to each woman to ensure at least one would get through to deliver the message.
She considered sending one to Mebetimmunedjem too, but that might bring even greater danger to the girl and she wouldn’t understand the message anyway. Meb’s only shield was her ignorance. No one knew who she truly was—no one except for Sakhet herself. As a precaution, she had arranged for Meb to be taken from her birth parents and given to another family to raise. They were never told who. And Meb herself knew nothing at all.
Just once had Sakhet seen Meb face-to-face and that was for the testing. There was no way around it. The inheritance of the gift was arbitrary and the only way to know which of her descendants had it was to determine who was weak in the element of water. When the gifted one was old enough, at least fifty, Sakhet would reveal the truth. He or she would keep it a close secret until they bore their own children, when the gift would in turn pass down again and the process would begin anew. The Drowned Lady had told Sakhet-ra-katme it must be so.
But Meb was not nearly old enough to be told. Had Sakhet taken the girl under her personal protection, those who sought Meb could have tracked her all too easily. A secret was safe in direct proportion to the number of people who knew about it.
But Sakhet had watched Meb from afar through her birds. The girl was cautious and sneaky, which was good. The only person Sakhet trusted implicitly was Kallisto. The other clans would need to protect their own talismans, but Kallisto could protect Meb.
The original talismans of the Danai and the Valkirins were long dead. They might have taken the secret to their graves for all Sakhet knew. The last time she set foot on solid land was when the three of them joined their gifts to make the Gale and turn back the Vatras. The war had ended, the world sundered into light and dark. But as soon as Sakhet bore a child, her gift had vanished, passed on to the next generation, and the next, and the next, for a thousand years.
Now she stirred the leaves, waiting to see who was coming through the fog.
It might be Kallisto. Sakhet had received a message from her that morning, warning of grave danger.
Or it might be the other. The one she’d dreamt of.
A gull perched on the roof gave a rusty cry of alarm.
Out of the mist, a small boat appeared. It was a humble vessel and built in the shallow-draft style of Tjanjin, with sails reefed against the fury of the storm roiling the sea beyond her safe place. It drifted slowly towards her, leaving faint ripples in its wake. A man with copper hair stood at the bow, white shirt plastered wetly to his chest. His mouth had a gentle cast, yet his eyes reminded her of a barracuda. A creature of contradictions.
So that’s how it was.
Sakhet quickly slipped the packet of powder into the kelp tea and swirled it around until it dissolved.
“Fire child,” she called. The fog dampened her voice like the walls of a cave. It didn’t quaver despite the fear coiling around her spine. “What brings you to the middle of the White Sea on a night such as this?”
He inclined his head, appearing to consider his reply.
“I have some questions for you,” he called.
His boat drifted closer. The birds watched with eyes like polished sea-glass.
“How did you escape the Kiln?” she inquired.
He smiled then, a disarming smile full of white teeth.
“It’s quite a tale. May I come aboard?”
A cloud veiling Selene passed then and the light grew brighter. She could see his features clearly. He was well-fed but still had a starving look, a bottomless hunger etched into the lines of his face. The hyena at the feast.
“If I refuse?” she said mildly.
He didn’t bother to answer this foolish question, watching her with eyes the color of the depths on a moonlit night.
Sakhet gave the barest nod. Why not? She had nowhere to run. Her gift was long gone. She would be no match for him and they both knew it.
A moment later, he leapt lightly across the gap between their two boats, a line in his hand. He tied it to a cleat and sat down cross-legged opposite her, close enough for her to feel the heat rolling off him in waves. A network of pink scars was visible though the thin material of his shirt.
“Well, this is cozy,” he said, looking around.
“Kelp chai?” She held up the pot.
He smiled. “Thank you, no.”
She poured herself a cup and cradled it in her hands, but she did not drink. Not yet. There were things she wished to know first.
“How did you find me?”
He rubbed his forehead, slicking his wet hair back. “It wasn’t easy. I’ve been looking for two years. Not all of the time, and not very hard. Until recently.” His mouth split in a charming grin. “And now I’ve found you.”
“The Gale.” She swallowed, her mouth dry. “Is it….?”
“Down? No, not yet. Not yet.” He picked up her fish knife and twirled it through his fingers like a conjuror performing a trick. “I found another way.”
She let out a breath. “What way?”
“An answer for an answer.”
“What is your question then?”
He studied her closely. “Where to start? I have so many.” The knife flashed and spun. “All right, here’s one. Why are the talismans weak in their clan’s power?”
“So they cannot abuse it as your own King Gaius did.”
He nodded, a finger tracing aimless patterns in the blood staining the deck.
“My turn. How did you get through?” she asked.
“All the gates west of Samarqand were damaged in the sundering. The coastline is surrounded by reefs—not that we have wood to build ships. There isn’t a single tree in the Kiln. Not one. But I suppose you know that already.”
She frowned. “There were oases.”
“Before the sundering. They all dried up. We can’t tunnel under the Gale because the sands are too unstable. The barrier is warded so no talisman can penetrate it. So…take a guess!”
She thought for a moment. “You said the gates were damaged, not destroyed.”
“Very good. But gates need water, you see. And we have none save what falls from the sky.”
Sakhet suppressed a shiver. No water? She felt a moment’s pity until she remembered the Marakai ships burning in the harbors.
“Yet it had to be the gates,” he continued. “So twenty of us went east to find one. Seven survived the journey.”
“Just seven?”
“The Vatras are not the only wildlife in the Kiln,” he said lightly. “There are many other creatures. They’ve adapted remarkably well. I wish you could meet them.” He stared out at the fog and his voice grew soft. “We did find a gate eventually, not far from the Gale. But it was dead, half buried in sand. Our water was gone. We waited a week, hoping it might rain.” He turned to her. “I don’t imagine you’ve ever suffered from thirst. It’s far worse than hunger. Your tongue swells up. The agony is…maddening. Then I had an idea.”
Sakhet said nothing, though her fingers tightened around the cup.
“We bled ourselves until the sands were soaked crimson. It turns out gates like blood. They like wet. I was the first through.”
“So there are seven of you here?” she managed.
He shook his head. “One other. The rest died when the gate failed again moments later.” He gave her a mirthless smile. “Don’t worry, they’re better off. Do you know how we live in the Kiln?”
In the beginning, Sakhet had often wondered what became of the Vatras. She assumed some of them survived the flight across the desert. But as the years passed with no sign either way, she’d thought of them less and less. She hoped they were gone forever. Yet she had maintained her precautions with the heir to the power.
“It must be difficult,” she said.
He cocked his head, blue eyes narrowing. “Difficult? Yes. There is no food. No shade or water.”
“That was not our intention—”
“No? What was your intention?”
“To lock you away where you could do no more harm.”
Rage flashed across his face, there and gone in an instant.
“It’s my turn for a question. How do I access the talisman’s true power?”
And now they had come to it. Sakhet sipped her tea, trying not to grimace at the taste.
“How would you use the talisman?” she asked to buy herself some time.
“She will bring down the Gale.”
She. What did he know?
Sakhet shook her head. “It would take all three working together to do such a thing.”
“Would it? I don’t think anyone knows.”
This much was true. She took another sip of tea.
“You’re young,” she observed.
“I was born in the Kiln.”
“So you don’t remember what Gaius did. Does he live?”
He ignored this question.
“You were one of them,” he said. “One of the three.”
Why deny it now? she thought. “Yes.”
The memory came with sudden, vivid force. Gaius sending a wall of flame racing toward the clans as they came to parley at the Vatras’ capital. The channel of power opening inside her, weaving together with the others to sweep the fire back at the Vatras. The terrible roar of the elements, a thousand times greater than any of them could have wielded alone.
“Where did the power come from?” he demanded. “Who gave it to you?”
A lance of pain stabbed her belly, but Sakhet kept her face smooth.
“It was all a long time ago, fire child. I can hardly remember.”
He seized her wrist in a powerful grip, grinding the bones together. The ferocious heat of his skin repelled her, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing it.
“The time for lies is past, old woman,” he grated. “I’ll burn you to cinders, but I won’t do it quickly. Dying can take a very long time indeed and I’ll have the truth out of you in the end.”
Sakhet thought of Khaf-Hor and his needle teeth, each the length of a ship’s mast. Now would be a good time to come along and eat this man, she thought.
But the great eel must have been occupied elsewhere, for he did not appear.
“You’ll never find her,” she said.
He thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out a tern. Its head drooped brokenly against one grey wing. “You think so?”
Sakhet felt a sickening jolt.
“This bird carried an image of a Selk ship.” He paused. “And a young girl. Give me the name of her ship and I’ll let you live. I’ll find her anyway, but it would save me some time.”
“She’ll be useless to you, fire child,” Sakhet whispered, darkness sucking her down like an inrushing tide.
“Useless?” He jerked her closer until his face was inches away. “What do you mean?”
The fog roiled. “Leave her be. Without the fourth talisman, you will never touch her power. And even I do not know what it is.”
He glared at her, realization dawning. “What have you done?”
The cup fell from her hands, the dregs tipping to the deck. Black sludge with traces of grey powder.
“The chai,” he hissed. “You poisoned it.”
The birds flew at him then, pecking at his eyes, battering him with their wings. He let her go and threw his hands up. A din of terrified squawking filled the air as they erupted in flames. With her last ounce of strength, Sakhet threw herself into the sea.
As the frigid waters closed over her head, she saw his face backlit against the moons, fire boiling in his eyes.
Nicodemus couldn’t tamp down his fury at losing the old woman before he was done with her—and on her terms rather than his. With an almost sensual shiver, he released the molten heat building in his veins. Sheets of flame swept across the houseboat, licking at the paint and devouring the curtains. Wood splintered and cracked. The flames burned unnaturally hot, red and yellow and, at their heart, a kinetic blue that was reflected in the dark mirror of the sea so it looked as if the water itself was burning.
Gaius said the other elements could be diluted, contaminated. Only fire was pure. Only fire transformed.
Nico’s legs trembled as he pocketed Sakhet’s knife. He barely managed to reach his own boat and shove off before a wayward spark set the sail alight. From a safe distance, he watched her houseboat burn and sink into the sea. She didn’t resurface and when the last of it was gone, he called a breeze to propel him into the fog.
The cool mist helped calm him. He’d gotten what he came for. He didn’t need the girl’s name. He knew what she looked like now and he knew she was part of the Selk fleet. He’d recognized the image of a small grey cat painted on the sail. He’d also seen a woman, the one the message was meant for. A mortal with grey-streaked braids and a staff in her hand. Again, he didn’t know her name—names meant nothing to birds—but her face was clear enough. He got the sense she was supposed to protect the girl, though it seemed odd Sakhet would entrust this task to a mortal.
Good luck with that, he thought.
Nico had to find her ship, but the whole Selk fleet numbered a few dozen. As his boat drifted through the fog, Nicodemus unwrapped the globe and blew softly on the runes until they glowed a faint blue. The view changed as it sped across the sea. It entered the twilight realm of the Cimmerian Sea and passed the port of Delphi, swooping across the whitewashed buildings of the city and over the great hill of the Acropolis to the Temple of Apollo, through silent torch-lit corridors and finally, the innermost chamber called the adyton.
A woman with hair the color of freshly spilled blood paced up and down before a tripod. Steam drifted from cracks in the stone beneath her bare feet. She had sternly handsome features and wore a white gown with a serpent brooch at the shoulder. She turned as his presence grew near and hurried over to a hidden niche in the wall, withdrawing her own globe. Pale eyes locked with his own.
“What took you so long?” she demanded coldly.
Nicodemus smiled. “I had no news to share. Now I do.”
Her mouth drew into a tight line. Domitia couldn’t use her globe to find him anymore, although it was her own fault. She’d thrown a fit a while back and partly melted the base. It couldn’t be used to Seek so she was forced to wait for Nicodemus to contact her. This drove Domitia crazy, though he couldn’t be happier. Before she broke her globe, she used to hound him on a daily basis.
“I needed your help weeks ago,” she snapped. “Where have you been?”
“Sakhet-ra-katme is dead,” he said.
Her nostrils flared as she drew a sharp breath. Nico knew how much she hated the old Marakai. Gaius said Sakhet had been a leader of the faction whose jealousy of the Vatras led to the sundering and banishment. That she’d sold her soul for dark magic.
“And the heir?”
“A young Selk. I know what she looks like. It won’t be long now.”
Domitia considered this. “Once she’s collared and broken, we might not need another. One could be enough to unravel the Gale, especially if she’s Marakai. The storms feed on water.”
The Gale. The gate to the Vatras’ prison. Nicodemus had glimpsed it when they made the pilgrimage across the desert. A howling wall of sand that sustained itself through the powerful wards the three talismans had conjured a thousand years ago.
But what could be made could also be destroyed.
“I ordered the Polemarch to close the ports of Delphi to the Marakai,” Domitia said with satisfaction. “They’re gathering in the Isles. You’ll find the girl there.” She pursed her lips. “There’s another matter we need to discuss. A mortal. She has a rare power the philosophers call negatory magic. I set chimera on her and she dissolved them. I felt them die.”
“Huo mofa,” Nicodemus said after a moment.
“What?”
“That’s what the alchemists in Tjanjin call it. Huo mofa. Fire magic.”
She frowned. “Like ours?”
He shook his head. “It needs fire to work, but the source is inside the wielder. I’ve never met one.” How to explain? Domitia always thought in literal terms. “It’s less magic, I think, than a concentrated absence of magic.”
“I know that,” she said dismissively. “But there’s a weakness. She can only use it in Solis. I ordered the chimera to wait until she’d passed fully into the darklands, but they’re stupid creatures. They must have attacked too soon.”
Nico leaned against the mast, tendrils of mist curling around his cloak. “Who cares?”
“She broke my gate,” Domitia said flatly.
He raised an eyebrow.
“She’s with a bunch of Greek women who call themselves the Cult of Dionysus. They’re impervious to fire. They helped this woman free two prisoners. And they have a connection with the talismans.”
Nico thought for a moment. “I intercepted a message from Sakhet-ra-katme,” he said. “It was to a woman with grey-streaked hair and braids. She carried a staff.”
“That’s their leader.” Domitia’s face darkened in rage.
“What exactly happened?”
“I planned to execute two mortals. A Greek and a Persian. The Greek had knowledge he refused to disclose. Something about a fourth talisman.”
“Sakhet said the same,” Nico replied. “I thought she was lying.”
Domitia leaned forward eagerly. “What did she say?”
“That even if I found the Marakai girl, she would be useless without the fourth talisman.”
“Well, what is it?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“And you killed her?” Her voice choked with rage.
“She drank poisoned tea,” he admitted. “I didn’t know until it was too late.”
Domitia hissed out a breath. “I wish you’d kept that old monster alive. She might be the only one who knows the truth. Why are the talismans weak in the element of their clan? How do their powers work?”
Nicodemus had often wondered the same thing, but he shrugged.
“Calm yourself, Domitia. There’s nothing we can do about it now. Most likely it’s a mental block. You know how to break those. Perhaps we need all three together, perhaps not. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Domitia sat down on the tripod, her back hunched. He could see torches flaring in the background. “When you get to Selk, keep an eye out. I sent some Shields of Apollo to Susa to sniff out the trail of this woman. The one with negatory magic. She took a ship to the Isles of the Marakai. If you see her, kill her.”
A wielder of huo mofa. Nicodemus mulled over the possibilities for a moment.
“If she can shatter magic, why not capture her and bring her to the Gale?”
Domitia gave him a pitying look. “Because it’s in Solis, you fool. We’d have no means of controlling her power. She’s mortal so the collars won’t work on her. No, best to just catch the Marakai girl and get rid of the Breaker if she crosses your path. She’s helpless in the darklands.”
Domitia’s head turned at a soft knock on the door of the adyton. Her hand flew to the serpent brooch and its eyes flared red for an instant. Her copper hair changed instantly to black. Nicodemus gave a thin smile. Domitia always did love intrigues.
“Just do it,” she snapped, severing the connection.
The view inside the globe grew cloudy. Nicodemus wrapped it up and stowed it away.
He knew the Marakai talisman was an orphan. A year before, the globe had led him to her adopted parents. Whatever warding protected her didn’t extend to her family. Before they died, they admitted they’d been given a child by Sakhet-ra-katme. They told him other things too. The father said he called her Jem. But no one knew any girl by that name. If fact, no one he spoke with later knew the two Marakai had sheltered a child at all.
Questioning her parents was the first time Nicodemus saw what fire did to the other clans. He’d been fresh from the Kiln and his own power was new to him, an explosive, unwieldy thing that erupted without warning. He hadn’t meant to kill them, but he’d gotten angry. Flame had dripped from his tongue and though it hadn’t touched the two Marakai, they’d been unable to resist reaching for the fourth element and charred themselves to husks.
At least it had happened away from the house. He’d buried the remains in a crevice of rock and no one ever knew what became of them.
Nicodemus examined the fish knife he’d taken from the old Marakai. A fanged eel coiled around the hilt, needle teeth bared in a ghoulish grin. His own lips curved in a smile. The knife would be his private joke. He tucked it into his belt and set a course for the Isles, the fog slowly dissipating around him.