Nicodemus sipped his mug of bitter ale and watched the ships bobbing at anchor. One had just come limping into the harbor, minus both her masts, but his keen eyes noted the tentacled tattoos of the crew. Sheut. Not the one he sought.
As usual, the crowd in the tavern was a mixed bunch. Most of the mortals here had roots in the Isles going back generations to the first wave of refugees fleeing the war. They were close-knit and hardworking. The Stygian economy relied on the barter system and everyone knew each other. If you were a liar or a cheat, you wouldn’t get away with it for long.
But there were always a few new faces. The Isles attracted a certain type of person, he’d found. They were almost all men, though a woman did turn up from time to time. Invariably, they were running from something. Life in the Isles was hard and cold and dark. You didn’t come here unless you had nowhere else to go and nothing left to lose.
Like the pale-haired fellow at the next table. His clothes were far too well-made for a native and a sapphire ring glittered on his finger, but his eyes had all the empathy of a dead carp. They met Nicodemus’s for an instant, then flicked away. Some minor noble from Solis no doubt. Nico had noticed him watching the young girl who swept the floor. She was a skinny thing in a shapeless tunic and trousers she’d probably inherited from one of her brothers. But her small breasts poked through the fabric and the man’s eyes crawled over them like maggots.
Nicodemus smiled to himself. He leaned over.
“Who’d you murder?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
The man’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?” he said in a strangled voice.
“Must have been someone important, eh? Someone who mattered. Did they offer you exile? Or did you just jump on the first Marakai ship you saw?”
The blood drained from the man’s face. Nico raised his own cup and downed its contents with a grimace. “Nothing like fermented kelp. We’ll be shitting black for a week.” He slid his chair closer. The noble inched back as if he had the plague. “Or maybe you liked to hurt little girls? Is that it?”
A muscle twitched in the man’s cheek. How sadly predictable they were, Nico thought.
“I’ll give you a piece of friendly advice,” he said softly. “Whoever you used to be, you’re nobody now. Just a piece of scum that washed ashore. Fuck with these people and they’ll chop you up and feed you to the gulls.”
The man stood so quickly he sent his chair tumbling over. He hurried out of the tavern without a backward glance.
Nico watched him disappear into the crowds swarming around the docks. He understood the instinct, even if he held such men in contempt. Nicodemus was a hunter too. But it wasn’t his fault. It was their fault. The Kiln had made him that way.
His gaze settled on a boy of about twelve who was desultorily swiping the tables with a dirty scrap of cloth. A lock of hair fell across the boy’s forehead and he pushed it away with the back of his hand. The resemblance was superficial, but something tightened in Nico’s chest. A memory surfaced as often happened when he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. He tried to shove it back down, but he knew it was already too late when instead of the rancid stink of the tavern, he smelled an earthen burrow deep underground, the air thick with dust and something worse….
Atticus moaned in his sleep. His color was bad, ghostly white with patches of red mottling his neck. Nico crouched over him and examined the tiny puncture wounds on his brother’s foot for the tenth time. As he feared, they were festering. The venom of a rock spider would eat through flesh and bone if it wasn’t cleaned out thoroughly. He trickled the last precious drops of water over the ankle. It wasn’t enough. The foot needed soaking or Atticus might lose it. Plus they had nothing to drink now. Nico licked dry lips. He’d have to go for water.
He crawled to the corner where he kept his gear. The burrow was about ten paces across, with a low ceiling and two tunnels leading out. He used the wider one when he had to go to the surface. The other was an emergency escape route. His mother had taught him that before she died. Never, ever dig a burrow with only one way out.
“I’ll be back soon,” he told Atticus.
His brother rolled over and opened his eyes. They were blue-black, the same as Nico’s. Like the summer sea on a moonlit night, Domitia used to say when she was being nice. Nico had always liked the sound of the words moonlit night, though neither held any real meaning for him. And it had been a long time since Domitia was nice.
“I want to go too,” Atticus said, brows drawing into a stubborn line.
“You can’t walk,” Nico replied wearily. “Just sit tight.”
“I can walk.”
“You can’t.” He felt frustration building and gentled his tone. “If I see a ship, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Atticus stuck his lip out but quit arguing. It was a game they played on the rare occasions Nico let him come along to the dunes where the water was. Sometimes they spotted Marakai vessels off in the distance and tried to guess where the ships might be headed. The world outside the Kiln was a great mystery. Only Gaius knew what it looked like—or what it used to look like. It could all be like the Kiln now, though Atticus refused to believe that. So when they were alone together, they gave their imaginations free rein to conjure the wonders it might hold.
“If trouble comes while I’m gone….” Nico looked at his brother’s swollen foot. Could he even crawl out of the escape tunnel? “Never mind. It won’t.” He grabbed his gear. “Back in a few hours.” He forced a smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you fixed up.”
“Okay.” Atticus drew the word out, his eyes already slipping shut again.
Nico turned his back. There was no point in worrying about what he couldn’t control. That was another rule. Stay focused on the here and now. Get the water and come back, just as he’d done a thousand times before.
He crawled through the tunnel with the bundle of gear in one hand and three water skins in the other. It sloped steeply upward. The air grew hotter as he ascended. When he reached the exit, he paused and listened for a long moment. Nothing but the low voice of the wind. Nico unwrapped the bundle. Strips of cured hide wound around his nose and mouth. A knee-length cloak covered him to the knees. Both were made from the skin of a lizard that blended with the sand and rocks of the Kiln. It made him nearly invisible. He pushed aside the screen of thorny brambles and scrambled out. As much as he feared the surface, it felt wonderful to stand upright again. Atticus was still small, but Nico had reached his full height and the confined space of the burrow made him half-crazy after too many days inside.
His gaze swept the terrain, watchful for any sign of movement. Desert hardpan stretched in all directions. The unrelenting sun had baked it into a scaled pattern of cracks like the underbelly of a cockindrill. Nicodemus set out for the north coast, running at an easy lope. Waves of heat shimmered in the distance. He’d fill one of the skins with saltwater for the soaking. It was a waste, but he had no choice. Two skins of fresh might last them a week if they were careful. He still had a little meat left from the last hunting trip.
What if you’re too late? What if Atticus loses the foot? Should have gone yesterday.
Nico silenced the voice in his head, but he ran a little faster.
After an hour or so, he heard the murmuring crash of the sea and knew he was close. The hardpan gave way to golden dunes with a few hardy grasses poking out. Even though Domitia had warned him, Nico once tried to dig a burrow here, closer to the water. It kept collapsing and he’d finally given up.
The sand was broiling even through the thick callouses on his feet. He ran pell-mell over the last dune and waded into the surf up to his knees. Waves thundered across the jagged offshore reef, aquamarine in the bright sunlight. He didn’t know how to swim, but even if he did, the dark shadows cruising through the shallows would have warned him off.
Nico eyed the water with hopeless longing, then turned back to the sandhills. Using his hands, he started digging a shallow hole on the back side. The dunes trapped rainwater, which floated on top of the heavier salt water. Only the top inch or so was clear. The rest would be brackish. He filled the first two skins slowly and carefully, tasting each to make sure they weren’t contaminated. The third he filled down at the sea. The salt and minerals would help leach the poison from Atticus’s foot.
This task accomplished, Nico used strands of tough grass to tie the three skins into a bundle. The muscles of his neck flexed as he hefted them over one shoulder and started home. He could make a mud poultice. That should help too. A gust of wind whipped sand into his eyes as he topped the dunes, so he heard the crab before he saw it. The soft click of chitinous claws.
“Fuck,” he spat, dropping the water and reaching for his tooth knife.
The crab must have sensed the vibrations of his digging. Its carapace was about two paces across and speckled grey and red. This one was a male, with one large foreclaw that ended in black-tipped pincers. The other seven legs were used for locomotion and Nico knew how fast they could go. It had stopped at the bottom of the dune, uncertain where its prey had gone.
“Fuck,” he mouthed again, silently.
The sand seared his feet but he didn’t dare run. The crabs had poor eyesight and hunted primarily by sound and movement. They usually stayed in the rocky tidal pools farther down the beach. Bad luck he’d run into this one.
Nico could feel the sand crumbling under his heels, trickling down the backside of the dune. The crab opened and closed its foreclaw in an almost thoughtful manner, as if pondering some question. A person scratching his forehead.
Where, oh where, can you be?
He eyed the water skins he’d thrown down. He couldn’t leave without them.
Easy, he thought. Slow and easy. He flexed the fingers of his left hand, the knife firmly in the other.
Bursting into sudden motion that nearly made Nico piss himself, the crab scuttled a few paces to the side. Then it stopped. It was facing partly away from him now. But he could see five more coming up the beach, streaks of grey and red against the sand. The time for subtlety was over.
Nico made a grab for the skins. His fingers closed around the knot of grass just as the sand gave way beneath his feet in a silken sheet. With a yell, he went tumbling down the dune. He rolled to his feet, tangled up in the cloak, and saw the flash of many-jointed legs galloping down the treacherous sandhill with no trouble at all. He still had the knife—Rule Three: Never Lose Your Weapon—but he knew it wouldn’t make a dent in the carapace. So he went straight to Rule Four: When in Doubt, Run for Your Life.
The crab caught him with the oversized claw mid-stride. He heard the tough hide of his cloak tear like a fragile bit of seafoam. The crab jerked him off his feet, then stunned him with a blow to the head. He sucked in a mouthful of bloody sand.
Not this way. Not with Atticus waiting. Alone.
The crab crouched over him. Its smaller foreclaw pinned his left hand, digging with agonizing weight into his palm. Nico looked into its tiny yellow eyes. He raised the knife in a futile gesture just as the crab’s pincer opened wide.
And then it gave a convulsive shudder. A bare foot, small and delicate, kicked the carapace over so the crab lay on its back, twitching feebly. Before Nico could fathom what had happened, a hand seized his own and hauled him to his feet. Domitia’s pale blue eyes regarded him dispassionately, so like her father’s. Yellow ichor ran from the point of a crude flint spear lashed to a thighbone. A daēva thighbone. She must have scavenged it from a corpse.
“I told you, your knife’s a piece of shit,” she said contemptuously, tossing him the waterskins. With a hard jerk, she ripped off two of the dying creature’s legs. “Want one? Good eating.”
Nico gave the barest shake of his head. He thought he might throw up, not over the crab, not even over the spear, but because something felt broken in his head. He coughed and earned a blinding stab of pain. One of his molars felt loose. But he still had the knife, even if it was a piece of shit.
“Suit yourself.” She glanced back at the dunes. “Better go.”
Domitia turned without another word and loped off toward the hardpan, her crab legs dragging in the sand. After an instant’s hesitation, Nico did the same. His skull throbbed but the bleeding had clotted by the time he reached the burrow.
In the end, Atticus kept his foot. But the healing made him thirsty so the water only lasted three days instead of a week. And Nico felt a new, unwelcome fear growing inside him. He said the same exact words every time he left for food or water or whatever it was they’d run out of. A magic spell of protection.
I’ll be back soon.
And it worked.
For a while.
Nicodemus shook himself, remembrance mercifully fading. It was so vivid sometimes, but he knew the reason. The memories came to him so he’d never forget. Every single thing in this shithole tavern would be a priceless luxury in the Kiln. The scarred wooden tables and chairs. The dented pewter mugs and bucket of water the boy was sloppily tipping onto a puddle of ale. Water to wash the fucking floor. It boggled the imagination.
Nico was about to order his third mug when he saw a girl dart past the mouth of an alley across the way. She was only there for an instant, but he felt an electric shock of recognition. He stabbed a hand into his pocket and tossed a handful of coins on the table. He strode outside and looked around.
There she was, slinking along in the shadows, eyes darting, shoulders hunched. A Marakai ship rat through and through. Could she really be the talisman? He’d seen her face clearly enough in the image he wrenched from the bird’s mind. Long and dour, with skin so dark it seemed to glow. Scrawny as a scarecrow. Her hair was the biggest part of her. Nico knew it was the same girl. Or had Sakhet-ra-katme tricked him? The thought lit a blaze of anger in his gut, which was already queasy from the ale he’d been nursing while he watched the docks. His skin prickled with the heat of it. He wanted to burn something. Or better yet, someone.
Nico drew a deep breath, letting the excess bleed though the soles of his feet and into the rock. It glowed red for an instant, then subsided. His power had been weak inside the Kiln and even after two years of freedom, he sometimes had trouble controlling it.
Calmer now, he forced himself to slow down and think. The talismans bore no special mark. The power lived in their blood. Sakhet couldn’t have known he would snatch one of her messenger birds. This girl had to be the one he sought.
A gust of wind made the tavern’s sign—a striped grey cat—creak and clatter. Nico trailed her at a discreet distance through the miserable hovels of New Hope. Fortunately, the Isles were a stewpot of humanity and his red hair didn’t attract undue attention. He watched as the girl went aboard a ship called the Asperta.
He considered taking her right then. An army of Marakai wouldn’t be able to stop him. But there was no gate in the Isles and his little boat would never make it all the way to Delphi. No, better to go to Tjanjin, where there was a gate.
He hummed to himself as he headed down the hill to the Asperta.
Meb perched in the crow’s nest, picking at scabs and feeling sorry for herself. Since the disaster with Anuketmatma, her status had gone from beneath notice to full-fledged pariah. The little cat’s pique had stirred up one of the worst storms in recent memory. The Asperta made it to port in one piece but just barely—and only because Anuketmatma allowed it. She’d snarled and spat when Meb tried to dry the milk from her fur, hence the long scratches on her arms and face. Captain Kasaika finally managed to appease her with a morsel of fish and two hours of chin scratching, but by then it was too late. The forces of destruction had been unleashed and Anuketmatma couldn’t—or wouldn’t—call them back.
Most of the crew had gone ashore to drink and gossip in the taverns, but Meb was confined to Asperta, except for the message she’d just carried from Captain Kasaika to the harbor master. What the captain would do with her now, she had no idea. Meb scowled and examined a particularly nasty welt. At least the cat was gone, handed over to another ship’s care. Good riddance, she thought sourly.
“Excuse me!”
Meb peered down at the jetty. A tall man with dark red hair was looking up at her. He gave a low bow and she frowned. No one had ever bowed to her before.
“Is your captain aboard?”
“What do you want her for?” Meb asked suspiciously.
“I have business to conduct.”
His smile made Meb uneasy. What if Captain Kasaika sold her to the mortals?
“She ain’t—”
Meb cut off as the captain herself appeared. She was still in a temper about Anuketmatma and glowered down at the man.
“No trade today,” she said curtly.
The man swept another bow, lower this time. “I am not here to trade captain. May we speak in private?”
Captain Kasaika turned away. “Later. I’m busy.”
He produced something from his cloak and held it up. The captain frowned. She beckoned him up the gangplank and examined it.
“If you stole this seal, I’ll have you arrested by the Medjay,” she said coldly.
“I think you’ll find it’s legitimate,” he replied, unruffled by her tone. “Will you invite me aboard? I have a business proposition.”
Captain Kasaika looked him over. “Five minutes,” she said.
The man gracefully leapt aboard and went below. Meb hesitated only an instant. She scrambled down from the crow’s nest and followed. She might be weak in the power, but she had years of practice at eavesdropping. Now she pressed her ear against the door to Captain Kasaika’s cabin, keeping one eye on the passageway.
“I’m on an urgent mission for the emperor and need to sail for Tjanjin right away,” the man said.
“Why the Asperta? We just arrived. My crew needs a rest.”
“I understand your cargo was damaged in the storm. I can help you make up the loss. Triple the usual rate.” He paused. “I can also tell you that His Imperial Majesty stands in opposition to the latest decree of the Oracle. It’s an outrage, and he intends to withdraw his ambassador from Delphi immediately.”
Captain Kasaika was silent for a moment. “I’ll need permission from the vizier. And to confirm you are who you say you are.”
“Of course.”
They haggled for a bit and finally struck a deal. Meb hurried back up to the deck just as the captain emerged.
“Mebetimmunedjem!” the captain bellowed.
“Right here,” Meb said breathlessly.
“Fetch my wastrel crew from the taverns and tell them we’re sailing in four bells.”
“Yes, captain,” Meb replied, bare feet slapping the deck as she ran down the gangplank.
She looked back once. The man was watching her. He gave a friendly wink. Meb scowled and turned her back.