Nicodemus gave Meb a casual wave as he disembarked from the Asperta. Her mouth formed an odd grimace he suspected was a smile. Then she slithered into one of the open hatches leading below. He’d managed to speak to her twice more during the journey, but the cook had scolded her for slacking off and Meb mostly disappeared after that. Perhaps it was better. He’d planted the seed. She didn’t yet trust him, but she liked him. And he still had a final card to play.
No, you’re hopeless at cards, he thought. Let’s call it a final roll of the dice. They always fall your way.
The port of Tjanjin sat just past the edge of the Umbra. Eternal twilight cloaked the eastern side of the island, with a few smoky blue mountains visible in the distance. By contrast, the capital city of Chang’an basked in low-slanting sunlight from the west that gilded its scarlet pagoda-style rooftops. Silken banners with bold black glyphs rippled in the breeze, advertising everything from fireworks to teahouses—half of which were illicit gambling dens. Nico stretched like a tiger, relishing the warmth on his skin. He wasn’t built for the dark and cold. They dulled his blood.
He’d decided to capture the girl someplace quiet. Years of tracking dangerous animals in the Kiln had instilled a healthy sense of caution. Move too soon and you might find yourself the hunted rather than the hunter. Not that he believed Meb to be dangerous. If she could use her power, the others would hardly treat her as they did. But he had no wish to kill Captain Kasaika and her entire crew. It would be pointless bloodshed.
So he politely thanked the captain, paid the balance of his passage and melted into the crowds clogging the harbor. Then he found an alley with a clear view of the Asperta and sat on a barrel to wait. Nico had long experience at waiting. He could lie half-buried in sand for hours, the sun pouring down in molten waves, watching the burrow of a bush-rat. One of the few creatures in the Kiln you could actually eat, bush-rats were also extremely paranoid—probably for the same reason—and difficult to catch. But starvation was a great motivator.
A stillness settled over him. Part of him floated in the oneness of the Nexus. The other part remained quietly focused on the Asperta.
After a while, Meb emerged from below decks and spoke briefly with Captain Kasaika. The girl’s body language was skittish and hangdog as usual, but when the captain gave a brusque nod, she brightened. He watched Meb slip like a shadow along the pier. No one gave her a second glance. She meant nothing to anyone, except for him. He hardened his heart against a tiny mote of pity. This girl was heir to the power that had imprisoned his people for a thousand years. Whether she knew it or not was immaterial.
He thought of Atticus, whom he’d found screaming over the corpse of their mother at the age of two. The memory was dim and fractured—Nico himself was five or six—but he remembered the blood on the walls of the burrow, and Gaius’s strong hands closing around his arm and dragging him away. Later, Gaius had hunted the wyrm that got inside. He brought Nico the head, grinning like a lunatic.
Present for you, boy. Eat the eyes and you’ll have a hard-on for a week!
Nico hadn’t. He’d buried it in the sand so it wouldn’t attract predators and then he’d set out to dig a new burrow for him and Atticus. Even if Gaius had offered, the thought of living in his burrow made Nico faint with fear.
If his brother wasn’t dead himself yet, he had a chance at a real life. And Gaius…. Well, Nico would worry about him later.
He stood and chose a course to intercept her when two men tumbled out of a tavern door ahead, grappling drunkenly. A crowd of onlookers spilled out behind them, offering shouts of abuse and encouragement. Nico heard bets being placed in the harsh, rapid tongue of Tjanjinese. One of the combatants reeled into him and Nico shoved the man away. His gaze swung back to the pier. Meb had vanished.
Nicodemus’s mouth thinned. He walked over to the brawling men and kicked one of them viciously in the head, knocking the man senseless. There was a moment’s hush. Then the crowd erupted in outraged cries. He spat out an oath in Tjanjinese and stalked off. No one tried to stop him.
It didn’t matter. Nico guessed where she was going. Meb might be the talisman, but she was also a child. She wouldn’t have money for a tea house.
And there was a much more interesting place on Tjanjin that cost nothing at all.
Darius leapt to the pier before the Chione’s mooring rope was even secured. He scanned the crowded port, searching for Selk ships. Nazafareen’s boots thumped down beside him a moment later.
To her great relief, the port lay on the sunlit side. Her power had returned the moment the sun peeked over the western horizon—along with the bond and Darius’s infirmity. He kept his withered hand hidden in the sleeve and Nazafareen avoided looking at it, not because it repelled her, it didn’t in the least, but because it made her feel guilty.
“Do you see the Asperta?” she asked.
“Not yet. We should split up and search.”
Tjanjin was easily five times larger than the Selk port. It had six main jetties, countless smaller ones, and besides the Marakai ships, there were fishing vessels and pilot boats and swift passenger ferries with water wheels that appeared to be powered by spell dust.
“Come with me,” Megaera growled, seizing Herodotus by the sleeve and hauling him off down the jetty. “We’ll take the east side,” she called over her shoulder.
“Poor Herodotus,” Nazafareen murmured. “She bullies him terribly.”
“Only because he lets her,” Darius observed. “Let’s go.”
They dove into the controlled chaos of the port with Captain Mafuone. Voices jabbered in a dozen different dialects. Sewage and sawdust mingled with rotting fish and smoky joss sticks. Nyx vessels nudged shoulders with Sheut and Khepresh. It looked haphazard, but Mafuone seemed to know where to go and led them straight to the farthest pier.
“Over there,” she said, pointing into the forest of masts at an older vessel with the volatile gray cat flying from its masts, her tail lashing in the wind.
The ship was still being unloaded. It must have just arrived. But there was no sign of the red-haired man, or a girl either.
“Captain Kasaika,” Mafuone called out when they reached the Asperta.
The captain glanced up from a piece of parchment where she was ticking off items of cargo. She was short and buxom, with a closely shaved head. Unlike Mafuone, she wore no jewelry, but every visible inch of skin bore colorful tattoos, fantastic scenes of storm clouds and shipwrecks, frothing smashers and flocks of birds flying for cover. The scenes were so painstakingly lifelike, Nazafareen could almost hear rolls of thunder in the distance.
“Mafuone.” Kasaika looked surprised. “I didn’t know you were behind us.”
“A last-minute decision,” Mafuone replied. “You carried a passenger. Where is he?”
“Gone ashore an hour or so ago,” Kasaika replied, returning to the parchment. “Why?”
“I’ll explain in a moment.” Mafuone shot a quelling look at Nazafareen. “But we’re also looking for a girl.”
“By Anu’s whiskers, what’s she done now?” Kasaika demanded in exasperation.
“Nothing,” Nazafareen said quickly. “But we have to find her. Did she go somewhere with the man named Nicodemus?”
Kasaika looked her up and down. “Whoever you are, I’ll not hand Meb over—”
“We don’t wish to harm her,” Mafuone interrupted. “The opposite. She’s in grave danger.”
“I gave Meb leave to go ashore,” Kasaika said after a pause. “She usually visits the aquarium. It’s open to the public.”
“How do we find it?” Darius asked.
Nazafareen felt the urge to run, to hunt and track, rising in his blood.
“It’s next to the palace. The main entrance is just up the road, past the fish market.” She pointed toward the city. “That way. But—”
“What does Meb look like?” Mafuone asked.
The captain of the Asperta threw her hands up. “She must have done something, you want her so bad. Did she steal from you?”
“Please, Kasaika. We’ve known each other a long time. I’ll tell you everything, but they need to find that girl.”
“Meb? Skinny, wild hair. Acts like the Five put a blood bounty on her head. She’s a skulker and a sneak. Lazy, too.” Kasaika’s words seemed unkind, but Nazafareen sensed a gruff fondness. “Not many Marakai go to the aquarium so she’ll stand out—though if there’s a shadow in fifty paces, Meb’ll lurk in it.” She drew a breath and began rolling up the parchment. “If that girl’s in trouble, maybe I better go with you.”
“No time,” Mafuone said. She turned to Darius and jerked her chin toward the city. “I’ll stay and talk with Captain Kasaika.”
Nazafareen and Darius set off, pausing every now and then to ask directions. Most of the residents were fluent in several tongues and happy to offer help. Soon they reached a pair of tall wrought-iron gates with fanciful sea horses clinging to the finials. Nazafareen caught the crisp scent of cedar and pine trees. Beyond the gates, rolling wooded hills, each with a red-roofed pagoda on top, stretched into the distance. Shallow pools shimmered between them, connected by rope bridges.
“If he uses fire, you’ll have to sever me,” Darius said. “Don’t hesitate.”
Nazafareen nodded tensely. “I’ll never let you burn, Darius. And I know I can break his flows. I did it with the Valkirin. He won’t have her.”
They ran through the gates and into the aquarium.
Meb perched on a low stone wall, watching a dozen dark shapes cruise through the large saltwater pool beside her. Every now and then, a curved fin broke the surface, leaving a wake of ripples. The emperor used a clever system of locks to raise vast amounts of water up the hill from the port below. It was almost feeding time and the shapes circled in mounting excitement. Meb reached her hand out as one slid past, fingertips brushing its rough hide. She gave a little shiver of pleasure. The pool was her favorite exhibit, and the aquarium was her favorite place in the whole world.
At the aquarium, she wasn’t Meb the Mouse. She was Meb the Shark.
Two workers with buckets walked to the middle of the rope bridge suspended over the pool and started tossing chunks of fish into the water. Meb thrilled at the ensuing frenzy. She watched the ragged jaws gnash and tear, the mighty tails whip to and fro, and felt a surge of savage admiration. She clacked her teeth together experimentally. She might pretend to be a shark at supper and eat her own fish that way, though she’d have to make sure the cook didn’t see. He already thought her table manners abominable.
It was still early and the aquarium was deserted, just how she liked it. She rose to leave—Meb always visited the exhibits in exactly the same order, and the octopi pagoda, her second favorite, was next on the list—when she saw a man and woman on the far side of the pool. They seemed to be looking for something, a particular exhibit perhaps. The woman shaded her eyes and suddenly Meb recognized the chin-length light brown hair and bold nose. It was the one who’d bumped into her back on Selk.
She instinctively sidled away to one of the mermaid statues ringing the pool and peeked out from behind a fin. Meb noticed things about people and she saw the man had some kind of injury to his left arm. He was trying to hide it with long sleeves, but it hung dead at his side. And the woman was missing her hand. What an odd pair, Meb thought. They started to turn her way when a hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled wildly. She owned nothing worth stealing, but she had a dim notion there were bad people on the Umbra side who trafficked in children.
“Hush, Meb,” a voice whispered in her ear. “It’s me.”
The hand relaxed and she found herself looking into a pair of kindly dark blue eyes. It was the passenger from the Asperta.
“Why’d you grab me?” she demanded.
“I need you to listen closely, Meb,” he said softly, drawing her deeper into the shadow of the statue. “Those people are looking for you.”
“For me?” She frowned.
“They’ve been sent by the Oracle of Delphi. Do you know her?”
Meb nodded suspiciously.
“She captures daēvas and forces them to do her bidding. She arranged for the capture of your parents. But they’re alive. I can take you to them.”
Meb felt a terrible coldness grip her. The man was lying. Her parents were dead.
“Let go,” she hissed, pulling at her arm, which he held in his strong hand.
To her surprise, he did let go. “You don’t believe me and there’s no reason you should,” he said evenly. “You have every right not to trust me. But I can prove it.”
Meb wanted to run, but her feet didn’t move. She could hardly breathe.
“Your mother’s name is Ahset. Your father is Sendjemib. He used to call you Jem because it’s part of his name too and he said you were precious. He taught you how to catch driftfish with your bare hands when you were six. Your mother has a scar on her left forearm. A line caught it and nearly took the limb off but your father cut it with his knife before—”
“Stop,” she whispered, heart pounding. “Just stop.”
The day her parents vanished, Meb had gone to New Hope to buy a new net for her mother after a huge tigerfish swam into the old one and shredded it to bits. She’d never let Meb do that before, but Meb had begged and pleaded and she’d finally relented. Meb had sworn not to speak to anyone except the Stygian who made the nets, who her mother said was an honest man. When she’d returned, flushed with newfound confidence and a beautiful flaxen net in her hands, she found the house empty.
They lived in a stone dwelling with four rooms and a roof of woven kelp, on the remote, unsettled side of the Selk Isle, and were the only Marakai she knew who didn’t live shipboard. When Meb asked her parents why, they hugged her and said it was because she was special. Meb knew they meant her disability, but she wasn’t lonely for the company of other children. She passed her days swimming and fishing and combing the shore for interesting things the sea heaved up, and altogether felt quite happy and loved.
That awful day, Meb had waited and waited, but they never came back. Sometimes she wondered if a rogue smasher had come along and swallowed them whole, but there was no sign of it on the beach of their quiet lagoon. She’d finally returned to New Hope and told the captain of the first Marakai ship she found, who happened to be Kasaika. After long months of fruitless, painful hope, she’d resigned herself to the fact that their deaths would remain a mystery.
And now Nicodemus was telling her they were alive, after all this time.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” he said gently. “But I helped free them. The emperor hates the Pythia too. That was the mission he sent me on. They’re waiting for us, but we have to hurry.”
“How come you didn’t tell me before?” she asked in a daze.
“I wasn’t sure who to trust so I waited until we arrived in Tjanjin.” He sighed. “If you don’t want to come, I won’t make you. But it’s a chance that won’t come again. I’m meeting your parents and we’re leaving Tjanjin. Right now. It’s not safe here.”
Meb wasn’t stupid. She had a thousand questions. And she sensed holes in his tale. But she wanted to believe him. So badly. She glanced around the edge of the mermaid. The man and woman were gone.
She thought of the Asperta and Captain Kasaika. She thought about endless buckets of fish and the long nights when she lay in her hammock, listening to the crew laugh and joke together. They belonged. She didn’t belong anywhere. They hated her. Even if Nicodemus was lying, what could be worse than her life now? He didn’t seem the type to traffic in children. He’d given her honeycomb—even if it was disgusting.
“All right,” she said decisively. “Let’s go.”
He gave a grave nod and they set off across the rope bridge.
Nico felt a thrill of almost superstitious dread as they left the bridge and entered a cedar forest. He couldn’t believe the pair from the Mer had managed to track them here. Domitia claimed the woman could wield huo mofa, but what if she had other powers they knew nothing about?
He insisted on holding Meb’s hand. She didn’t like it, he could tell, but she allowed him to lead her away. He hadn’t clasped a child’s hand in his own since Atticus. Meb’s felt damp and grimy, where his brother’s had always been hot and dry. They couldn’t be more different. Atticus was good-natured and cheerful, whereas Meb was a nasty little thing. He’d give her to Domitia and walk away. She was one of them. Nothing more.
They passed through one of the long pagodas, which held great glass tanks filled with darting rainbow-hued fish. Lumen crystals inside the tanks lit Meb’s features in a greenish glow, as if they were walking together on the bottom of the sea.
“Not much farther,” he whispered, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
They crossed rope bridges and took more winding paths. The gate lay inside the aquarium, but on the far eastern side. They were nearly there when Nicodemus heard a shout. He spun and saw them. The Danai and the woman. He shoved Meb away and unleashed a gout of flame, but it evaporated like mist a pace away. The woman stared at him, triumph and fury mingling on her face.
“Let her go!” she yelled, drawing a sword. “Let her go, you bastard, or I’ll—”
The rest of her words were snatched away by a ferocious gust of wind that knocked Nicodemus from his feet. The Danai.
He felt everything slipping away. Domitia was right. He should have killed them when he had the chance. This wasn’t a fight he could win.
Nico cursed his own stupidity. But there was always a way out. Always. He hadn’t survived the Kiln for thirty-one years without taking that lesson to heart.
Nazafareen reveled in the dark power of the void. It was different this time. She didn’t feel sick at all. She felt wonderful. Black lightning sizzled in her veins. When the negatory magic filled her, the holes in her brain didn’t seem to matter. She was a creature of pure instinct. Delilah had called her reckless, but she felt entirely in control. As if she was born to use it.
She’d released Darius from the cuff once she realized she could smother the Vatra’s flames with ease. Half the aquarium sat in the Umbra, but they’d crossed the line to the sunlit side. Here, she could do as she pleased. And no one could stop her.
Now the Vatra was on the run. He crawled toward a wooden door set in the high stone wall encircling the aquarium.
She ran across the swaying rope bridge, Darius on her heels. Bottle-nosed porpoises darted through the pool below in agitation. The girl clung to the trunk of a pine tree, clearly terrified. Nazafareen felt Darius release the flows of air. The wind died.
Fifty paces. She readied herself to snap any flows the Vatra tried to weave. Daēvas were hard to kill, but they bled like anything else.
Nazafareen squinted at the girl and realized she’d seen her before. It was the same one who’d knocked her to the ground in New Hope. She’d literally had Meb in her arms.
“I won’t lose you again,” she muttered.
Then the Vatra beckoned. And the girl ran toward him.
“No,” Nazafareen screamed. “Don’t!”
She felt a tiny burst of power and shattered it, but she was an instant too late. The wooden door opened. The two of them slipped through.
Nazafareen didn’t pause, slamming into it with one shoulder, but it was locked tight again. She gazed up at the wall. Twenty paces of stone stretched above her head.
“Damn,” she growled, glaring at her stump.
“I’ve got it,” Darius muttered. Even with his withered arm, he managed to find tiny hand and toeholds. A minute later, he was peering over the top.
“Do you see them?” Nazafareen called.
He looked down at her. “Yeah. And about a hundred of the emperor’s guards.”
Nazafareen kicked the door in frustration.
“What are they doing?”
“The guards are escorting them toward the palace. They know the Vatra.”
“Damn!”
He dropped to the ground, landing lightly on his feet. “Too many to fight.” He paused. “And a bunch of them are headed back this way.”
“I’m not leaving without Meb!”
“We’ll come back. But we need a plan.”
They heard voices on the other side of the door. Nazafareen raised her fist to pound on it, but Darius grabbed her arm.
“Holy Father, listen to reason. If we get arrested, there’s no chance. We’ll come back. Tonight. But we need help.”
Calm determination flowed into her through their bond. Nazafareen swore again but followed him into the trees. As they passed the spot where the Vatra had fallen, a faint pulse of talismanic magic snapped her head around like a hunting dog catching the scent of a hare. She slowed and crouched down. A glass object lay under a bush. It was shaped like a globe and had strange runes carved into the base. Storm clouds roiled in its depths. The Vatra must have dropped it when Darius knocked him down. Nazafareen picked it up, fighting the urge to shatter the magic inside.
“Hurry,” Darius yelled over his shoulder.
“Coming!” She pocketed the talisman and sprinted to catch up.