King Edmund is powerless.

  The country is ruled by the aristos sitting in Parliament who do not represent our interests, but only seek to advance theirs.

  More than ever: The poor are poorer, and the rich are richer.

  Look across the sea: The Algaraans have paved our way.

  The Algaraan Malik will fall.

  So will our King.

  So will our Parliament.

  Take arms. Struggle. Resist.

  Keep a lookout.

  Further instructions will follow.

  Long live the People.

  Long live the People.

  Leena remembered how desperately she had wanted to fling those words at the Warden when he had cornered her, hissing in her face: Long live the King.

  What he had really meant to say was: Long live the corruption that lined his pockets with bribes and coins from desperate families begging for a word from an imprisoned loved one. All made possible by an infirm King who did not, ironically, have long to live.

  Leena was startled out of her dark reverie by the ghost of a Morish boy that she recognized. Last she’d seen him, he was alive, handing out pamphlets in the same determined manner as the girl. Even now, he still wore the twine of rope on his chest.

  Yet the ghost bore the marks of his death.

  The sinuous muscles of his back lay in tatters; it was clear he had been flogged without reprieve until the bloody whites of his ribs showed—each slash of skin a punishment for his supposed treason. Leena muffled an exclamation, averting her eyes, the hunger disappearing suddenly from her stomach.

  It was a jarring reality to see the ghost standing beside the girl. To Leena, it looked as if she was watching an inevitable future play out—that one day she would return to this street and it would be someone else handing out the flyers, and the girl nothing more than a whispered echo of a call to rise.

  No. Leena’s chest was already filled with all the things she could not change. She would not allow this feeling of helplessness to settle inside her, taking root and breeding complacency.

  Leena, who had seen the blue-uniformed soldiers enter the market at the same time she had, slowed her steps before passing the girl, warning her in a low voice, “There are soldiers coming your way.”

  The girl gave a curt nod and discreetly tucked the papers into her cloak before blending back into the market, lost within moments. The ghost of the flogged boy followed closely at her heels. Leena knew that she would be back tomorrow.

  Leena wished she could come every day to warn the girl when trouble followed, just as she wished someone had warned her father, but she knew that it would be impossible, especially now that she was contracted to the Saint of Silence.

  It took a few more minutes before Leena arrived at the small stall she was used to visiting whenever her pockets could spare it. She bought herself and Rami two rolls of bread each, freshly baked, with butter and jam. The small jug of milk was a luxury she was willing to indulge in; Leena could not remember when they had last had fresh milk.

  When she returned home, it was to find Rami taking slow steps from his bed. Seeing his growing energy, Leena tried to suppress her excitement, especially when he allowed her to feed him a few morsels of bread and butter.

  Rami never liked to be fussed over.

  On the next day, which marked the fifth day since starting the medication, Rami all but growled at her to leave him alone so that he might recover in peace. This led Leena to leave the house with a sense of relief that he was, albeit slowly, on the mend. She found her way to the lending library, a much-frequented address.

  * * *

  —

  The lending library held a sense of tranquility that was hard to come by in the endless bustle of the New Algaara District. A once heavily frequented church, the abandoned building had been transformed into a book room sometime in the last decade. Its dome still arched proudly over the texts, the pews turned into a sitting area for the readers. Windows, large and magnanimous, shone colored light onto the columns of books, creating a world that, to Leena, looked like a painting belonging to another century.

  Even the ghosts that frequented the library were different from the ones in the market. Leena did not venture to find out their stories and avoided them whenever possible, but a few she guessed to be scholars—though one or two phantoms still confused the place for a church from a time gone by, moving in an unhurried manner, as if in endless prayer.

  Today, Leena wasted no time in beginning her search for any information about this Wake that her mother had spoken of in her dream. Perhaps it was a mad notion, but she could not shake off the heavy feeling that her mother’s appearance was more than just the manifestation of her fever and anxiety.

  That it held a meaning.

  Leena began her search by rifling through old newspapers, journals, and any stored archives from the last decade. But there was nothing to be found there, and after hours of fruitless searching, she left depleted and hungry.

  Perhaps, Leena thought with some trepidation as she made her way to the district’s most disreputable pub, her answers were not to be found in old texts. Here was a place that was frequently visited by guards finishing their shifts at Newtorn Prison, where information was traded for a price and criminals held more knowledge than judges.

  She released her hair, pinched her cheeks, and smiled sweetly at some of the more seasoned-looking guards. There was little doubt that they were, indeed, entranced by her and would have happily talked to her about anything once the cheap ale started flowing, but their expressions shuttered the moment she began inquiring about the Wake, subtle though she thought she was.

  That in itself was suspicious.

  Hard as she tried, all roads were barred.

  It was in those dejected moments as she made her way back home that she questioned whether she was, in fact, slowly slipping into madness. Had she taken the misgivings of a fevered dream and spent precious hours searching for an answer to a question that never existed?

  All Avons are demon-kissed.

  Lord Avon, on the other hand, was not so difficult to find information on. Back at the lending library she had learned, among decades-old copies of Peerage Review, some useful intelligence which she transcribed carefully into the few empty pages at the back of her Guide to Botany.

  She learned that Lord Avon had inherited the marquessdom at twenty and then died from an undisclosed illness at six-and-thirty, little more than sixteen years after becoming the 16th Marquess and inheriting Weavingshaw. There was little information about his wife other than to say she had died within a few years of their marriage. He had left no living heirs.

  All throughout Leena’s research, she could find nothing that could account for St. Silas’s desire to locate this particular ghost. There seemed little to distinguish Lord Avon from any other blue-blooded aristocrat who had lived and died in the last century. Granted, Leena thought in annoyance, firmly shutting the extraordinarily outdated copy of Peerage Review in disgust, this library’s newest copy was above two decades old, so any amount of useful information could have been printed since then that she had no way to access.

  Then there was Weavingshaw.

  While the tattered page in Peerage Review held no picture of Lord Avon, a book on Landed Estates carried a black-and-white ink drawing of the grand house.

  Leena peered closely at it, the depiction of the place juxtaposing with her mother’s voice as she begged Leena to be wary of the manor.

  Here, in this single printed image, Weavingshaw did not look like any estate she’d ever seen in drawings before. It was not a house but a fortress, built to withstand the salt-laden grit of the northern sea, enclosed by ancient stone walls, resisting and enduring.

  Leena scanned the accompanying text. Weavingshaw had been the last defense of the north nine hundred years ago, against both the wildness of the ocean and the invading marauders from Casland, the isles east of Morland. In the ensuing raids, the estate had been burned seven times and rebuilt anew.

  Leena knew from her school lessons that the wars between Morland and Casland had ended in a treaty three hundred years ago, meaning that Weavingshaw no longer had a need to defend itself. And yet, Leena thought as she stared hard at the picture, Weavingshaw looked as if it had not forgotten its war-torn past, and behind its show of aristocratic gentility and remote beauty it looked ready to survive a siege even now.

  Leena was disappointed when the book shifted to discuss the scandalous past of the House of Marlborough, thanks to the 5th Duke and his not-so-discreet nightly activities. Just as her attention wavered, she noticed she’d missed a section pertaining to the Avons. Half the page was dedicated to their familial crest, drawn in painstaking detail in the darkest of ink: a snarling wolf battling a Deathgrip—a predator and its poison. Between the flower and the wolf lay a vacant circle, quartered diagonally by a cross. Etched at the foot of the crest were the words I complete what is mine.

  Beneath was a rare footnote by the author himself describing the unknown origins of the Avon crest and its unusual defiance of traditional heraldic rules. The author did not go into any further details as to why this might be—likely, Leena thought, because he did not know.

  Leena was surprised to see a Deathgrip on the Avon crest. Something about the dream of her mother wavered behind her eyes, something familiar, but it was too distant for Leena to grasp. She shook her head, battling a headache that struck sharp pains through her temples.

  There was also a short newspaper clipping she found that was more up-to-date than the Peerage Review, stating that the Avon ancestral home had been lost to the family line as there was no Avon to inherit it. It had instead been purchased by a Mr. Martin—no title.

  Leena knew the name at once. Mr. Martin was the most well-known tradesman in all of Golborne. He had lifted himself up from the same poverty Leena had grown up in, and was now a man whose name was emblazoned on half the factories in Ridgeways. He produced both the medications Leena had used to treat the Sweeper’s Cough: the expensive one she’d traded her secret for, as well as the cheaper alternative she’d purchased at the market. It felt almost wrong; Mr. Martin’s reputation seemed too modern to own the ancient lands of Weavingshaw.

  No—Leena thought to herself, staring back at the ink-drawn picture of the estate—Weavingshaw seemed much too wild a thing to be owned by anyone.

  * * *

  —

  On the day before her contract was set to begin, Leena had one final task, which she tackled with determination if not apprehension. Yet again she left Rami to a more restful sleep as she made her way through the bazaar, this time not in search of food but a dagger.

  It was a rainy day at the market. The tents, their cloth made thick to withstand the change of seasons, had a dusty, oppressive scent, filtering what little light slitted through. Leena was not a novice when it came to haggling. Teeth clamped in stubbornness, nose wrinkled in tenacity, most of the time she managed to bring down the asking price by half. Yet all her efforts were in vain this morning. Several vendors even laughed outright at the price she was willing to offer just for a small blade.

  Leena, who was accustomed to having a safety plan for most problems, hated the knowledge that she was going to work and live with Mr. St. Silas without so much as a knife to keep her protected. The only one they had at home was a large butcher’s knife that had grown rust on the metal—hardly something that could be easily concealed.

  The pittance she offered, as the vendors had mockingly called it, did not even stretch to cover new fabric to make a modest dress. She could not bear the disgrace of being looked at askance by his customers or, worse, by him, should her own garments be deemed wanting. If she had nothing else of value going into this contract, she at least had her pride—although that rarely proved to be a comfort on cold nights.

  Indeed, it would have been cheaper had she bought fabric to sew herself a dress in the Algaraan fashion—flowing skirts, cinched waistline, embroidered sleeves. But she knew, all too well, that to climb her way up the ladder in Morland society she had to speak like a Mor, dress like a Mor, and, above all else, think like a Mor. Still, her meager wardrobe held more Algaraan dresses than Morish—the only sentiment in her life she still clung on to with great affection.

  Leena tried to fight the dejection she felt as she walked back home. Even with a knife, she comforted herself, there was very little chance of fighting off the Saint of Silence should he choose to attack her. It would serve her well to find other means to protect herself, but what those other means were, she had no idea.

  * * *

  —

  Leena wore her best, and therefore least comfortable, Morish dress as she stood on the steps of the Saint’s house. She tried not to think about Rami, of how she had purposely concealed from him her indenture. He would find out about Leena’s contract to the Saint of Silence soon enough, but she wanted to delay that moment for as long as possible, until his health improved.

  She told him instead that she had managed to secure employment as a nanny and would temporarily take other accommodations on the outskirts of the city. If Rami had been fully back to his usual self, he would’ve caught her lie, but he merely gave a drowsy nod in acknowledgment.

  She was apprehensive about leaving him alone, but he’d improved to the extent that he could now walk to the cupboards—which she’d used nearly all her hard-earned savings on stocking to a fullness they had not seen in months, even years—for sustenance.

  On the other hand, Leena’s farewell to Margery had bruised her heart.

  She’d gone to see the old woman to say goodbye, her eyes flickering to the ghost that always trailed at Margery’s elbow—a man who had been stabbed in the abdomen with a dagger. The phantom was likely Margery’s infamous husband, whom the old woman only ever mentioned in tandem with a curse. Leena had never known who killed Margery’s husband, though a part of her wondered if it was the old woman herself who had done it. But Leena didn’t want to confirm it, afraid that it might change the way she saw her friend.

  The old woman, tears dotting her rheumy eyes, had insisted that Leena take a token to remember her by. Despite Leena’s pleas that she didn’t need a gift to remember Margery, the old woman had thrust a timepiece into her hand. Surprisingly, it was of exquisite make, molded in gold, with the name Fray etched on the lid in elegant strokes.

  Fray. That was likely the name of Margery’s husband.

  Inside, the clock mechanism was broken, and there was a mistake on the clockface as well. Rather than counting up to twelve hours, it counted to eighteen, with only one hand, stuck at the starting position. Perhaps this mistake had made the timepiece harder to barter—Margery had sold nearly everything else in her life to pay for her Tar habit—although the gold alone should have brought a pretty penny.

  Leena wore the timepiece now, tucked beneath her bodice—as if she carried a bit of home with her.

  She smoothed a damp palm across her stiff skirts, holding her tattered suitcase with the other, aware that she was twenty minutes late for the agreed time at which she was to present herself.

  Something worse than dread weighed down her spine—a stab of forewarning that told her crossing the threshold into the Saint’s house would irrevocably change her.

  Leena had migration in her blood, inherited in the womb, but this last migration would be the worst. She would be running toward bloodshed rather than fleeing from it.

  A few rain droplets spattered her cheeks, the chilly autumn wind twisting mist and smog through the city. The brown bricks of the Saint’s residence seemed to be siphoning the air from Leena’s lungs.

  Although Mr. St. Silas lived in a genteel area, there was nothing genteel about this building nor the residents inside it. She wondered briefly if the neighbors saw this house as their district’s greatest shame.

  She lifted her fist, but halted before her knuckles hit the door, a quake in her chest.

  Suddenly, as if the weather sensed Leena’s unease, the sky unhinged its jaw to release a torrent of rainwater just as the door swung open—before Leena had the chance to knock.

  Mr. St. Silas was on the other side with gloves in his hands as if preparing to leave.

  He checked his step. His brows drew together upon seeing her and his lips tightened; it was clear to her he was in a menacing mood. He met her gaze with cool civility, then bowed—an insolent incline of his head.

  “Your health has improved.” He took in her thin shawl, the worn boots, the drenched hemline with a contemptuous lift of his lips. “All radiance; you should thank me.”

  It was the first time she’d seen him since signing the contract. Leena’s gaze quickened to details about him that she’d missed that night: the shaved bristles on his jaw, the faint scar on his throat in the shape of a knife wound, the freshly bruised knuckles.

  He stood still under her scrutiny, but his mouth quivered upward as if daring her to share her assessment.

  She didn’t.

  Instead she said, “This is a business transaction, Mr. St. Silas. I do not owe you my gratitude.”

  His brows rose faintly. “No, you owe me your time.”

  He stepped aside, opening the passageway for her.

  Still, Leena didn’t move. “Were you on your way out to come fetch me? Did you think I would go back on my word?”

  “I had no doubt, Miss Al-Sayer, that you would fulfill your end of the contract.” His voice was mild. “Even if I had to drag you here myself to do so.”

  She met his eyes with a hard stare of her own. She could easily visualize the methods which he would have deployed to drag her.

  Then—deliberately—she took a step over the threshold as if to prove to him that she did so of her own volition. Her dress dripped on his gleaming hardwood floors, but if he noticed, he didn’t comment.