The first thing Alucard had done last night, upon leaving the Emery estate, was order it torn down. He’d gone that very morning, to make sure it was done. And as he stood on the bare spot where the house had once been, he’d felt an overwhelming peace. A burden finally set down. A weight released.

  Staring at his brother now, he felt no such relief, but the same grim resolve. Alucard straightened his coat as he crossed to the cell. He had chosen to dress in red and gold that day. Not a hint of Emery blue. His hair was pinned back with a chalice and sun, and at the sight of it, Berras sneered.

  “I thought it would please you,” said Alucard, “that I wear these colors instead of yours.”

  “No matter what you wear,” said Berras, rising to his feet, “it won’t change what you are, little brother.”

  “And what is that?” asked Alucard blandly.

  His brother approached the bars. “A disgrace.”

  Alucard smiled. “Once upon a time, those words would have cut, as surely as a blade. Now I see them for what they are. The last punches of a man who’s lost his fight. What would Father say, if he could see you now? His oldest son, arrested for treason. Would he be proud, that you tried to overthrow the empire? Or simply disappointed that you failed?”

  Berras’s good hand gripped the bars, squeezing until his scarred knuckles went pink, then white.

  “What do you think will happen to your followers,” mused Alucard, “now that you’re gone? Cut off the head, and the body quickly crumbles.”

  Berras’s mouth twitched. “But I am not a head,” he said. “I am a hand.” His eyes darkened. “Do you know why we call ourselves the Hand?”

  “Because you clutch at other people’s power?” ventured Alucard.

  Berras grinned. It was cold, and hateful, and mocking. “Because even if you lose one,” he said, releasing the bar, “there is another.”

  Alucard wasn’t sure if the words were a bluff, or truth, but they sat ill. Not that he would give Berras the satisfaction.

  “So you weren’t the leader, then?” he asked. “Just a pawn? A tool being used by smarter people? A blunt weapon, to be wielded, and then got rid of? If that is true, why?”

  “I already told you.”

  “That’s right. To take the throne. To show me what a real Emery is. But the thing is, Berras, I don’t believe you. I think you did it because you are small, and petty, and cannot bear a world where I am stronger.”

  His brother’s smile slid, becoming a feral, humorless grin. “Come into this cell and face me. Let’s see how strong you are with nothing but your fists.”

  “Tempting, but I’ll pass.” He turned, and started for the stairs.

  “How dare you turn your back on me, little brother.”

  Alucard stopped. “Oh, I’ll come back,” he said. “It’s not like you’re going anywhere. But I have places to be. My husband is waiting for me. My daughter, too.” He looked up at the ceiling. Through it. “You see, it’s dinnertime. I want to know which animal Ren has tried to sneak under the table. She’s been very into rabbits lately, but really, there’s not a single living thing she does not love. She’s like Anisa that way.” He swallowed, their little sister’s name scraping his throat. “Before bed, she’ll need a bath, which is always an adventure, and Rhy and I will read her a story, and the queen will shine a lantern into every corner of her room, to show her that every shadow is nothing but a lack of light. You see why I must leave you? There is so much love up there.”

  His eyes fell back to his brother.

  “I sometimes wonder if you would have been so hateful, had we lived in a kinder house.” He shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

  Berras glared out between the bars. The anger rolled off him in waves. Once, they would have crashed over Alucard, too. Would have pinned him down, and drowned him. Now, he simply stepped back, out of its reach.

  “Alucard,” growled Berras as he turned, and left.

  “Alucard!” His brother’s voice clawed at the air, but came no closer as he climbed the stairs, out of the dungeon and the darkness, and up, up, up, to the light.

  III

  SOMEWHERE AT SEA

  The Grey Barron sliced its way through the open water.

  Its captain stood at the prow, black coat billowing like a pirate flag, her eyes—one brown, the other black—turned to the bare horizon.

  Now and then Lila’s fingers drifted to the ring she wore on her right hand, one thumb running absently over the ship carved into its scorched black surface. The owner of its twin was back in London, but she knew that if she called Kell, he would come. And for the first time in seven years, he could cross the distance between them, no matter how great, and it would cost him nothing but a drop of blood and a whispered spell.

  The night before she’d left, they’d lain in bed, and Lila had run her hand across his brow, and down his cheeks, trying to smooth each and every line the pain had carved in and out of Kell Maresh, until he had taken her wrist, and pinned her to the bed, Kay glinting like mischief in his eyes, as he convinced her not every change needed to be erased.

  Now, Lila Bard rapped her fingers on the rail of her ship. Waves crashed up against the hull, spraying a cool mist that seemed to curl around her as she scanned the line where sea met sky, searching for the Ferase Stras.

  After all, she had a parcel to deliver.

  * * *

  At the back of the ship, Tes folded her arms on the wooden rail, and watched the water ripple in the Barron’s wake. She’d sewn a pocket on the outside of her coat, and Vares poked out from the top flap, his small head bobbing, wings pinned down over her heart. Now and then, when the breeze picked up, the dead bird nipped his beak at the buttons and fluttered, as if he was flying.

  She already missed London.

  Missed her shop in the shal, and the dumplings she got from the market stall on Heras Vas, and Nero, to whom there’d been no chance to say goodbye. It had been two days since the crimson glow of the Isle vanished from the water beneath the ship, replaced by tendrils of ordinary light. More than a day since she’d seen land.

  Not just any land, but Hanas.

  She’d known it, of course, the lines of the cliffs she’d climbed when she was young standing out like a jagged stitch on the horizon.

  She imagined her father preening over the rare objects in his shop.

  Imagined Serival standing on the docks, the wind tugging at her plaited hair, one hand lifted to shield her eyes as they scanned the water for something of worth. For Tesali.

  Where are you, little rabbit?

  She’d held her breath as the ship sailed on, and the cliffs shrank from sight.

  That first night on the Barron, when the hull rocked her to sleep, Tes had dreamed of another life. One where she’d asked to stay on Elrick’s boat, and the two of them had sailed away from London the same day they’d docked. One where she’d spent the last three years skimming from port to port, fixing any trinkets that came their way, and nothing bad ever happened.

  That’s how, even before she woke up, she knew it was a dream.

  The ship began to slow, the wind falling out of the sails, and Vares twitched, a small restless spasm of his bone wings.

  “It’ll be all right,” Tes told the dead owl as she pushed off the rail and made her way to the front of the Barron. In her brief time aboard, she’d mended the spell in Stross’s watch, and added a hidden compartment to Vasry’s trunk, and tweaked Raya’s galley kettle so its water was always hot. She kept her hands busy, and tried to forget that she wasn’t there by choice. That she was, in fact, Lila Bard’s prisoner aboard this ship.

  Soon enough, her future cell came into sight.

  The Ferase Stras rose out of nothing, looking less like a vessel fit for open water and more like a stack of parts, as if several smaller boats had been broken up, and then pieced together, level upon level, a tapestry of wood, and cloth, and spell.

  Tes had heard stories about the floating market.

  Some said the Ferase Stras was the blackest market in the world, others that it was not a market at all, but a vault, housing the world’s most wanted and forbidden magic. Heard that even if you were invited aboard the ship, there were rooms you’d never be allowed to enter, things that weren’t for sale, to any bidder. She’d heard that the captain was a hundred, three hundred, five hundred years old, that she took payment not in coin, but life. Heard that the floating market was a myth, and that it was very real, but impossible to find without the right map.

  She’d heard, too, that the Ferase Stras could not be robbed, though that was obviously a lie, since according to Lila Bard, the persalis had been housed there, safe until it wasn’t.

  Still, as the ship drew near, and the lines of magic glimmered in Tes’s sight, she wondered what else about the Ferase Stras was false. And what was true.

  She was about to find out.

  The Grey Barron pulled up beside the market, drifting close until there was only a stride between the rail of one and the covered awning over the other, a threshold marked by a single wooden door. Lila leapt nimbly across the gap, and gestured for Tes to follow.

  Vares clacked his beak. Tes’s heart quickened. She fought the urge to back away. They had told her she could not stay in London. Told her it wasn’t safe. Not until the Hand was gone for sure. It was too dangerous, they said, but Tes had a feeling they meant her. She was too dangerous. Her power wasn’t just a gift, or a curse, it was a weapon, one that could do unspeakable things if it fell into the wrong hands.

  The king said she would be safe here.

  Tes tried to believe him.

  Lila Bard cleared her throat, and gave her a look that said she would be getting onto the Ferase Stras that day, one way or another. Her silver threads twitched in the air, and Tes felt an invisible hand against her back, warning her to move. She swallowed, and stepped onto the threshold.

  Lila knocked, and a few moments later, the door opened, revealing a tall and handsome man, broad-shouldered and dark-skinned and dressed all in white. His magic was a tendril of amber light around his shoulders.

  “Back so soon?” he asked Lila.

  “What can I say, Katros? I’m good at my job.”

  His brows went up. “So you have the persalis?”

  “Well. Not that good.” Lila gripped Tes’s shoulder. “But I don’t come empty-handed.”

  He looked from the Antari to Tes and back again. “Well,” he said. “This should be interesting.”

  He led them through the door, into the cabin, which turned out to be an office, carefully treading the line between full and cluttered. Tes’s eyes took in everything—cabinets full of objects that might have passed for trinkets if she couldn’t see the complex spellwork threaded through them. A massive desk sat in the center of the room, behind which sat a well-worn chair, and a large black sphere in a gold stand, its threads an eerie, warning shade.

  Tes’s fingers twitched, and she felt herself drifting forward to examine it closer when Lila grabbed her arm.

  “This way,” said Katros, leading them out of the cabin, and down a flight of steps, into the maze that was the floating market. It reminded Tes of her father’s shop, the way there was always something to look at, and always the promise of more around the corner, or down the hall. Lila’s hand remained firmly on Tes’s sleeve as she steered her past curtains and ladders and doors until they reached the main deck, where another man, younger, leaner, but close enough in face he must have been related, stood over a table, inking a map with a minuscule brush, his white sleeves tied out of the way.

  And there, sitting on a chair in the sun, a grey sack on the boards beside her, was Maris Patrol. The captain of the floating market.

  She was reading a book, and at first, she didn’t look up.

  Her skin was dark, and deeply wrinkled, her hair a shocking silver, but what struck Tes most was that the air around her was empty. No threads, bright or dim, no dancing lines of light. It seemed the captain of the Ferase Stras, home to so much power, had no magic of her own.

  She looked old, very old, but not frail, and when she spoke, her voice rang like a bell.

  “So few gentle days at sea,” she said, closing the book, “you learn to enjoy them when they come.”

  Maris rose, and as she did, the grey pile on the deck twitched, and resolved itself into a large and ancient dog. Maris stared at Tes, and despite the fact she knew the woman had no magic, she couldn’t shake the sense that she was being read. Her eyes never left Tes, but when she spoke, it was to the Antari.

  “That is not a persalis, Delilah Bard. That is, if I had to guess, a teenage girl.”

  “No,” admitted Lila. “The persalis was, regrettably, destroyed. But I think you’ll find Tes is an … improvement.”

  “Is that so?” asked the old woman.

  Lila leaned in, and whispered something in the other captain’s ear. Her eyes sharpened. “I see.” There it was again, the hungry flash, as she realized she’d come into possession of something rare. “Perhaps we have a place for her.”

  “I’m not a prize for your vault,” snapped Tes.

  Maris gave her a long, appraising look. “What are you then?”

  She straightened. “I’m a tinkerer.”

  Maris raised a brow.

  “I mean, I fix things,” explained Tes. “I make them better. And I’m good at it. And yes, I can see magic. And yes, I can change it. And yes, I know that is a strange and valuable gift, but it doesn’t make me a thing instead of a person. I’m not a piece of magic to be put away, and taken out, whenever you have use, and I’m not going to be put in a cage or buried in the bowels of the ship.”

  It came spilling out, and left her breathless.

  Maris crossed her arms. “Have you finished?”

  Tes swallowed. And nodded. Maris smiled. “Good. Now, here is what I know. There is a great deal of magic on this ship. So much that sometimes, I cannot keep track of it all. There are things that have been aboard longer than I have—yes, it’s true—and others whose function I have never been able to discern. Now, it seems you have a talent, one that might make you useful, if you choose to be. And if you stay, as my apprentice, you will be free to use your gift, without being used for it, and maybe even learn a thing or two along the way.

  “But,” said Maris, stepping closer. “I have never kept a living person on this ship against their will, and I certainly won’t be starting now. So if you do not wish to stay, then by all means, return to the Barron, and go back to being Lila’s problem. It’s your choice.”

  The Antari scowled at that, and seemed about to speak, but Maris shot her a heavy look, and for once, she held her tongue while Tes stood on the deck, and looked around at the floating market, the light spilling through every curtain and doorway, the whole place rich with the promise of magic.

  And so she made a choice.

  * * *

  Tes watched as the Barron drifted away from the Ferase Stras, and turned, setting a course she couldn’t follow. A hand came to rest on her shoulder, the fingers old, but strong. Tes glanced toward Maris.

  “I heard your ship was supposed to be impenetrable,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then how were you robbed?”

  Maris smiled thinly. “It seems my wards could use improving.”

  Tes’s fingers twitched at the challenge, her eyes already tracing the lines of light that wove across the ship, her mind racing ahead to all the ways they could be fixed. “I can help with that.”

  “Excellent,” said Maris. “Just tell me what you need.”

  Tes glanced around at the floating market, with all its levels, its rooms, its secrets. “I don’t suppose you have any tea?”

  IV

  The palace rose over the Isle, the crimson water lapping at the stone pedestals that held it up. But from the prison deep inside, there was no sound of water, no tinted light. Only the dull echo of footsteps for the second time that day.

  They seemed to run ahead, warning the man in the cell below that someone was coming.

  Berras was on his feet by the time his visitor arrived. He took in her pale brown eyes and her widow’s peak, the long black hair that fell in a curtain behind her crisp white robes, and for the first time in days, he smiled.

  “Ezril.”

  The Aven Essen stood beyond the bars, her priestly garments shining like a moon against the dim stone confines. He was used to seeing her in ordinary clothes, her face obscured by her white mask, but she had the kind of voice that conveyed expression, even with her features hidden. Now, her annoyance was on full display.

  “Berras Emery,” she said with a long-suffering sigh. “What a mess you made.”

  His brow furrowed. “It can be fixed.”

  Ezril inclined her head. “Can it?” she mused in her airy way. “I think not. Your plan was rushed. And you, too eager. I warned you of that, didn’t I? Change may seem sudden when it comes, Berras Emery. A tree, split by a bolt of lightning. A flood overrunning the banks. But it’s easy to forget, the storm must gather first.”

  He gripped the bars. “Must you always speak in riddles like a priest?”

  “I am a priest,” she pointed out, “and they are not riddles, just because you fail to understand them.” She folded her hands inside the sleeves of her robes. “Nature provides an analog to every human problem. An answer to every question.”

  “I don’t need answers,” he muttered. “I need you to open the cell, so I can finish what I started.”

  “What you started…” she echoed, looking up, not at the prison ceiling, but the palace overhead. “You worked so hard to get within the walls, and here you are. So far, and yet, so close.”

  Berras grimaced, but said nothing.

  “But you are alone,” she went on. “No persalis, no borrowed magic, no contingent of willing hands.” Her gaze flicked to his bandaged fist. “Just you.”

  “If you help me—”