First things first.

  She dropped the slip of paper and turned, abandoning the deck, the ship’s contents unfolding in her mind as she wove through crowded corridors, past cabinets and cases and alcoves that to anyone else would have seemed cluttered. But she knew where she was going, and found what she was looking for.

  A black box, a gold eye carved into the top.

  Inside, half a dozen grooves in a velvet-lined tray. Four of the slots were empty. The remaining two held panes of colored glass, each the size of Sanct cards.

  Her nephews were sharp. Chances were they had not forgotten anything important.

  But Maris wasn’t in the habit of taking chances.

  She drew a glass card from the case and returned topside, held the brittle pane up and spoke.

  “Enis,” she said.

  Begin.

  The glass pane fogged momentarily between her fingers, and when it cleared, the deck beyond began to draw itself back, and back, and back, retreating through the minutes until the thieves were there again, having just set foot aboard her ship.

  “Skar.”

  Stop.

  The image shuddered, held, the figures frozen as they set the trunk down on the deck in front of her nephews.

  Maris strode forward, putting herself in the center of the scene, her back to the image of Valick and Katros so she could better see the thieves.

  “Enis.”

  The scene rolled forward, just as it had. She turned in a circle as she watched it all play out, saw Valick’s death and the thieves’ attack, the first broken by the wards, the second gone with Katros over the side, saw the parcel break against the deck, only to be salvaged by the third.

  And as he stumbled, dazed and bleeding toward the ship’s edge, she saw it, through the tear in his shirt—a tattoo, or perhaps a brand, across his ribs. And though she couldn’t see the entire image, she knew what she was looking for, and there it was: a hand.

  Then the thief was gone, over the side, and Maris was there once more, kneeling over Valick as the past caught up to the present, and the glass splintered in her hand, and turned to sand, and blew away.

  Maris sighed, and felt every one of her many, many years, and then she turned to Katros.

  “Search the bodies,” she said. “And throw them over.”

  “And then?” asked Valick.

  Maris glanced at the horizon. The other ship was gone. Her aching fingers cracked as they closed into a fist. No one stole from the Ferase Stras.

  “Clean yourself up,” she told him. “I have a favor to call in.”

  Part Two

  THE CAPTAIN AND THE GHOST

  I

  Delilah Bard leaned against the rail of the Grey Barron, watching the prow split the sea.

  The wind was up, propelling the ship with enough force to send up a spray of mist that shimmered where it caught the light.

  The sails snapped in the breeze, and Lila tipped her head back, brown eyes squinting at the sky. A stranger would never know that one of those eyes was real and one was fake. Would never know that the one she’d lost hadn’t been brown at all, but black as pitch, carved out by a two-bit doctor back in London, England—the only London she’d known of, then—when she was just a child. As if it had been a poisoned thing, a spreading rot, and not a sign of strength, a marker of extraordinary power, once-in-a-generation magic.

  If only she’d been born in this world, the one that worshipped magic, instead of the one that had forgotten it. But she was here now.

  She held out her hand, calling the water to her.

  “Tyger, tyger,” she murmured, even though she no longer needed words to focus her power. She simply curled her fingers, and the water answered, drew itself around her wrist and hardened there into an icy bangle. Easy, effortless. As natural as breathing.

  Lila smiled.

  Over the years, she had been many things.

  A con artist. A captain. A traveler. A mage.

  Once upon a time—and a world away—she’d been nothing but an orphan, a pickpocket, a thief with dreams of stealing a ship and sailing away. Dreams of becoming a pirate, laying claim to foreign seas. Dreams of fine knives and good coins, and more than anything, of freedom.

  It had been hard-won, bought and paid for in years and battle and blood—not always her own—but at last, she had it all.

  She flicked her fingers, and the icy bangle shattered with enough force that a few bits of ice drove into the rail. She plucked them out, and dropped them over the side. In her head, she heard Alucard muttering about his ship. But of course, it wasn’t his ship, not anymore.

  She had rechristened it, much to the old captain’s displeasure, but the Night Spire had had its time at sea; now it was the Grey Barron’s turn.

  The Barron had spent its first few years as an independent vessel, under no flag but its own. It had been pleasant enough, to sail for the sake of sailing, to discover new ports, new markets, new seas. But Lila had spent the first nineteen years of her life with one goal, and in its wake, she found herself coveting a new purpose. She was almost relieved when the rumors began to spread, first of more trouble with the empire’s reluctant allies, Faro and Vesk, and then, worse still, of trouble at home. So Alucard had asked her to put the ship to use. To go where no royal vessel could, and do what no royal vessel would.

  To spy. To sack. To sabotage. To plunder, and sink, and fight, and steal.

  To plunge in like a knife, and disappear again before anyone knew they had been cut, let alone that they were bleeding out.

  Now and then, when it suited, the Grey Barron would still don the Spire’s black sails, become the shadow on the sea again, but today, its sails were white, its hull a nondescript grey. With luck, they would blend right in with all the other smugglers and thieves traveling down the Blood Coast.

  Some places earned their names by dint of nature—they had black sands, perhaps, red silt, green tides—but the Blood Coast was not one of them. No, when the powers carved up Arnes and Faro and Vesk centuries before, there was a seam, a single juncture where all three empires met. No one could agree on the exact boundary, and so, after decades of discontent, of sabotage and sunken ships, the stretch had earned its moniker.

  And they were bound for the capital, the infamous port of Verose.

  Lila scanned the horizon, waiting for the jagged line of the city’s pale cliffs to take shape on the horizon. The Arnesian guard had done their best to clean up Verose decades before, to drive out the worst of the violence and impose a kind of order—the old king, Rhy’s father, Maxim Maresh, had even served a stint as captain of its base. But Verose had proved a lawless place, by nature or by choice.

  And Lila loved it.

  It was the kind of place where blood spilled often, every gathering was always one drawn blade away from a brawl, and—

  A bottle shattered somewhere behind her on the deck, followed by a raucous cheer. Lila sighed, and turned toward her crew. Tav and Vasry were jostling, while the usually stern-faced Stross barked in laughter, all three faces red. The only one missing was Vasry’s wife, Raya. Lila craned her head and scanned the rigging until she found the woman, black-haired and pale as marble, perched on the masthead. The sun was high, and hot, but the woman didn’t seem to mind. Her gaze dropped to Lila, her eyes the same icy blue as the glacier she’d come from.

  “Didn’t think I could do it, did you?” Vasry was whooping in Arnesian, and it was clear from the volume of his voice and the way he swayed that he had emptied the bottle before breaking it. “But I’ve been practicing.”

  Lila looked down at the shards of glass littering her deck. “Practicing what, exactly?” she asked.

  Tav made a small explosive gesture with both hands, and mouthed the word boom. Lila raised a brow. Vasry was a wind mage by nature, though he had never been a very good one. As far as she could tell, he’d gotten far more use out of his looks than his magic. His hair was a tawny gold, his eyes fringed thick with lashes, and, obnoxiously, he seemed to be getting more handsome with age instead of less, which came in handy when someone needed charming, less so when their ship could use a strong gust.

  “Here, here,” he said, handing Stross another bottle. “Give this one some air.”

  “That better be empty,” said Lila the second before her first mate hurled the bottle up over the side of the ship. Vasry’s hand shot out, eyes narrowed and lips moving. Clearly he meant to hit the glass with some concussive force, but he missed, and the bottle simply arced, and fell, untouched, landing with a quiet plop in the surf below.

  “Oops,” he said, and after a moment of silence, all three men broke out laughing again. Vasry hiccupped. Lila shook her head.

  “I think you’ve all had enough.”

  Tav spread his arms. “But Captain,” he said, with mock sincerity, “this is meant to be a pleasure vessel.”

  “Charted for a lark,” added Vasry.

  “That’s right,” grumbled Stross, suddenly defensive. “We’re just being thorough.”

  In that moment, she regretted letting them pick the Barron’s cover for this particular mission, even as she took up the last of the bottles waiting on the crate. She went to take a swig, only to find it empty.

  Lila gritted her teeth. “Tell me there’s still liquor somewhere on this ship.”

  The three men had the decency to look at least a little guilty. “Should still be some in the hold.”

  She sighed, then turned and tossed the empty bottle up into the air.

  Instead of splaying her hand, she closed it, not into a fist but a pistol. Thumb up, finger pointed. She followed the bottle’s arc with her finger, and squeezed the imaginary trigger.

  The bottle shattered with a bang. The crew whooped and cheered, and the captain stifled a small smile as she strode away, the sounds following her down into the hold.

  II

  Lila hummed as she moved between the crates, her voice echoing faintly against the hull.

  The Grey Barron’s hold was home to many things. There were stores, of course, enough supplies that they could stay at sea for weeks without calling into port. But there was also plenty to trade, or keep—bolts of fine cloth and scrying stones; Veskan masks and Faroan mantles; books of poetry, histories, and spells; and of course, a fair number of weapons stashed among the crates, since her burgeoning collection had long overflowed her private quarters. Everyone deserved a hobby, and just because Lila sailed for the crown didn’t mean she couldn’t serve herself.

  The hold was also home to a handsome collection of spirits, skimmed from private stashes or lifted from the captain’s cabins of the ships they crossed, the ones left sinking in their wake.

  “How do you know that the Sarows is coming…” she sang, pulling open the wine cage. Her fingers danced across the bottles on the rack, tracing the empty spaces like missing teeth.

  Just being thorough, Stross had said.

  “Bastards,” she muttered, just before an arm closed around her throat.

  It wrenched her back with sudden force, lifting her off her feet. Her hand went to the dagger at her hip, but the attacker’s hand went there, too, pinning her fingers against the hilt before she could draw the blade. His grip was solid stone, but she still had another hand, and she used it, dragging free a second blade and driving it blindly back into his chest.

  It should have found flesh. It didn’t.

  Instead, the attacker let go, flinging her forward into the rack with clattering force. A bottle of summer wine went crashing to the floor, and shattered.

  “Oh, you’ll pay for that,” she hissed, turning just in time to block the blade that came slicing toward her throat. Beyond the scraping steel, she saw him—the flash of a black mask, the ripple of a coat, a pair of lips twitching into a smile. But her attacker made no sound. Not when she spoke, and not when he struck, and not when he leapt back from the boot she tried to slam into his chest. By the time he landed, her dagger was already flying. It sliced through the air, embedded itself in a beam as the attacker twisted out of the way, vanishing behind a stack of crates.

  Lila called the dagger back into her fingers. She held her breath, listened for the sound of steps in the hold. Bodies took up space. They made noise.

  Overhead, the crew were singing a shanty, oblivious.

  Down here, the only sounds were the slosh of sea against the hull, and the heartbeat thudding in her chest.

  Lila didn’t call for help. Instead, she forced herself to close her eyes. Block out the cluttered hold, the tip and sway of the boat, and stretch her senses, feeling for the other body as if it were just another element for her to touch. Not wood or water but blood and bone.

  There.

  She blinked, her hand cutting sideways at one of the crates. It slammed back, wood scraping over the floor, and she readied her blade, expecting the attacker to dive out of the way. Instead, he vaulted over the top, weight slamming into her, both of them crashing down to the floor. They rolled, and when they stopped, he was on top, but her blade was at his throat.

  His chest rose and fell.

  Her steel kissed his skin, but didn’t draw blood.

  “You’re lucky,” she said, “that I have such a steady hand.”

  The hood of his coat had fallen back, and even in the dull light of the hold, his copper hair shone, a single silver streak glinting at his temple. Lila tugged on the mask that hid the top half of his face, and it came away, revealing a pair of mismatched eyes, one blue, the other black.

  “Admit it,” said Kell Maresh. “I caught you off guard.”

  Lila shrugged. “I still would have killed you, in the end.”

  He raised a brow. “Are you sure?”

  She turned the fight over in her mind. If he had used a blade instead of his arm. If he had gone for the kill right then and there, instead of the game, would she have been able to feel the intent? Would the knife have sung in his fingers, that tune she knew so well?

  “Fine,” she said, still beneath him on the floor. “In my own hold, on my own ship, you caught me off guard. Now get off me,” she said, “unless you’d rather stay down here and have a tumble.”

  It was worth it, just to see the color rising in Kell’s cheeks.

  “You could put the mask back on,” she added, and his blush only deepened.

  He tried to hide it with a frown as he rose off her, offering a hand to help her to her feet. Lila ignored it, stood, and pushed past him, returning to the open wine cage. She fetched up the bottom half of the broken bottle, studying the shallow pool of ruined summer wine.

  “I was saving that,” she muttered, looking back over her shoulder.

  Kell wasn’t listening. He was too busy fumbling with his coat, turning it inside out, trading the black he’d worn when he’d attacked her for red, then red for blue, and finally blue for grey. Each side of the peculiar coat was a different one entirely, from the color to the cut to the buttons and clasps, to the contents of the pockets, and each had a story. She recognized most of them by now—here was the one he’d been wearing the night they’d met; here was the royal crimson with gold buttons down the front, the one he wore as prince; here, the pale grey he’d donned in the Essen Tasch, when he first became Kamerov Loste—but every now and then she’d see one she’d never noticed, tucked like secrets in a life she knew so well.

  He found the one he was looking for—the charcoal coat he’d come to favor in their years at sea—and he shrugged it on just as a voice rang out from the deck above.

  Not Vasry or Tav calling down for wine, but Stross, his deep tones booming across the ship.

  “Hals!”

  Land.

  III

  THE SOUTHERN POINT

  SEVEN YEARS AGO

  “Hals!”

  Stross’s voice rang through the ship a moment after something scraped against the hull. One second Lila was asleep beneath a mound of quilts, and the next she was lurching out of bed, balance thrown by the steadiness of the floor beneath her legs.

  She swore, shoving her socked feet into the boots she kept beside the bed, and sliding into her coat as she flung open the cabin door. Kell was already there, his own coat in his hands, his face taut with alarm, and moments later Vasry and Tav spilled into the hall, the former disheveled but dressed, the latter wearing far less but clutching a sword.

  Lila opened her mouth to speak, but she was cut off by the sound that a captain never, ever wanted to hear: the splintering of wood.

  She surged up the steps onto the deck. A pale mist surrounded the ship, and the sun sat somewhere below the horizon, the sky promising a dawn that hadn’t yet arrived, but in the soft light, she saw Stross gripping the rail, and staring down over the side.

  “You’re supposed to call land before we hit it!” she snarled, breath pluming in the frigid air.

  “It’s not land,” said Kell, from the upper deck.

  She stomped over to the nearest rail, looked down, and swore even louder when she saw that he was right. The ship hadn’t struck land.

  It had struck ice.

  Three weeks before, Lila had decided to point the ship south, and sail until something stopped them. And now, at last, something had.

  She should have seen it coming, should have turned back days before, when she’d first woken to find frozen slivers floating on the surface of the water. When the cold turned sharp enough to drag its blade across her skin. When Kell’s coat started offering him warmer and warmer sides, cowls and hoods and collars lined with fleece, gloves already waiting in the pockets.

  They should have turned back, but the world was vast, and she was hungry.

  And now they were stuck.

  This wasn’t an icy plinth they’d struck against, a cap floating in the sea. There was no sea anymore. It had frozen solid. Which meant she would have to unfreeze it. She sighed, and swung her leg over the side.

  “Captain,” called Stross, but she waved him away.

  “Lila,” warned Kell, but she ignored him.

  She was an Antari, the strongest magician in the world. She could move a ship.