Page 1 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

one

THE CITY WAS ALIGHT with a familiar coldness as Nore slipped through the streets toward the harbor. Dawn was tipping over the horizon, casting the streets in an ethereal gray fog. It was one of the few times when Nettlepool didn’t look like a cesspit.

She moved easily, avoiding the notice of the patrolling guards. Perhaps they would stop her if she were a lone woman in her expensive cloak, maybe even offer an escort home; but with the ragged elbows of her coat and her hair tucked up into a cap, they didn’t spare her a second glance.

She was nearly done with her work for the night: she had passed a message to a sailor drinking in one of the inland pubs; then retrieved a notebook from a nook on Carver Street, to be secreted away in her office the next morning; and then, dressed as a storehouse runner, flirted with a cook in the kitchens of a house belonging to a textile merchant who was supposedly having a rather secretive dinner party this evening. She had one task left, and though she was thinking of her bed and the hours she was not spending in it, this had to be resolved.

In the harbor, there was the usual clamor of morning so early it could barely be labeled as such: the first of the shipping vessels were coming in, clearing the port guard and declaring wares to the overnight clerks—with captains cutting whatever deals they needed to to avoid the worst of the Lindle import taxes. The air was thick with the scent of fish and brine, the harbor overloud with the clapping of waves against docks and the early cry of gulls, all the machinations of a new day. Nore kept her head down to avoid detection and tucked her hands in her pockets until she reached the Gleaming Swine, one of the quayside pubs. It served strong, dark coffee alongside ale in the hours when night bled into morning. She made her way across the worn boards, keeping her head ducked as she swerved against the knots of laughing sailors and brawling merchants, moving around the long bar—there, on the other side, was a door that opened to a deck that hovered perilously over the water. Someday, Nore was certain, the wood would finally fail and it would splinter away into the sea.

She looked up, scanning the tables in the gap between the high rise of her scarf and the low brim of her hat. At the farthest table from the door, she found an old man in a worn oilskin coat. His left eye was milky and sightless and his fingers curved with arthritis, possibly beyond the point of feeling the cold.

“I have a job for you,” she said, dropping into the chair across from him without a greeting.

The old man looked up at her, nose wrinkled, then spit over the banister of the deck. His saliva landed, filmy and white, on the dirty water below. “Bah.”

“I’ll pay.”

“I know,” the man said. His fingertips were dark with lead as he sketched—to Nore’s upside-down perspective, it looked like a caricaturized impression of one of the meaner port guards. It was, Nore had to admit, an illustration that captured the sense of the man, if not his exact likeness. “You always do. And I say bah.”

“So you’ll do it?”

He raised his gaze to her face. Nore didn’t know the man’s real name, just as he did not know hers. She’d heard him called many things, both names and random nouns: Alba, Owen, Jager, Kitten, Anchor. None of them seemed to fit. Some other regulars simply called him Hands, which almost made sense—the man’s lead-lined hands were the most distinctive thing about him, his palms burned from some long-ago fire on a ship that no longer visited Lindan’s waters.

What she did know was that he was reliable enough, and she had used him for more than one task in the past. Over the years, he had become something of a trusted supplier for her.

“How much?”

“Fifty silvers, if you find what I need, for your time. Plus market rate for your findings.”

His mouth was already poised to protest, but he stopped to consider this. It was more than double what she usually paid—because it was her money this time, and her own reputation on the line. “No matter the outcome?”

“I trust you’ll find me what I need.”

The man sighed, leaned back in his chair, and sighed again. He idly tapped his pencil against the paper, looking out at sea. She had thought, more than once, to ask him why he didn’t sail anymore when he so clearly loved the sea—but not every secret was her business. He left her alone to do her bidding, didn’t care about her name or background or purposes. He only cared about her coin. She respected him enough to do the same.

“Tell me what you’re looking for, then.”

Nore chewed her lip. She was fully aware of the stickiness in what she was about to say. “I need something that will disable magic.”

Hands studied her with his good eye. “Use a protection spell,” he said.

“It’s not enough.”

“What about that repellent paste I found for you last autumn? That should be enough to protect you from—”

“That only works,” Nore said through gritted teeth, “on spellwork produced by an instructive system. And there are no shields I know of, spells or physical, that disable magic from all systems.”

The man looked at her shrewdly. “If you narrow the magic, it’ll be a much easier fix—and cheaper.”

But she couldn’t narrow the system. What Nore needed was breadth. She’d already tried the repellent paste, which worked for instructive systems—systems where magic could be learned by anyone in the system, like in Lindan, without natural-born ability—and it had done nothing. She’d also tried a shielding spell, which usually worked on magic made in a constructive system, where artifacts were created and imbued with power, like spellstones; that hadn’t worked, either. Nore had nothing that would work on consumptive magic—in which the magical potion was consumed—nor could she protect herself from an inherent mage, gifted power through one’s blood (though inherent magic was often tied to geographical borders, so the possibilities were limited).

She had tried everything she could think of to solve her current problem, and clearly, the mage she was dealing with was not using Lindle magic. Or maybe worse: they weren’t only using Lindle magic.

She needed something strong. Something that worked for everything.

“I don’t care how much it costs,” Nore said. She was not often reckless with her money, but she would spare as much as was needed to rid herself of this nuisance.

Hands raised an eyebrow. “For that to work, it’ll need to be—”