Page 1

Chapter 1

The train hissed like a warning, but Idonea disembarked anyway. No one said no to her mother.

The whistle split the night behind her, sharp enough to set her teeth on edge. Wheels ground against the rails, and the engine dragged itself away from the platform in a wash of smoke and hot metal. She stood still until the last carriage vanished into the dark between the pines.

Long enough to pretend she was deciding something. She wasn't.

Mist clung to her glasses. Idonea wiped it away with her sleeve and caught the thin yellow glow of a gas lamp in the lens. The train yard sat below Thalorica, pressed into the mountain's shadow like a guilty thought. Above, the skyport burned with light, all brass spars and mooring spires, though no dirigibles waited there. Too much wind off the sea, too many sensible captains elsewhere.

Jasmine grew wild along the platform fence. Soot had settled over the flowers until the sweetness came bruised and dirty. Draugaros always smelled like it was trying to survive rot.

Idonea adjusted the strap of her satchel and started upwards. Her boots struck the frosted cobbles too loudly. The cold gathered first at her neck, then beneath her collar, needling along the new scars and old ones alike. Every breath tasted of smoke, iron, and alchemical leavings from the lower factories. She catalogued it without meaning to. Nothing dangerous enough to stop for.

A woman sat on the stoop of a shuttered shop, sorting salt-blessed pebbles by lamplight. Her fingers were black to the second knuckle; a salt-cutter. The stain never washed out, not with vinegar, not with ash soap, and not with blood. Nellith told her that when Idonea was seven and still believed hands revealed the shape of a life. She'd been wrong, of course, hands lied as well as mouths.

The woman didn't look up, and Idonea didn't slow.

Three streets later, footsteps sounded behind her. Not the salt-cutter. The steps kept to her pace with careful, irritating patience.

Idonea slid one hand into her satchel, brushing past bone dust, thread, three vials. The salt was the second from the left, stoppered with cork. She found it by touch, tipped a pinch into her palm, and flicked it over shoulder without turning.

The footsteps didn't falter. Spirits stopped at salt. Anything half-born from the Current recoiled from it. Whatever followed her had either a body, a master, or a hunger too old for common warding.

Her fingers found the stiletto at her hip, which bled her more often than anyone else.

The footsteps followed her through every turn. Thalorica's lamps flickered as she passed, throwing shadows across the cobbles. She kept her eyes forward. Shadows in this city always had bad manners, sometimes worse. As a girl she'd once asked Nellith why the lamps were kept so low if everyone knew what moved between them. Because fear is cheaper than oil, Nellith had replied. It was one of the few lessons her mother never needed to repeat.

Nellith's porch light appeared at the end of the lane, small and steady, and infuriatingly welcome.

The house stood behind its crooked bronze gate, two weatherboard storeys of deep blue paint peeling like old skin. Salt had worried the iron railings into lace, and the wild garden lay dead under frost.

The footsteps quickened. So did she.

Idonea cut through the gate and crossed the garden path at a near run. Her breath shortened. She hated that, for panic wasted air.

The door gave before her shoulder. She slammed it shut behind her and dropped the iron chain into place. Her satchel hit the floor. For one still moment, she listened. But there was no breath beyond the door, nor scrape of claw or boot. She leaned close to the glass pane and saw only garden, the gate, the lamplit lane. Unease skittered across her skin.

"Nellith?" She took one measured breath.

"You're late," her mother called.

Of course. There'd be no checking as to the why. That wasn't important.

Nellith stood at the top of the spiral staircase, a figure carved of calm and stone. Silver scars spider-webbed across her warm beige skin. Her obsidian eyes were too dark to reflect the light properly.

"We have to finish the tattoo before midnight," Nellith said.

Nellith greeted her the way she greeted weather, as an inconvenience expected to pass.

"A fine welcome," Idonea muttered.

It would be the last birthday she'd have to endure this ritual. That thought had carried her through the train ride. It'd have to carry her now.

"Well, up you come." Nellith turned towards the sanctum. "Shoes off."

Idonea looked down at her boots. For half a second she considered keeping them on to prove she was no longer a child. Then she sighed and tugged them off.

The metal stairs rattled under her bare feet. She'd never liked the sound. The sanctum waited above, close and dim, smelling of cedar, musk, dust, and old candle smoke. Dark-wood shelves lined the walls, crowded with tomes, some Nellith had forbidden her to read. No candles burned tonight, only one gas lamp flickered beside the tattoo chair.