He found Kyra in the alley behind the Bitter Wake. He felt her before he saw her, the air in the street charged with psychic energy and a tingling sensation moving across his scalp, like touching one of those Van der Graaf generators at the science museum. Her veil was drawn, but when she spotted him, a look of relief flashed in her eyes, followed quickly by rage.

  “What the hell was that?” She leaned in close, her voice low, her hair smelling of funeral lilies. She looked like she was choosing between a hug and a headbutt. “You abandoned me back there.”

  Frank pulled her into the mouth of an alley, the touch of her soft body against his raising gooseflesh across his skin. He tried to put that thought out of his mind, if only so she didn’t read it.

  “I had to stop that dwarf,” he said.

  “Who was he?”

  “Iliquith’s old slave. The one who tried to frame me and Kelmar for murder.”

  “What the hell is he doing down here?”

  “If I had to guess, trying to lay low. Same thing we are. But if he’d gotten away, he would’ve caused us a lot of trouble.”

  “Did you catch him?”

  Frank looked down, his left hand clenching unconsciously. “Yeah, I caught him.”

  “What did he say?”

  A beggar shuffled past, his feet wrapped in strips of cracked leather. He carried an orange kitten in the crook of his arm, shielding it with a rag.

  That’s illegal, Frank thought. The idea came to him so suddenly, so forcefully, he almost didn’t question it. But an unpleasant afterthought lingered in his mind, something nakedly artificial, like the taste of diet soda. And he knew this thought didn’t belong to him.

  “Are cats illegal in Uqmai?” he said, his voice faraway.

  “What?” Kyra said. “Why are you asking that?”

  “Answer me.”

  “Yes. It’s been that way for years. Ever since –”

  “The Rat Cult.”

  “What does that have to do with the dwarf?”

  “Nothing. My mind just got away from me.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “There’s a bigger threat in play. Someone working in the shadows. Manipulating the biggest powers in the city.”

  Kya gripped his arm. “Who?”

  “The dwarf didn’t know. A city guard captain and a girl from the Rat Cult are involved. But they’re both working for someone else.”

  “A girl?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Did he give her name?”

  Frank shook his head. “The only name he gave me was the guard captain. Rallis.”

  “Why’d he set you up?”

  “Someone wants to raise tensions between House Saar’Jin and the Red Coin. And the city guard. And the Rat Cult.”

  “They’re trying to start a war. But why?”

  “The book.”

  “Sazhra’s book?”

  “That’s what the dwarf said. But that’s only because he didn’t know the truth.”

  “What’s the truth?”

  “This isn’t about the book. It’s about the Spire.”

  “What do we do?” Kyra’s voice was charged with fear. But fear of what, he wondered? The war? The Spire? Him?

  “We get back on our boat and sail out of here,” Frank said. “This doesn’t change our plans.”

  She sighed with relief and hugged him. “Bless you, Frank Farrell.”

  ***

  They returned to the boat as the black sun climbed above the eastern cliffs, bathing the world in sickly light and burning away the last of the morning mist. Sunbeams slanted across the broken water in long, wavering bars, painting everything in tones of brass and blood. The tide had shifted. The sea lapped at the pilings with a hollow suck-slap rhythm, like some enormous throat chewing through the docks.

  Frank’s sandalled feet were loud on the wooden planks, but otherwise the approach to Apson’s skiff was quiet, bordering on silent. No grunts of hard work. No sea-shanties. Not even any snoring.

  That wasn’t good. Apson didn’t seem like the strong, silent type. He seemed the type to curse and sweat his way through an honest day’s work. Frank knew lots of guys like that working on union film crews. The less they did, the more they belly-ached. And when they went quiet, it was only because something had gone wrong.

  The skiff floated in the red waters, bobbing as if bored with its own existence. The mooring rope was still tied in the same slouching knot Apson had used earlier, but there was no sign of the old man himself.

  “Something’s wrong,” Frank said under his breath.

  Kyra moved past him, her wrap fluttering in the breeze. “He’s probably asleep under a crate.”

  But she didn’t believe it. He could hear it in her voice, just a little too loud, a little too forced.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Frank stepped aboard and the wood of the deck groaned under his weight. He crouched low, searching for … something. He didn’t know what he was looking for exactly, but he’d know it when he saw it.

  He spotted lengths of curled rope, damp nets, a pair of oars, a sounding pole. He was about to turn back when he saw the puddle, a wine-dark stain seeping into the wood at the bow of the boat. The dregs of a broken jug lay in the scupper, the earthenware shards red in the light of the sun.

  “You see this?” Frank said, moving to gather up the broken pieces.

  Kyra made a show of sniffing the air. “He drank himself into a stupor, then probably wandered off somewhere to piss. Typical.”

  Frank didn’t reply. He knelt near the stain and ran two fingers through it. Still wet. Still warm, just barely. His fingertips came away streaked with red, but not all of it looked like wine. He tasted it. Beneath the sour, fermented sweetness lay a darker, meatier tang, the iron-rich scent of blood.

  His stomach turned.

  “He was here. Recently. And bleeding.”

  Kyra exhaled sharply. “He probably tripped, broke the jug, cut himself. Then limped off to find a bandage somewhere. And more wine.”

  “You think he wandered off on that foot?” Frank pointed to the far end of the skiff, where Apson’s boot still lay, soaked with salt, warped by the sea. The matching bare footprint led to the jug. There were no prints after that. Nothing in the wine. No drag marks. No limp. Just stillness.

  “You’re jumping to conclusions,” Kyra said, folding her arms. “One old drunk disappears and suddenly you think there’s a plot?”

  “I’ve been the plot,” Frank said. “It doesn’t take much. A wrong word. The wrong face. You make an enemy you didn’t even know existed, and people start crawling out of the gutters to kill you.”

  “You’re being paranoid.” Kyra turned away, scanning the docks. Despite her protests, Frank saw new suspicion creeping into her eyes.

  He moved to the edge of the skiff, resting a hand on the warped rail. The tide whispered below, and something down there, just beyond the hull, stirred the water, a ripple without wind, a shiver of displacement.

  He squinted, then looked back at the dock. People moved with morning purpose: sailors coiling ropes, urchins carrying bundles of driftwood, traders arguing over crates of brined fish.

  But no one looked toward Apson’s boat. No one acted like they’d seen anything.

  Too clean. Too quiet.

  “Thune, you think you can locate a drunken sailor on this dock?” he said.

  “A drunken sailor?” Thune said. “Undoubtedly. Thy drunken sailor. Mayhaps. But it will expose us. Every mentalist in the harbor shall feel my presence. Even those who are merely sensitive to psionics but without power themselves.”

  “Do we need that kind of attention?” Kyra said.

  “A man might be hurt.”

  Kyra knelt beside the jug shards. “And I’m sorry about that. I truly am. But his business isn’t our business.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because, I’m closer than I’ve ever been before, Frank. To getting off this island. To getting my revenge. To getting myself back. And I’m not going to let something like this get in that. Now we had an agreement. I held up my end. Now it’s time you held up yours.”

  “What if he’s in trouble because of us?” Frank said, heat rising behind his words.

  “Then that’s the cost of doing business in this city.”

  Frank’s jaw clenched. The edge of his hood fluttered in the wind off the bay, flashing his horns. He resettled it quickly, casting a wary eye over the docks to see if he’d been spotted.

  His hand drifted to his belt unconsciously, fingers brushing the edge of the fold where the brass key was hidden. There was no reason to touch it. Not really. And yet he imagined that he felt warmth emanating from it now – impossible through the oiled leather of his belt – felt also a pulse, faint and pleasant, like a lover’s heartbeat.

  “I don’t like this either,” Kyra said. “But we can’t save everyone. You’ve got enemies, Frank. We both do. Big ones. If we stop every time someone gets caught in your shadow, we’ll never make it out of Uqmai.”

  “You ever been left behind?” he said. “Forgotten about? Thrown away like a piece of trash the minute you became an inconvenience?”

  “Yes, I have. Everyone of those.”

  “Doesn’t feel good, does it?”

  She looked away, saying nothing.

  Wind tugged at the sailcloth above them. The sea beyond the quay glimmered dully, and from across the harbor came the low clang of bells, out of rhythm, sharp, urgent.

  Frank turned instinctively, heart thudding.

  The pyre was finished.

  It rose like a cruel monument where a chaotic pile of driftwood had stood before, a scaffolded platform lashed together by blackened rope, crowned with a girl in cage. She was awake inside it, her limbs hanging limp through the bars. She looked smaller than before. With her head tilted back, the blindfold made her appear eyeless, as though her head had been hollowed out by the rituals they’d forced on her.

  Beneath her, the rat cult circled. The plague-priests muttered prayers, drawing sigils in blood and ash across the pyre’s base. Rats chittered in a frenzy, climbing the posts, clinging to ropes, sniffing at the girl’s legs like carrion birds waiting for a signal.

  It would be lit soon.

  Frank watched in silence, unease nesting behind his ribs. He’d fought monsters. He’d faced blades, sorcery, worse. But there was something about the ritual of what was unfolding that chilled him more deeply than violence ever could.

  He stiffened.

  For a moment, the world pulled sideways. The quay faded. The mist returned. He was standing on a dark street, rain falling on slick cobblestones, someone tugging at his sleeve.

  “You can’t go,” she was saying. “You’ll never come back. And I need you here.”

  Then it was gone.

  The girl in the cage hung limp, her face unreadable behind the blindfold, her limbs slack with sickness. But something about her posture, the slope of her shoulders, twisted a knot in his gut.

  His hand tightened over the brass key.

  Suddenly he felt wet. He felt like screaming.

  And then came the sound of the horn, cutting through the air sharp as a blade. The ring of a handbell followed, shrill and authoritative.

  Frank’s blood turned cold.

  A tall figure appeared at the top of the quay, stepping into the sunlight like an actor arriving on stage. He was a crier and a Bronze Man, tall and barrel-chested, with heavy shoulders and a thick neck. He was garbed in a rich, white toga, stitched crosswise with a stripe of seafoam green and trimmed in gold. A pair of Tariff Lords flanked him, there to witness his proclamation and declare it binding.

  “By order of Her Radiance, Princess Sazhra of the Maelstrom Seat,” he called, voice projecting over the harbor with theatrical force, “let it be known. A bounty is hereby placed upon the head of Frank Farrell, grey-skinned abomination, horned and cursed, servant of forbidden rites and killer of the innocent!”

  Heads turned.

  Kyra grabbed his arm.

  “All citizens are hereby requested, and encouraged, to detain the mutant if seen. The reward for live capture is three hundred gold suns if delivered to the House of Saar’Jin, or one of its duly appointed agents. If captured alongside his witch, both alive, the reward shall be five hundred gold suns.”

  Whispers stirred like wind in a corn field. Frank could feel the gaze of the crowd as it moved up and down the quay, searching and frenzied. The words “grey-skinned” and “horned” lingered, like blood in still water.

  He pulled his hood lower, but it didn’t matter. He was too tall. Too broad. Too strange.

  The crier’s voice sharpened: “Furthermore, be warned all ye ship captains and harbor lords present. Any who shelter the fugitive shall be deemed enemies of House Saar’Jin, and betrayers of the princess herself. Any ship thought to harbor the demon will be rammed, boarded, put to the torch and sunk to the red depths. No questions asked. No quarter given.”

  Kyra’s grip tightened. “We need to disappear. Now.”

  Frank’s thoughts were a storm. Apson. The blood. The cult. The cage. The girl. The bounty. He didn’t know where to start. The whole city had just been given permission to hunt them like dogs, their every escape route shut down.

  “We stay put for now,” Frank said. “Let everything quiet down. It’s not like they’ll go boat to boat searching for us.”

  “You sure of that?” Kyra nodded across the quay, to the Broken Wake. Standing in the entranceway was a bony woman with a widow’s peak and teeth like cracked shells. It was the barmaid who had served them earlier, the one who had clocked Frank’s horns, the one who knew they were Apson’s friends.

  She turned and vanished into the Bitter Wake, without so much as a backward glance, as though she’d been called back to work.

  “I don’t think she saw us,” Kyra said.

  Frank didn’t speak, didn’t move. Instead, he listened. To the water lapping below, to the bells still ringing out of sync, and to the creeping certainty that the chum had just been dropped, and the frenzy was about to begin.