The third man said nothing, only stared at the floating market, and wondered how many of the stories were true. If there really were talismans aboard that could split mountains, or plunge thousands into sleep. Blades that drew out secrets instead of blood, and mirrors that showed a person’s future, and metal cages that trapped and stored a person’s magic, their mind, their soul.
“Should we just go in?” asked the second.
“Be my guest,” said the first. “I told them we didn’t need three men for this mission.”
The second man rubbed his fingers, calling up a flame. It flickered to life but as he brought it to the door, the fire guttered, snuffed out by the force of the market’s wards.
The third man tugged nervously at his tunic.
He was dressed, like the others, in the rough-spun black common to pirates. It was scratchier than he thought it would be. Olik never mentioned that. Nor how the constant rocking of a boat could turn one’s stomach.
Finally, the door rattled open.
He looked up, expecting to see the infamous Maris Patrol, but found a middle-aged man instead, dressed in a crisp white cowl.
The captain’s oldest nephew, Katros. The steward of the ship.
He was broad-shouldered and dark-skinned, a sheen of sweat on his brow, as though he’d been ill. But he wasn’t ill, strictly speaking. He was drugged. That was part of the plan. Katros’s younger brother, Valick, took a skiff to shore twice a month, and came back laden with food and drink, the latest shipment of which had been laced with savarin, an odorless powder that weakened the body and clouded the mind. The bulk of the toxin had been put in the wine that Maris favored, from a vintner who now served the Hand.
She must have been in a generous mood.
It wasn’t poison, he reminded himself, as Katros swayed on his feet, his skin taking on a greyish hue. Olik wasn’t in the business of murder—went out of his way to avoid needless death, and so would he. Besides, there was too good a chance the spellwork aboard would catch it. But some people took savarin for pleasure. The danger was only in the dosage, and that was in the drinker’s hands.
Katros Patrol cleared his throat, and steadied himself.
“Tokens,” he said, holding out a hand.
The first man toed their trunk. “We’re selling, not buying.”
But the steward of the ship only shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
The third man understood. This wasn’t just a doorway. The entrance to the Ferase Stras was a threshold, and all good thresholds demanded a price. A cost to board the market, a payment for simply setting foot among its wares. And according to the tales, nothing so common as coin would do. You had to part with something special, to add to Maris’s collection.
They’d docked earlier at Sasenroche for just that purpose.
The first man held out a piece of paper, bound with ribbon. It was a page from a book that once belonged in Black London.
The second man produced a pencil, its core filled with powdered blood instead of charcoal, and spelled to write only truths.
When it was his turn, the third man reached into his pocket, fingers tracing the cool rim of the glass before drawing it out. It was a disc, roughly the size of his palm. He’d spent the last hours of the trip, from the black market to this one, staring into its surface.
It was spelled to answer only one question: Am I going to die today?
When the glass turned black, the answer was yes.
He didn’t want to part with the token—felt deeply that it was meant to be his—but told himself if that was true, it would find its way back.
Powerful objects had a way of doing that.
As he held it up one last time, he asked the question in his mind, and sighed in relief when the glass stayed clear.
Of course he wouldn’t die, he thought.
This was his story, after all.
He watched as the three tokens vanished in Katros Patrol’s white linen sleeve. And then the door to the floating market was swinging wide, ushering them into their fate.
* * *
The room was dim, and cluttered with cabinets. Items gleamed from every shelf, the only clean surface a broad wooden desk, beside which stood a large black sphere, though whether it was made of glass or stone he couldn’t tell. It sat in its stand like a globe, but its surface was as smooth and blank as the maps that led to the Ferase Stras.
The third man glimpsed a mask, a lovely piece of molten silver, on a mantle, and his fingers twitched with longing.
“Where is the captain?” asked the first man, eyeing the empty desk.
“She will come when she is needed,” said Katros, leading them through the office door, and out onto the decks. There they found Maris’s other nephew, Valick, leaning against the mast, dressed in the same unblemished white—so out of place amid the salt and grime of the sea—and either he did not drink or he had a stronger constitution, because he seemed hale and steady, untouched by the savarin.