So she knew, when she woke with ash in her mouth and her head like the shallows after a storm, that she’d been drugged.
Light spilled thinly through the curtains of her cabin. She sat up, limbs shaking with the effort. She was old—older than most—wrinkles gouged like grooves into her brown skin, but her ringed hands were still steady, her bony spine straight. Sweat broke out as she tried to stand, and failed, sagging back onto the edge of the bed.
“Sanct,” she swore under her breath, and the pile of bones and fur that called itself a dog looked up from the rug nearby at the unexpected sound of his name.
Voices reached her from across the ship. They weren’t raised, but this was the Ferase Stras, and its walls kept no secrets, not from her. Two of the voices belonged to her nephews, but the rest were foreign. A small voice in the back of her own mind told her to lie back, to rest, to let Valick and Katros handle the customers. One day, they would have to run the market themselves. One day—but Maris was still the captain of this ship, and they might be grown men, but they were still young, still—
A shout went up, a pained cry slicing through the air, and Maris was on her feet. Her knees nearly gave way at the suddenness, but she made it to the cabinet by the door, dragged open a heavy drawer and shuffled through until she found the vial, the liquid inside like melted pearl. She tipped it back, swallowing the contents, which tasted of metal and left ice in their wake. Unpleasant, yes, but in seconds, her limbs had stopped shaking. Her breath steadied. Fresh sweat slicked her skin, but it had the pearl shine of the concoction, and as she wiped it from her brow, she felt her senses return to her in full.
She swept her robe from the nearby hook, and was still pulling it around her bony shoulders when the wards of the Ferase Stras shattered.
The force of it rocked through the ship, and Maris swore out loud again. Only a fool would try to rob the floating market. But she’d been alive long enough to know the world was full of fools.
She surged across the cabin, Sanct unfolding from his place and rising to follow, a pale ghost in her wake. She snatched her dagger from the desk, threw open the cabin door, and stepped out onto an upper deck, her silver hair loose and wild in the wind.
“Venskal,” she told the dog. Wait.
Maris silently crossed the maze of halls, checking for broken cabinets as she passed, signs of theft. The sounds of a struggle wafted up from the main deck, followed by a splash, the sound of boots shuffling over wood. She pulled a blade from its sheath and descended the stairs.
But by the time she reached the main deck, the scene was oddly still.
The ship swayed gently from the force of the blown ward, and Maris could smell the stain of blood and magic. A chest sat open and empty on the deck, and the body of a thief lay halfway to the rail, little more than a blackened shell. There was no sign of Katros, but several strides away she found her youngest nephew, Valick, his once-white tunic dark with blood. It pooled beneath him, a shadow creeping across the deck. His face was turned up, his eyes on the sky, open and unseeing.
Maris knelt beside him, ran a ringed hand over Valick’s black hair. Not a single strand of grey.
“Venskal,” she whispered again, this time to her nephew’s corpse.
She knew there was an order to the world, a give and take, a season for all things. She knew it was forbidden to wade into the stream of magic and try to change its course. But Maris Patrol was the captain of a ship that traded in forbidden things.
And she would have used every single one to bring her nephew back to life.
Maris slid a ring from her right hand. It was a heavy silver band, but when she closed her fist around it, the metal shattered, the shell crumbling away to reveal the thinnest length of golden thread.
She was still wrapping one end around her narrow wrist when Katros hauled himself over the side of the ship, boots sloshing as he landed on the deck.
Red ran into one eye, and his ruined tunic clung to his body, fresh blood blooming here and there against the once-white cloth. But the wounds were shallow, and he was upright, and dragging another body in his wake.
He dropped the second thief onto the deck, where the man shuddered and retched, seawater rattling in his chest. His head fell back, the strength going out of his limbs.
Maris’s mind raced. She should keep him alive, question him, find answers.
But Valick.
Her older nephew must have seen the struggle in her eyes, because he squeezed the sea from his shirt and said, “I broke his jaw. Doubt he can speak.”
She shot Katros a grateful look, then began to wind the golden thread around the man’s limp wrist instead of her own. It looked as brittle as a strand of hair, but it held firm, even biting into the skin. She twisted the other end around Valick’s palm, curling his dead fingers over it.