ONE
They say summer storms in Caraza bring more than rain. When lightning crackles across the sky and the air gets thick enough to chew, it means trouble isn’t far behind.
Marlow wasn’t one for superstition, but when the sky broke open the moment she stepped onto the dock at Breaker’s Neck, even she had to admit the timing was portentous.
On the muddy isthmus below the dock, husks of rust and steel sat beached like whale carcasses, some of them nearly intact and some already gutted. Laborers stripped the hulls like scavengers picking the bones of some great behemoth, the crash of falling debris indistinguishable from the thunder shaking the sky.
Generally, Marlow avoided Breaker’s Neck as much as possible, and not just because of the noise and the thick stench of scorched metal and brine that emanated from the ship-breaker’s yard. Most parts of the Marshes were loud and smelly, but Breaker’s Neck presented an additional threat—it was Copperhead territory. A dangerous place for anyone in the Marshes to find themselves, but especially risky for Marlow.
But it wasn’t like she had much of a choice. This case had dragged on for almost two weeks, and time was up. Tonight was the grand premiere of The Ballad of the Moon Thief, and if its prima ballerina had any hope of performing, Marlow was going to have to brave the danger.
Tugging the hood of her jacket over her head, she sloshed across the crooked plankway that sagged along the isthmus, heading for the rusted remains of an empire dreadnought. The ship was keeled over and half sunk in the mud, but unlike the other ships around it, there was no one stripping this one apart.
Marlow carefully climbed down the steel ladder that rose from the dreadnought’s cavernous belly, hopping down the last few rungs and landing on what had once been the bulkhead of one of the compartments. A hermetic hatch led to the main deck. Pushing a wet strand of hair out of her face, Marlow marched over to it.
“Nightshade.” As she uttered the password, the handle spun and the hatch swung inward.
With her stomach squirming like a bucket of crayfish, Marlow stepped into the Blind Tiger.
Bioluminescent lamps glinted off the corrugated walls of the dreadnought, turning the whole bar a malevolent dark purple. Voices clambered over one another, punctuated by the high notes of clinking glasses. This early in the evening the crowd was thin, with no real entertainment save a lone zither player plucking in the corner.
Marlow made a slow circuit of the speakeasy, cataloging each face: The soothsayer reading some bright-eyed young woman’s fortune, the bracelets on her arms jangling as she shook a bowl of runestones. A man drinking alone, gaze darting around the room as though worried someone might catch him there—an off-duty cop, or a cheating husband, Marlow guessed. A group of gamblers clustered around one of the tables, arguing over dice.
But none matched the description of one Montgomery Flint. Marlow’s curse dealer contact had provided a fairly detailed account—long dark hair, a mole under his lip, and a jade earring stud in one ear.
There was still no sign of Flint by the time Marlow reached the long, curved bar that took up the stern of the hollowed-out deck. Sliding onto one of the silver stools, she waved the bartender over and ordered a Maiden’s Prayer. She leaned back in her seat as if she were merely taking in the atmosphere rather than keeping an eye out for Flint.
Her gaze lingered on a tall woman who sat a few stools down, simply but elegantly dressed in a sharp black suit. Short-cropped dark hair fell in a gentle wave over her eye and a row of silver earrings glinted against the shell of her ear. One slender hand was curled around a thick-rimmed tumbler, and when she noticed Marlow staring at her, she raised the glass in a tiny salute before taking a sip.
Marlow’s pulse picked up, and it took her a second to realize why. She’d seen this woman before—not long ago, in fact. She’d boarded the same water-taxi that had ferried Marlow to Breaker’s Neck.
Marlow turned back to her drink, heart hammering as she raised it to her lips. The cocktail burned on its way down.
It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Lots of people took water-taxis. And lots of people came to speakeasies, even ones owned by Copperheads. But that thought did little to soothe the unease prickling up Marlow’s spine.
Because for the past few weeks, Marlow had been growing more and more convinced that she was being followed. Coincidence after coincidence—seeing the same old man pass by the spellshop where she worked some days, and again browsing a crayfish stall at the Swamp Market. A messenger boy that Marlow had seen not twice but three times in a single day earlier that week.
It was a pattern. And in Marlow’s line of work, patterns didn’t go unexamined.
You’re here for a case, Briggs, she reminded herself. Don’t get distracted.
A flash of movement at the very end of the bar seized her attention. Marlow watched as a man with long dark hair swept into a shadowy corridor that branched off from the main deck. Caught in the glow of the violet light, a jade stud winked in his earlobe.
There you are. Marlow threw back the rest of her drink and pushed away from the bar to follow, the elegant woman forgotten for the moment.
The corridor that Flint had disappeared into was empty, and dimly lit with sickly green bioluminescent lamps. Three lavatory doors lined the right side, with lights above the doorknob indicating whether they were occupied. Only the nearest one was illuminated.
Marlow rolled her shoulders against the wall across from the door and waited. She toyed with her lighter, flicking it open and shut as she hummed softly along to the faint twang of the zither, trying to remember the name of the song. As the notes reached a crescendo, the lavatory door swung open.
“Hi there,” Marlow said as her mark stepped into the hallway. He glanced at her, surprised but not scared. Not yet.
“Can I help you, sweetheart?” he drawled.
Sweetheart? It was like he wanted to get hexed.
“You sure can!” she chirped, shouldering off the wall. “You can start by telling me why you cursed the prima ballerina of the Monarch Ballet.”
He stilled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Here’s how this is going to go,” Marlow said, pushing her hands into her jacket pockets. “I’m going to ask you once, very nicely, to hand over the curse card. And if I have to ask a second time, well—I won’t be as nice.”
Flint stared at her, weighing his options. Then, without warning, he shoved Marlow back and bolted down the corridor. Marlow stumbled, her legs slipping out from under her as she careened against the wall. But she already had the hex card pinched between her thumb and her knuckle.
“Congelia,” she muttered. Glowing red glyphs swirled out from the card and shot toward her target like an eel slicing through dark water. The spell struck him between the shoulder blades and he crumpled like wet paper.
Marlow climbed to her feet and stalked toward him.
“I lied,” she said, nudging his arm with her boot as he groaned in pain. “I’m not going to ask a second time.”
She rolled him over and briskly patted down his jacket while he let out a few thready breaths and whines of pain. Marlow resisted rolling her eyes. It was just a simple Immobilizing hex. No need to be such a child about it.
Something crinkled in one of his inner pockets. Throwing a glance over her shoulder to make sure they were still alone in the corridor, Marlow withdrew a pamphlet.
No, not a pamphlet. A playbill, emblazoned with the same black-and-gold promotional image that Marlow had seen plastered across the city for the past few weeks. The golden Sun King’s court and the face of the prima ballerina, Corinne Gaspar, staring up at it, her dark skin luminous against the silver moon. The Ballad of the Moon Thief, the playbill read in bold, dark letters.
Marlow thumbed through the playbill. Tucked inside was a ticket to the ballet and a black curse card, marked with stripes of interlocking gold diamonds. She turned the card over, revealing an intricately etched illustration of a girl dancing with music notes floating above her. The illustration moved, showing the girl falling back, one arm thrown dramatically over her face. Gold and white glyphs ran along the edges of the card. Marlow could tell that the spell had been cast because the glyphs were no longer glowing, their magic used up.
“What’s this?” Marlow said, waving the curse card in Flint’s panicked face as she pocketed the ticket. “A curse that afflicts its subject with debilitating vertigo every time they hear a certain piece of music. Such a strange coincidence, because I happen to know that Corinne Gaspar is suffering from this exact problem. How do you suppose that happened?”
Flint gurgled in reply, his face locked in a rictus of surprise. Seizing a handful of his gold silk shirt, Marlow hauled him upright so he wouldn’t choke on his own spit.
“You want to tell me why a midlevel ship-breaker foreman spent over two hundred pearls to curse the prima ballerina in the Monarch Ballet?”
She’d considered a host of theories about who was behind Corinne’s curse and what had motivated them. Corinne had suspected a jealous ex-boyfriend out to sabotage her—an easy, if obvious, answer. But the ex-boyfriend had turned out to be a dead end, and Marlow had turned her attention to the Monarch Ballet’s biggest competitor, the Belvedere Theater. After all, what better way to ensure the Monarch took a loss than to sabotage their biggest draw? But she hadn’t been able to link them to Flint. The only things she knew about him were his name and that he’d bought this curse off a dealer who, as luck would have it, owed Marlow a favor.
“You want to know?” Flint slurred. “I’ll tell you.”
He spat in Marlow’s face. A glob of saliva landed wetly on her cheek, and for a moment Marlow was stunned into silence. Slowly, deliberately, she wiped her face and said, in a taut voice brimming with violence, “You’re really going to regret that.”
But before she could make good on her threat, a chillingly familiar voice sounded from the end of the hallway.
“Do my eyes deceive me? Or is that Marlow Briggs I see skulking around this very fine establishment?”
Marlow rose on shaking legs and swung around to face Thaddeus Bane—second-in-command of the Copperheads, and the second-to-last person she ever wanted to see anywhere, but especially here. He took up nearly the breadth of the hallway, his barrel-like chest stuffed into an ostentatious purple waistcoat bedizened with shining gold-linked chains. Two Copperhead lackeys stood on either side of him, wearing slightly more subdued threads, but the same bronze snake tattooed around their throats.
“You know, when our doorman said he’d seen you come in, I thought he must be mistaken,” Bane went on in a lazy burr. “Surely the brilliant Marlow Briggs wouldn’t be stupid enough to set foot in a Copperhead joint again.”
He bellowed her name like an announcer at a pit fight, his eyes gleaming manically in the green light. A cold trickle of fear slid down Marlow’s spine. Thaddeus Bane had every reason to want revenge on Marlow after she had humiliated him and his boss, Leonidas Howell, nine months ago—and it seemed his chance had finally arrived. He was incandescent with delight.
“Guess you’re not as smart as you think you are,” he sneered.
“Still smarter than you, Thad,” Marlow replied sweetly.
Bane chuckled, shaking his head as he strolled toward her with the air of an indolent predator who knew its prey was cornered. “And you came alone. Where’s your friend Swift? Been a while since we’ve seen him, and we miss him something awful.”
Bane’s two cronies pushed deeper into the hall, flanking Marlow. She stood her ground, sizing them up. The one with a red beard she vaguely recognized, and the other, a wiry youth with a squid beak nose, looked like he couldn’t be much older than she was. A new recruit. Maybe even Swift’s replacement.
Marlow smiled as she slipped a hand into the pocket of her rain jacket. “Actually, he had a message for you.”
“Oh?”
“He says he’s really flattered, but this obsession your boss has with him is starting to get embarrassing.”
Bane flashed a crocodile grin, advancing. “Speaking of, I wish the boss was here now. But don’t worry—I’ll be sure to describe your screams in detail to him later.”
For a moment Marlow’s fear dulled the edges of her mind. She swallowed it down and forced herself to meet Bane’s cruel gray eyes with another smile.
“With all the time I’ve spent occupying that vacant head of yours, you should really think about charging rent,” she said, thumbing through the slim stack of spellcards in her pocket and hoping she could somehow divine by touch which one she needed.
“You really think you’re better than the rest of us,” Bane snarled. “Because you used to rub shoulders with the noblesse nouveau. But then your bitch of a mother dumped you back in the Marshes, didn’t she?”
Marlow clenched her jaw, fury pouring through her veins like hot acid.
“Guess she figured out what the rest of us already knew—you can’t wash the swamp off the swamp rat.”
His cronies guffawed. Marlow’s fingers closed around what she deeply hoped was a temporary Blinding hex.
As she opened her mouth to cast it, the red-bearded crony flicked open a switchblade and held it to her throat.
“Hands where we can see them,” he said in a low voice.
Marlow sucked in a breath that felt closer to a sob and jerked her hands up, showing them her palms. Squid Beak pushed right into her space, roughly grabbing her wrists and pinning them behind her back.
She was alone. Swift and Hyrum had no idea where she was. And she couldn’t talk, think, or hex her way out of this.
The blade pressed into her skin, and Marlow bit down on a pathetic whimper as Bane leaned into her, his breath on her cheek as warm and wet as a summer storm.
“Tell you what,” he said conspiratorially. “I’ll let you choose what we take from you, how’s that? A few ounces of blood, perhaps? Or I could take your nose, so you’ll stop poking it where it doesn’t belong. Or maybe you’d rather I take some of your memories—all your memories of dear old mommy, perhaps?”
Copyright © 2023 by Katy Rose Pool
