Four Dead Queens Read online

  He jerked his chin. “With you, it always is.”

  I ignored him. Mackiel was always joking, but this time I didn’t know if it was a jibe or whether he actually wanted more from me, from us. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. Was it the put-together Torian girl I pretended to be? Or a broken girl, his porcelain doll; all that was needed was a crack to reveal the darkness growing within.

  I didn’t question what he would prefer.

  Mackiel’s office was located in the attic of the auction house, overlooking the Torian harbor. The moonlit sails of the boats glowed like ghosts on the dark water. I’d often wondered why he’d chosen this room overlooking the sea. Was it simply because it had been his father’s? Or did he want to confront his phobia of the ocean each day, hoping the fear would one day subside?

  Mackiel scratched his neck briefly to check he was not, nor was he about to be, submerged in water. He was stronger than he gave himself credit for. Unlike me. I couldn’t face my ghosts. Any space smaller than my compact quarters behind the auction house stage sent me running from the room. Simply thinking about tight spaces made my chest constrict.

  Small breath in, small breath out. There’s a way in, and always a way out. The mantra helped still any anxiety curling in my belly, like an agitated eel.

  “How much do you think it will go for?” I asked, distracting myself.

  He placed the comm case on the table and stretched out his other hand. “This is for you.”

  In his palm was a silver locket in the shape of a gold quartier, the currency that united Quadara. I reached for the locket. He grabbed my fingers in his. There—the darkness that lately plagued his expression bubbled to the surface, and my friend was gone. “You took too long out there,” he said.

  I pulled away from him, the locket in my grasp, and leaned back in my chair. “Too long for what?” I countered. “Has anyone else stolen a comm case without being arrested by Quadarian authorities?”

  “Touché,” he said, tilting his chair back, mimicking me. The wooden frame dwarfed him. The room had been built and furnished for a larger man—Mackiel Delore Sr. And everything was exactly as he’d left it, before the blood plague.

  The plague had started as a seasickness contracted on a return voyage from Archia and had spread swiftly once the boat had docked and the crew had returned to their homes in Toria. The disease had been merciless; mere hours after you’d been exposed, blood would seep from your eyes and ears, before hardening. Mackiel’s mother had contracted it first, then his father.

  Mackiel had rushed to the Eonist Medical Facility in hopes of gaining access to HIDRA. The Holistic Injury and Disease Repair Aid was an Eonist cure-all—Quadara’s most prized creation. But only one “deserving” patient could be treated each year, due to dwindling supplies. The queens decided who that patient would be. A criminal and his wife were not high on their list.

  Mackiel’s parents were dead by the time he returned home.

  The only change to Delore Imports and Exports in the three years since his father’s death was the menacing gleam behind Mackiel’s eyes and the growth in his security team. His henchmen were out tonight, doing his bidding. More monsters than men—I hoped they’d forget their way home.

  “Thank you, Kera,” Mackiel said suddenly.

  I glanced up. “You’re welcome?” It came out much more like a question than I’d meant it to, unsure how to take his shifting mood. We’d been friends for seven years. Our thieving had begun as a thrill to chase and a game to play, which also happened to fill our pockets with cash. He’d been a lively, charismatic boy of twelve, promising wealth, excitement and fantasy. A world far from the one I’d known.

  While a young Mackiel had boasted about playing with the latest Eonist technologies and eating fluffy Ludist pastries, I’d shivered in my parents’ narrow, dim cottage and eaten my mother’s stew made from week-old fish scraps. My father had inherited his shipping business from his parents, but the boat had been leaky and could barely weather the storms between Archia and Toria. We’d lived week-to-week, my parents always hoping for a brighter horizon.

  Mackiel’s offer to join the dippers had been a ticket to a new life. I’d taken it without a second thought.

  But over the past year, something increasingly tarnished Mackiel’s thoughts like the sea air tarnished the dock. Where was the boy whose smile lit his face as easily as the sun lit the sky? Was it his parents’ death that continued to haunt him, as my father’s accident haunted me?

  Six months ago, I’d moved into Mackiel’s auction house—to my own room, of course. I thought moving in would’ve brought us closer, back to our childish years, when we did everything together. But he still disappeared for days, never telling me why.

  “You did well,” he said with a smile.

  I rolled my new locket between my fingers before attaching it to my dipper bracelet. He’d started giving me lockets for increasingly dangerous thefts about a year ago. The coin hung among my other conquests. “Thanks for this,” I said.

  “I have something else for you.” He held out an envelope. Fear racked my insides.

  I tore the letter open without further preamble. My mother’s latest letter was short, but struck me between the ribs like a blow.

  Dear Keralie,

  Please come to the Eonist Medical Facility at once. Your father is dying. The doctors believe he has weeks remaining, maybe less, if he isn’t allowed access to HIDRA. Please come and say good-bye.

  I love you, Keralie. We miss you. We need you.

  Love,

  Mom

  I clutched the paper in my hands, my breath leaving in gasps.

  Although it was six months ago, I could still hear my father screaming my name. It was the last word he uttered, almost like a curse, before he was thrown from his boat and hit his head on a nearby rock. I would never forget my mother’s tearstained face as she sobbed over his unconscious body before he was carted away to receive medical attention.

  My mother had stayed by his bedside for two weeks. By the time she returned home, I was gone. She sent numerous letters to the auction house begging me to join her at the hospital’s accommodation, knowing exactly where I’d fled to.

  But she was wrong. She didn’t need me. My father was on the brink of the next world because of what I’d done. They were better off without me.

  Meeting Mackiel had set me on a path for a different life, and my father’s accident was the final act to sever me from my parents and their oppressive expectations. I couldn’t return to them now. Much as I might want to.

  “Everything all right?” Mackiel’s voice was soft.

  I shook my head. “My father’s dying.”

  “No HIDRA?” he asked, expression darkening.

  “Doesn’t look like it.” My father was one of thousands on the waiting list. For years, Eonist scientists had tried, but failed, to replicate the treatment. Whispers had begun to spread that there were no doses remaining.

  “Curse those queens,” Mackiel said, slamming his hand on the table. “I’m sorry, Kera.”

  I took a deep, steadying breath. I’d used up all the tears for my father in the days following the accident. He was gone to me the moment he was thrown from the boat.

  A vibration rattled the building as the weight shifted on the floor beneath us. The audience had arrived.

  “If you’re not up for tonight,” Mackiel said, “I’ll understand.”

  “And miss out on seeing who buys my comm case?” I forced a smile. “I don’t think so.”

  He gave me a sly grin, his somber mood disappearing. “Come, then. Let’s not keep our audience waiting.”

  * * *

  —

  THE AUCTION HOUSE was located on the dock at the far, and seedier, end of the Torian harbor. As a child, the old trading hall had seemed like a majestic palace with
its high-arched ceiling and wide columns. Now I saw the truth. The building should be condemned. The salty air had rotted the pylons, slanting the right side of the building toward the sea, and the decay of wood infected every room, including the drafty lodgings I rented behind the stage. I was sure the smell of decay followed me like a shadow. How fitting.

  The audience shuffled in from the slightly more stable section of the dock, which housed other Torian attractions: the stuffy gambling houses, courtly pleasure palaces, and the dingy, damp pubs that rose in between like fungus in marshes, forming Toria’s notorious Jetée district. Our neighbors’ hands as dirty as our own.

  The auction floor became increasingly crowded until there wasn’t enough room to breathe without warming the back of someone’s neck. If one more body crammed inside, we’d sink to the ocean floor beneath us. While there was no ignoring the cacophony bleeding out of the walls and onto the dock, Torian authorities left Mackiel to his sordid business.

  The Torian queen had been intent on shutting the Jetée down for decades. She’d recently revealed her plans to demolish the dock for “safety reasons,” but we knew the truth. She was desperate to erase the blight on “proper” Torian society. Could that be what tarnished Mackiel’s thoughts?

  Mackiel wasn’t alone in his concern. During the day, when most of the Jetée establishments were shut and everyone should be home in their beds, loud voices could be heard from behind closed doors. Angry voices. Voices from the business owners, demanding to take vengeance on their meddling queen. They vowed to run all Torian businesses into the ground if she succeeded. Despite what the queen wanted to believe, the seedy underbelly was the heart of the quadrant. Cut that out, and Toria would perish.

  I didn’t involve myself in palace politics.

  I watched from behind the stage curtain as the audience forgot their manners—or rather the manners they pretended to keep while in public as hardworking and enterprising explorers and traders. It wasn’t long until the true, darker desires were exposed. Wide skirts pushed in among one another, hands groped for exposed flesh, while children weaved in and out among legs like rats navigating the sewers, hoping to get a nibble of the action. A perfect training ground for new dippers—any kids who managed to steal from the audience without getting caught were worth recruiting.

  It wasn’t difficult to see why my parents had warned me to stay away from this place as a child. But with their cottage located near the harbor, the auction house had never been far from view.

  Growing up by the sea, I loved to swim, but I had always hated sailing. Being short made it difficult to reach the mast and my small fingers were inept at tying knots. While my parents could walk the deck as though they were on dry land, I’d always been off balance. I couldn’t understand why they loved the seafaring life: the early rises, the bitter cold, and the tiring, relentless work for little return.

  After a voyage, my parents would huddle by a fire—on the days we could afford it—and reminisce about the journey, while I would pray to the queens above for a storm to strike down the boat moored in the harbor. As I got older, I’d beg them to travel without me and would throw a tantrum if they insisted I come along.

  For years, I didn’t know there was another way of life, a life I would enjoy, a life I’d thrive in. Then I met Mackiel.

  I don’t remember much of my first visit to the auction house except the feeling. A tangible thrill ignited my body and senses. I didn’t steal anything, merely swept my hands across ladies’ bags and dipped into men’s pockets. But I could have taken something, and that was illuminating.

  Mackiel found me later that night, sitting on the dock with my legs dangling below, my cheeks flushed with excitement despite the cold night. He introduced himself, offering his hand and a job.

  I pushed back thoughts of my parents, my mother’s letter and the aching absence they’d left in my life. An absence I’d created the day I decided to follow Mackiel down a darker road. There was no turning back now.

  Searching the auction house crowd, I wondered who would be the owner of my comm case and the chips inside, and what my cut would be. I imagined the flurry of bids it would ignite from those desperate for a glimpse into Eonist life and their technology. Like the other quadrants, Torians weren’t allowed to use most technologies from Eonia, for fear that it would alter our society. But that didn’t stop us from wanting a taste.

  And that was exactly what the chips would allow. All you had to do was place the comm chip on your tongue and your senses would be transported to another time and place. A memory, which would feel like your own. A message from another life.

  Mackiel was standing in the stalls crudely erected into one side of the building. Since his father’s death, Mackiel had added a heavy red curtain to conceal the wares from the crowd, the auction house now looking more like a Ludist theater than a warehouse. Just the way Mackiel liked it, preferring the spectacle of life.

  Mackiel saved the seats in the stalls for “valued patrons,” those too proper to sully their clothing by mingling down with the commoners. He ushered a girl with a large royal blue bonnet to her seat, one hand on her velvet-clad arm, the other to tilt his hat toward her. She looked up at him. Even from here, I could see her sickening, adoring expression. I looked away as Mackiel glanced in my direction, not wanting him to see the jealousy heat my face.

  “Move,” Kyrin said, elbowing me. “My wares are up first.”

  I happily stepped aside; his breath preceded him by at least ten feet. His sandy blond hair was stuck up in odd directions, as though he’d been trying to imitate the current trend in Ludia. It looked ridiculous on him. We dippers traditionally wore conservative clothes and attire, allowing us to blend into our surroundings.

  “Still stealing watches?” I asked. Unfortunately for Kyrin, his tall stature made him stand out, no matter what he tried. Although, I hated to admit, his deft long fingers could unclasp watch fasteners in seconds, the owner none the wiser. “How long does that make it now? Five years?”

  “Shut it, Keralie,” he bit back.

  I shrugged, tucking a stray lock behind my ear. “It’s all right. Give it a few more years, and you’ll get there. You see this?” I held out my wrist and jingled my new locket at him, a sign of moving up the ranks in Mackiel’s crew. “Want a closer look? It might give you some inspiration.” Kyrin’s leather cuff had only two charms to keep each other company, while I had struggled to find room for my latest success. My parents used to argue that sailing was in my blood, but they’d never seen how I could take a woman’s bag from her shoulder or the glasses right off a man’s nose. Thieving was in my blood.

  “I don’t need your kind of inspiration.” Kyrin pushed my arm out of the way. “Not all of us are willing to wet Mackiel’s whistle as you do.”

  “I do nothing but my job!” I’d raised my clenched fist before I’d thought about my next move.

  Kyrin didn’t flinch. “Right. You think we’re blind?” He gestured to the dippers watching with interest behind him. “You get all the best jobs.”

  “Because I am the best.”

  “The best at sucking his—”

  I lurched forward, my fist about to slam into his face, but I was jerked back at the last second by a hand covered in rings from nail to knuckle.

  “What’s going on here?” Mackiel asked, his eyes flashing between us, his full mouth pulled up at one side.

  “Nothing,” I replied, swallowing down my anger. I didn’t want to discuss the rumors spreading about Mackiel and me until I knew where we stood. “I was just hearing about the gorgeous Ludist watch Kyrin acquired today.” I gave Kyrin a sweet smile.

  Mackiel grinned at me. “Is that so?” He tapped my dimpled cheek. “Sweet.” Tap. “Little.” Tap. “Kera.” Tap.

  I pulled my wrist out of Mackiel’s grasp and stepped away, hating the way Kyrin’s eyes lingered on the contact. Sure, there w
ere the late nights in Mackiel’s rooms, discussing the future of the auction house. But nothing had happened, although I felt us teetering on the precipice of more. Or at least, I was teetering. In the last year, he didn’t seem to care as much about me anymore.

  “What is it that I always tell you?” Mackiel’s voice was melodic, but still authoritative. His deep-set eyes flicked among us all.

  “Never detract from the wares,” we replied in unison.

  I kicked Kyrin’s shin for good measure. He grunted in reply and took a step away.

  “Very good,” Mackiel said, fiddling with his bowler hat. “And we have a generous collection tonight. Let’s stay on track, shall we?”

  Generous? I caught Mackiel’s eye. He hadn’t answered my question about the comm case’s worth and the chips inside. He avoided my probing gaze and scratched briefly at his neck, his eyes landing on me, then darting away again. Mackiel was never nervous, not when it came to an auction. This was what he lived for now that his father was gone.

  “Places, dippers,” he said. “Let’s begin!” He swept onto the stage, his long coat flapping behind him.

  “Mackiel seems distracted.” Kyrin’s breath wafted over me as he whispered in my ear. “Didn’t put out last night?”

  This time I went for Kyrin’s toes with the spiked heels of my boots. I reveled in the squelch as the spikes pierced through the leather and into his skin.

  “You bitch!” he yelped, hopping up and down on one foot. “One day you’re going to get yours!”

  I shoved past him and the rest of the gawking dippers.

  “Maybe,” I called back over my shoulder, “but you won’t be the one to deliver.” Not while Mackiel had my back.

  I pushed my way to the entrance of the auction house to watch the proceedings from behind the crowd. Perspiration dotted my brow from the crammed bodies heating the cavernous room; the only relief was the salty breeze, wafting in through cracks in the timber floor.