Uncle Holden’s footfalls sound behind me. “Everley,” he says, “please don’t go.”
I halt halfway outside. “You made Markham a chronometer.” I sling the accusation as I would a stone.
“I was commissioned by the queen’s navy. I couldn’t refuse without drawing suspicion.” My uncle comes nearer. “Please stay.”
“This is the final time.” The last time I steal down to the docks. The last time I disobey my uncle. The last time I prowl the streets and seek refuge in the shadows.
“One more night could be your undoing. There are dangers you don’t understand. Think of your parents.”
I grip the hilt of my sword. “I am.”
“They wouldn’t want this. Your father respected the sacredness of creation power, and your mother taught you all life is divine.”
“And now they’re dead.”
He flinches from my directness. My mother and father worshipped Mother Madrona, the ancient elderwood from which all life springs. Around the time of my parents’ death, the Progressive Ministry, a church organized by the queen, spoke out against the Children of Madrona and stated their beliefs were sorcery. Instead of thanking Mother Madrona for each autumn harvest and celebrating her power each spring during planting season, Progressives believe devotion to her disrespects the Creator, the goddess of all the worlds. Our queen’s councilmen support her assertion that she receives direction from the Creator through visions, and our magistrates determined that anyone caught worshiping Madrona will be punished, so Uncle Holden is careful to pray in private. My brothers, sister, and I were raised to honor the sanctification of Madrona and the Creator. Our parents esteemed all creation power, but whatever faith I had died with them. Father Time is another matter. He, of course, is inescapably relevant.
I step the rest of the way outside. Rain patters against my boots and lays a fine mist over my hair. Uncle Holden follows me, raindrops staining his ivory nightshirt.
“Seeking out Markham will not help you find justice,” he says.
“I deserve answers.” My throat tightens on a surge of anguish. Be calm. Be machine. Be indifferent, like time. My uncle and I never pieced together why Markham came that night. The governor interrogated my father and searched our manor. My parents had no jewels or gold, and our prized possessions were family heirlooms, razed in the fire.
“Everley, this hunger for vengeance will rot you. Could you do it? Could you become a monster to destroy one?”
He must think I haven’t the nerve. I was unprepared for Markham’s visit today, but he will not catch me unawares again. So long as he can insert himself into my life, I am not safe.
“The only way to be rid of rot is to cut it out,” I say.
Uncle Holden’s eyes dampen. “Your heart can only handle so much.”
“My heart should have stopped long ago.”
We thought my ticker would last maybe five years. I have nearly doubled that estimate. But eventually this miraculous clock will fail and Father Time will reclaim the years I stole.
“You mustn’t go,” Uncle Holden pleads. “You can take any lessons you want and I’ll teach you to build gearwork. You’re ready, Everley. The store, the workshop, our home—this will all be yours someday.”
Maybe I am naive to have my own aspirations. Maybe my future is to inherit this shop. I love my uncle, my only true friend, and I am forever in his debt for taking me in and giving me his name and a new life. But I do not want to hide anymore. I’ve lived longer than either of us thought possible, and I cannot let this time go to waste.
“Thank you, Uncle,” I say, raising my hood. “I’ll return as soon as I have my answers.”
Sweeping my cloak behind me, I dash into the cover of night.
Darkness whispers a velvet welcome against my cheek. I have come to thrive in the midnight hour, where the truth of daylight cannot reveal my secrets. Between the steel at my hip and the cloak shielding my face, no one approaches me. Here in shadow, I am formidable.
My nighttime strolls have become a pastime. I’ve memorized the route from the shop to the docks. Even without it or my keen sense of direction, I could easily seek out the lights along the river. Through training and practice, my ticker abides my physical demands. The emotional side of having a clock heart is far harder to control.
A cry from an alleyway stops me. I peer through steam seeping from the gutters at a man trapping a girl against a wall. My toes curl in my boots. Men of every class pay for the companionship of streetwalkers, but what may have started as a mutual meeting is no longer.
The sight of them calls to memory the night Markham came to my family home with his masked men. Before I ran to the drawing room, they knocked out Carlin and attacked Isleen while our older brother, Tavis, pressed my face to his chest. I was too young to comprehend what the soldiers were after. What they took from her. Time has a way of unraveling secrets, and with age, I came to understand the vileness done to my sister.
The girl pushes against her captor, so he shoves her harder against the wall. No one else is here, and no sign of the constable corps in their pompous scarlet jackets. The storm has washed everyone indoors. I could leave her to defend herself, but I cannot shake free from my sister’s haunting cries.
My ticker beats faster.
Be still, I command it. The clock is machine. I—I am flesh. It evens to a submissive tap and I reach the alleyway. The lass, no more than fifteen years old, spots me.
“H-help,” she says.
Her attacker lifts his gaze. “Go away,” he grunts.
Sneering under the cover of my hood, I draw my sword. They both still, the lass blanching. The man has no weapon in sight, but his calloused knuckles belong to a fighter. I calculate the extension of his reach and stay out of swinging range.
“Fine,” he says. “Wait your turn.”
Fool. He thinks I’m a man seeking a piece of the girl.
I throw off my hood. He reads the imminence of his pain in my glare and wrestles his trousers up from his knees. I immobilize him with the whip of my steel beneath his chin.
Kill him, growls my rage. The yearning to steep my blade in blood startles me. I hold myself, on the verge of springing at him.
“Go home,” I tell the girl. She straightens her dress and clips away through the puddles, vanishing into the fog.
The man gulps hard, his neck tendons bulging. “I didn’t mean no harm.”
He reeks of liquor, his bloodshot eyes wide and worried for himself. He won’t give the girl another thought, except perhaps to regret not completing his intentions. As I pull back to strike, Isleen’s final moments call out from the past.
After the men were done with her, and her screams died off, what followed was also difficult to hear—her whimpered pleas for our father.
My fist cramps on my sword poised to slay. Father could not save Isleen. Could not save Carlin or my mother. He could not save me or Tavis. Could not, in the end, even save himself. Someone should pay, yet the memory of Isleen calling for him restrains me. I must be known as Everley O’Shea, but I am Brogan Donovan’s daughter. Retribution will not be attained by punishing just any man, only Markham.
I lower my sword, slicing the man’s belt in two, and his trousers slip to his ankles. He waddles away, but I am far from satisfied. As I stalk out of the alley, escaping my near lapse in judgment, my uncle’s admonishment pursues me.
Could you become a monster to destroy one?
Chapter Four
By the time I reach the waterfront, the rain has lessened. I stand at the shoreline, where the cobblestones end and the River Tyne slithers by. Patches of fog cling to the lamplit wharf that stretches over the river in the shape of a hammer. In the center of the channel that cleaves the city in two, several ships are anchored in a line. I eye the largest ship, Markham’s vessel. The Cadeyrn of the Seas, a 180-foot first-rate barque, is the pride of the queen’s navy. Though its stern lanterns glow, the cabin windows are dim. Markham and his crew will
spend their last night at port ashore.
I start down the long dock toward the Hammer, my gloves and cloak shielding me from the cool air drifting up through the cracks. Farther out, moonlight scatters the fog. The riverbank opposite us has half as many lights as this side of the city. Last year, autumn rains flooded the area, yet miraculously there were no casualties. The night before the river breached the bank, Queen Aislinn had a vision from the Creator to evacuate that region. Once the rain stopped, attendance at the Progressive Ministry church swelled and the Children of Madrona receded further into the underground.
The crowd on the Hammer is bigger and rowdier than usual. Dozens of sailors assemble to gamble, glug yeasty ale, and watch the duels. The sailors serving aboard the Cadeyrn of the Seas are bound for Dagger Island in the morning. With all the sobering stories of the penal colony, I would revel in my last night on land too.
In the trench—a circle enclosed by waist-high barrels—streetwalkers Claret and Laverick cross swords. Corsets pump up their bosoms, and petticoats flounce about their knees. Black-striped stockings emphasize their sleek legs and agile feet. Their violent dance engages the crowd in hollers. I push through the crush of bodies to the bettors’ booth. Vevina stacks notes and coins into neat piles. Her curly hair, like waves of satin, spills around her ebony shoulders. Her shiny gaze floats over me.
“Everley, darling. What brings you out tonight? Come to join my crew?”
“Answer’s still no, Vevina.”
“A shame. Your face would fetch a wealth of interest. I could fill your pockets with gold, split it eighty-twenty.”
“Still no.”
“Seventy-thirty, and don’t go telling my girls. They’ll be in knots that I’m paying you more than them.”
“That’s a fine offer, Vevina, but I have to pass.” Resting my hip against the table, I nod at the duelers in the trench. “Who’s slotted to win?”
“Two to one Laverick.” Vevina’s rouged lips slide upward, emphasizing her petite chin and long neck. “If I were betting, I would put money on Claret going down at the end of this round.”
I chuckle at her game. Although she’s only five years older than me, Vevina is the most lucrative street mistress in Dorestand. She rose to the top through hard work, cunning—and cheating. Claret and Laverick are on her payroll; every streetwalker cruising the wharf works for Vevina. Street duels are a clever way of displaying her merchandise while dipping further into customers’ pockets. Any man who fancies her fighters can pay for time alone with them. Some nights Laverick wins; other nights Claret wins. Every night Vevina rakes in more coin than she loses.
She adjusts the bodice of her wine-red gown and winks at a well-dressed sailor. He flushes, oblivious that from the second she set eyes on him, she started plotting how to swindle him out of all the coin in his pocket.
I watch the city lights glistening off the onyx river. “Have you seen Harlow? I have a question for her.”
Vevina shifts closer to my side. “Maybe I can help.”
“Thank you, but I need Harlow.” No one hoards more secrets than her.
Roars erupt around the trench. Within the dueling circle, Laverick disarms Claret with a meticulous swirl of her sword and then unbalances her with a push. Claret lands on her bottom, and her going down ends the third round. The mediator blows his whistle and calls the win in Laverick’s favor. The duel finishes just how the mistress predicted. Sailors swarm the bettors’ booth to win back their losses.
“One at a time, gentlemen,” Vevina says loudly.
Leaving the mistress to her work, I weave through the crowd, past a streetwalker and a sailor entangled on a heap of ropes. The giggling young woman seems to like his touch, and from the position of his hands, he’s enjoying himself. This audience takes little interest in a woman dressed in men’s attire, yet I leave my grip on my sword. Liquored-up sailors can be impetuous. I vault over the water barrels into the trench with Laverick and Claret. Bloodstains speckle the dock planks. I have bled enough of my own drops here to claim this as a second home.
“Here for a duel?” asks Laverick, wearing a feral grin. Laverick resembles a fox, with a long, straight nose, close brown eyes, and thick chestnut hair.
“I’m looking for Harlow,” I say.
Laverick swaps a glance with her best friend, Claret, and asks, “What for?”
I shrug, feigning unimportance. The three of us are sociable, but I know as little about Laverick and Claret as they do about me. I haven’t inquired about their pasts. I couldn’t without offering them bits of my own.
“I saw Harlow earlier,” Claret says. “She’s here somewhere.”
As much as Laverick resembles a fox, Claret has the features of a cat—slanted amber eyes, deep-tan skin, and a feline stride. She has a northern Wyeth accent, wherein she rolls her r’s almost like a purr. Vevina nicknamed this inseparable duo the Fox and the Cat for good reason.
Laverick leans over the water barrels and smiles at a merchant. While he is taken by her, Claret pinches a bag of hard taffy off his tray. She would strip him of his pistol, but she cannot reach it. Laverick blows the dazed merchant a kiss, and he moves on, unaware that he was robbed by two very pretty, very sneaky thieves. I learned long ago not to have anything of importance on my person around the Fox and the Cat. Before Vevina hired them, they were successful pickpockets and vandals. Claret specializes in pilfering, and Laverick has an affinity for powder explosives and artillery. They steal pistols and fence them, an interesting side business, since neither owns a firearm.
Claret offers me a candy. I decline and she pops it into her mouth. I glance at the swollen crowd of spectators. This many people may attract the constable corps. I need to find what I came for and get out.
“There she is,” Laverick says, pointing across the trench.
Harlow sits on a barrel, swinging her legs back and forth, her rapier at her hip. Her golden hair and elegant features attract an audience. A sailor grabs her from behind and tries for a kiss. She fists the back of his shirt and throws him over her shoulder into the trench. While he’s down on his back, she hops off the barrel and kicks him in the groin.
Onlookers applaud and chortle as the man rolls away groaning. He isn’t the first, nor the last, to mistake Harlow’s divine looks for a pleasing temperament.
Harlow takes a tobacco pipe from her pocket and lights it with her fire striker. She is our age, but she isn’t one of Vevina’s girls. Harlow works for herself selling high-value secrets. I draw my sword and point it at her, extending her a challenge. She grins, her pipe clamped between her teeth.
Duel on.
“You really want to do this, Everley?” Laverick asks.
“My rematch with Harlow has been a long time coming,” I reply, adjusting my gloves.
Laverick pats my back and wishes me luck. She and Claret exit the trench, petticoats flouncing and heels clicking. Harlow sets aside her pipe and saunters toward me.
“Prepared to lose again?” she asks.
I have come a long way since our first duel long ago—the second time my ticker failed. At fourteen years of age, I came to the Hammer for the first time to learn how to fight with my father’s sword. Assuming Harlow was a wide-eyed, wispy blond, I selected her as my opponent. I limped home an hour later, bleeding and dragging my sword behind me. My uncle reprimanded me for my foolishness. While I was arguing for my right to learn swordplay, my clock heart seized. He revived me, and as soon as I was well again, I returned to the Hammer to train in earnest. Professional swordplay lessons weren’t an option, so I studied experienced street fighters and practiced against them.
The mediator stands atop a water barrel and hollers, “Next in the trench, Striker versus Marionette!”
Bystanders press in around the barrels and bettors flock to Vevina’s table. Many girls have entered the trench in search of acclaim. The few of us who win often earned nicknames. Harlow is Striker, for her habit of setting off tempers. I crumble like a marionette wi
th snipped strings when I go down, hence my title. The nickname began as unflattering, but after countless wins, it evolved into a show of respect.
The mediator places his whistle between his lips. He will enforce the only two rules: duelers must not leave the trench, and the first person knocked on their backend forfeits the round. Regardless of whether the duel is impromptu or premeditated, such as those between Vevina’s girls, the mediator’s task is to call each round, three in total, and serve as lookout. Though the Hammer has never been raided, a quadruple whistle blast from him would be the call to vacate. A couple of constables take bribes in exchange for ignoring us, but we keep our guard up.
Harlow rolls her shoulders to stretch. “You must want something terribly bad from me.”
“If I win, you’ll tell me where to find Governor Markham.”
Her brows arch, confirming my intuition—she knows where he is. “When I win—”
“If.”
“When I win, you’ll explain to me what you want from Markham.”
Her wager is high, but Harlow won’t ever find out that I am the believed-dead daughter of the queen’s former explorer, because I will win. “Deal.”
I raise my sword and she mirrors my stance. Neither of us has formal training. Like every competitor in the trench, we taught ourselves to fight through experience. Harlow is taller than me by a finger length and quicker, or she was, so I ready myself.
The whistle sounds. Before the shrill call leaves my ears, she swings and steel jars against steel. We sidestep, in and out, forward and back, swords clashing between us like arcs of lightning. I breathe lightly, my heart a gentle drone.
I spin away from her thrust. “I’m stronger than I was.”
She redirects her blade for my side and catches the hem of my cloak, slicing a strip of cloth free.
Before the Broken Star Page 3