but first there’s a Price you must pay.
In the harbor, a ship that Never harbors
Waits to be Boarded.
Full of Treasures, her richest
Treasures are only in Secret Hoarded.
Pierce the Starry sky to find the vault,
Break the safe to get the Key,
Bring it to the thieves’ Den,
And take the Rest as your Fee.
Believe that I Am,
Someone Who Remembers You
Just beside the signature, a black splotch marred the white page, as if a single droplet of ink had fallen from the author’s quill.
Fin’s gaze drifted back up to the one word that had caused his breath to catch and his chest to ache. Mother. He closed his eyes, replaying in his mind the last time he’d seen her.
It was the only thing he remembered about her at all.
He couldn’t have been older than four. He still recalled the waves shining golden as they split before the ship’s prow, and the lights dancing on the shoreline, climbing from the water up the shadow of a great mountain, on and on to join the night sky above.
“The Khaznot Quay,” his mother had whispered, pronouncing the first word with a grumble and the last with a pop, so it came out something like Has Not Key. “Your new home.”
Of course, Fin knew the Quay all too well now; he’d been here ever since. But that night, he’d been afraid, balled up in her arms, snuggled close. He couldn’t really remember exactly what she looked like anymore; just black hair falling around her shoulders, moonlight on her eyes, the outline of a soft, round nose.
How safe he’d felt with her holding him.
He sighed. The very last thing he remembered was her pointing up to a star in the sky, brighter than all the others. “No matter what happens,” she’d told him, “so long as that star is still there shining, someone will always be out here thinking of you.” Even in memory, her voice came as smooth and calm as a warm fire on a freezing day.
Sniffling, Fin swiped at his eyes and stared at the letter. He read it again, tracing the bizarre curves of the handwriting. Break into a ship, steal a key, and anything else was his. A typical heist, really, if sparing on the details. And written by someone with really bad taste in poetry.
It was the signature that he kept coming back to. Someone Who Remembers You. Before falling asleep last night, he’d watched the star blinking through the attic window, the promise that someone would be thinking of him. Now it had come true—there really was someone who remembered him. And the reward they promised… to show him the path to home, to his mother?
There was no turning this offer down. Even if whoever sent it sounded like they’d dipped their head in Stream water.
Fin stood up on the roof’s edge, unbothered by the four-story drop below. This job was too important to risk going in blind; what Fin needed was intel. And for a Quay thief, there was only one place to go to learn anything about anything: Ad and Tad’s pie shop.
He set off, clattering across ceramic roofs and jumping from dangling gutters on his way to the top of the District. The old pie shop squished against a cliff there, just beneath the crumbling towers of Nosebleed Heights. Before long, he slipped down a trellis of tangleweed, into an alley so steep and narrow it would be better called a staircase, and hiked up to the little dead-end plaza outside Ad and Tad’s Gourmet Pie-o-ria.
It was a cramped space, with only one way in and one way out. Overhead, the fierce Quay winds blew straight into the cliff, creating a curl-over vortex that kept all but the best skysailers at bay. In short, it was a terrible place for a store, and a great place for a bunch of thieves to keep their den.
The bell over the door jangled as he opened it. NO ONE LEAVES WITH AN APPETITE! claimed the sign in the window, and Fin could hardly argue with that.
Instead of the smell of buttery rolls and cinnamon, Ad and Tad’s reeked of damp mildew and burnt something. On the shelves, mounds of sticky buns with gooey green frosting slumped beside stacks of cookies that each sported a fully functioning eyeball. And, of course, on the counter sat a plate of foil-wrapped candies. Ad and Tad called them their Famous Chocolate Flavor Blasters. Everyone else in the world called them “the puke pills.”
The thieves had chosen carefully in locating their den here. Fin didn’t remember ever seeing this place with an actual customer.
Ad and Tad looked up with toothy smiles as he strolled inside, not a drop of recognition in their eyes. “Help you, young man?” Ad asked. She was young and sweet, at least by Quay standards, which meant she had nearly all her teeth and usually wasn’t armed.
“No trub today, Ad,” Fin said. “Just an order of your finest phlegmenflosses.” He squared his shoulders as he said the password, trying to look authoritative.
Tad nodded and motioned to the brick walk-in oven in the back. “Of course, m’boy,” he said. “We bake ’em fresh right through there.”
That was what made this place great, Fin thought. Among the pie shop crew, a thief who didn’t draw attention was a good thief. To them, as long as Fin knew the right signs, the fact that no one remembered him just meant he was good at what he did.
He slipped under the counter, snatching a few puke pills on his way (they were always handy in case you got poisoned), and headed into the dark oven. At a touch, the back wall swung away, revealing the thieves’ den.
Just down a few rickety stairs, thieves laughed and gambled and argued in an open hall filled with wood tables and a roaring fireplace at the far end. Hulking thugs with arms like gorillas’ played toss-the-teeth using wiry footpads. Scale-covered cutpurses picked away at practice locks, while swindlers spun stories to half-interested con artists. To a man almost everyone, and everything, was covered in a light dusting of flour.
Fin smiled and relaxed. It was good to be back.
Casually, he wandered over to a table full of privateers clanking cups with a squad of highwaymen. They were a rough-looking bunch, but Fin didn’t worry. While pretty much anyone crooked was welcome in the pie shop, Stavik, the self-proclaimed Pirate King of the Khaznot Quay and undisputed boss of the den, drew the line at murderers. Besides, thieves and pirates honored their own.
“Signs up, bloods,” Fin announced, briefly gaining their attention. He made the traditional pirate greeting in the air, and ten gloved hands echoed it back.
“Welcome, fellow shady-fellow,” one of them said cheerfully. “Make a spot, mates.”
Fin bit back his joy at being included; it wouldn’t last, of course. The spot they made was closing almost before he could sit. Still, even a moment’s warmth was more than Fin got anywhere else.
Normally he’d sit and soak it all in. But today he was here to get information. “Soooo,” he said, “how about that ship that doesn’t harbor harboring in the harbor, huh?”
Nine sets of eyes looked at him and blinked. Fin had a moment of discomfort, until the tenth man spoke up. “Bly me twice, but ’twere the Iron Ship what sent her limping into port!”
One of the other pirates let out a guffaw. “You old bafter, the Iron Ship’s naught but a story.”
“Don’t laugh! It’s true!” a third argued. “What else could bruise a ship like that?” He leaned forward, a crazed gleam in one eye. “They say the Iron Ship comes in the biggest storms, when the lightning flashes red. A ship cast in iron, her crew cut from shadows. They say her master’s the ghost of a great wizard-demon-pirate-captain-king, and he’s hungry for souls.” As usual in a gathering of thieves, half the gang snorted in derision and the other half affirmed it as undeniable.
“Wizard-demon-pirate-captain-king, got it,” Fin said. “But about the ship here in the harbor… the one that’s not made of iron?”
A thick-bearded smuggler dropped his cup with a clang. “Oh, she’s something else. Supposably, whatever she’s carrying is fancy enough that she don’t ever make port, just stays out on the Stream full-time where none can touch her. Stavik tried to go after her once, but even he couldn?
??t bring her down.…” He trailed off and shook his head. “But then I reckon she got caught in one of them storms. Drove her in for repairs, and I reckon the Quay was the closest harbor she could find. The Master o’ the Iron Ship musta did a number on her, for a ship like that to dock in a place like this.”
Fin nodded. “In for repairs is good. What’s she look like? Well guarded?” He cleared his throat. “I only ask for a friend.”
“Well, ya can’t miss ’er,” the first pirate said. “About the weirdest-lookin’ vessel I e’er peeped. As fer who’s on board, well…” He leaned in and dropped his voice. “You’d have to ask Stavik.”
The others at the table gulped. “I wouldn’t,” one of them murmured.
Fin grinned. “Don’t worry about me.…” he said, slipping to his feet. Not that they would. Because practically before the words had even left his mouth, the privateers and highwaymen had forgotten he was ever there. “I can handle Stavik,” he added to himself.
Keeping his back straight, he swaggered his way toward the far end of the room, where the Pirate King sat on his throne, a polished chair made from the figureheads of ships he’d captured. Stavik was lean and angular and seemed built from taut wire. More of him was scar than smooth skin, and he did nothing to hide it.
He dressed simply, in a vest and matching trousers made of close-cut dragon leather. The story went that Stavik was so good a thief he’d cut the skin from the dragon itself while it still lived, and the beast never knew it was missing. It was no wonder the rest of the thieves feared him.
But Fin actually liked Stavik. He’d been the one to teach Fin most everything he knew about thieving, even if the Pirate King didn’t remember it.
Back when Fin was seven, it had taken him months to learn the right mix of bravado and deference to get an audience with Stavik. He probably still had bruises on his shoulders from all the hands that had tossed him onto the cobblestone street. But he’d come back each day, a total stranger to the thieves each time. And each time, he learned a bit better how to carry himself. And then one day Stavik had said, “Leave him. I like the tyke,” and agreed to show Fin a few tricks.
Fin had repeated that scene ever since, starting fresh each time, until he knew just about everything Stavik had to teach. He still did it from time to time, though, relearning the same old lessons. He liked spending time with the old goon.
Puffing up his chest but keeping his eyes down, Fin walked straight up to the polished chair, stopping exactly the second before a thick hand would have come down on his shoulder. “Leave him,” Stavik said, his voice rough like the edge of an old rusty razor. “I like the look of the boy. Good swagger, but knows his place. Blends in. Barely noticed him till he stepped up. Good thieving in this one.” He squinted at Fin. “Who the ’etch are you, then?”
“Just an apprentice,” Fin said. Long experience had taught him how hard it was to convince anyone that a kid his age was a master thief. “My bossman said to mention the Blind Beetle Bank break-in, or the Laughing Sauce looting?” He rifled through his pockets quickly, producing a red coin with a bug emblazoned on it as proof.
Stavik’s face barely moved, but an ugly red scar on his chin twitched, a sure sign he was considering. “Yeah,” he said. “All right. What’s your bossman after, then?”
“I… uh, I mean, he needs some information on that weird-looking ship in the harbor.”
“Fine enough,” Stavik said. “Someone needs to rob that thing.” It went without saying, of course, that he expected a cut of the take. Fin nodded eagerly; if the letter was right, this job should net plenty of loot to spare.
Stavik’s eyes shifted from one side to the other and his voice dropped. “Ship belongs to the Meressian Order. Heard of them?”
Fin shook his head. “Wouldn’t think so,” Stavik continued. “Some kind of cult started a couple centuries back. They spent decades writing down everything that came outta some oracle’s mouth, something about a prophecy and the future and whatnot. End-of-the-world-type stuff.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Anyway, back in the day, they had some sort of falling-out with their oracle, he split, and the whole cult sort of faded out of view. But word is the real hardcore blights kept going, trying to stop the nutter’s prophecy from coming true. They been collecting stuff related to that prophecy ever since. Relics and antiques and all sorts of value-ables.”
His mouth split into a grin. “That’s a couple hundred years of loot if your math ain’t good. All of it on that ship, which is why they keep it out on the Stream full-time, nonstop.”
“But now that it’s here…” Fin said, echoing Stavik’s grin.
“Don’t get cocky,” Stavik told him. “These guys know how to protect their jink. I tried once, didn’t go well. That was on the open Stream, a’course, but being in port will make ’em even more jumpy. Way I hear it, the guards they got posted on the docks are professionals, impossible to distract. Get past them and there’s a whole mess more, patrolling the place. Nasty traps, too. Your man will have to be good.”
“He is,” Fin said with pride, plans already running through his mind.
“He’d better be,” Stavik said. “He won’t be the first to try.” He leaned back onto his figurehead throne, knitting his fingers together. “That’s all I got.”
Fin nodded, half-bowed, and made to leave. It was heist time.
“Hey, blood,” Stavik called after him. Fin turned. “Your man busts that ship open, tell him to bring me something nice. Make it good, and I’ll show you how to pick a lock with a dagger tip.”
Of course, Stavik had already taught Fin that trick. Three years ago. And five times since.
“I’d like that,” Fin said.
CHAPTER 4
Don’t Harass the Barnacles
The ship in the parking lot towered over Marrill, making her feel tiny in comparison. A part of her wanted to slosh closer, to touch the hull to see if it was real. The other part warned she should get as far away as possible.
She glanced around, wishing her dad were here, or her mom; they would know what to do. Even the Hatch brothers could at least tell her if she was hallucinating. But there was no one. Just Karnelius, the cool water against her skin, and the pirate ship. She could make out a few windows on its sides, running away from her in rows, but each one was either boarded by shutters or crusted with salt. The only other person was the old man, who leaned out over the ship’s rail, staring at her expectantly.
“I think she’s deaf,” he remarked to someone out of sight. “Or possibly she just replaced herself with a perfect double, made of her own belly button lint. If it’s the latter, we’re in luck; I’m pretty sure I’ve been here before.”
Marrill blinked, realizing he was talking about her. She knew she ought to say something, but she didn’t quite know what. “Um… hello?” She swallowed uneasily. “I didn’t understand you. Or what’s going on, or… anything, really.”
The white-bearded face turned back to her, one eyebrow lifted. “Not deaf. Or lint,” he told his invisible companion, sounding vaguely disappointed. “But good for you, of course!” he added to Marrill. She stared, trying to keep up. “Anyway, we’re a bit lost, as you might have gathered. Could you kindly tell us what branch of the Stream we’ve stumbled on?”
She had no idea what he was talking about. They were in the desert—there wasn’t running water for miles. Unless you counted the sudden lake, which she didn’t because… well, because it shouldn’t have been there.
Except that it was there, since she was clearly standing in it. Little waves lapped at her ankles, and if she angled her head just right, she could still make out the lines of the parking lot below the surface.
She blinked, trying to remember the question. “What branch of the what?” she asked.
“She doesn’t know where we are,” the old man called over his shoulder.
“I didn’t think she would,” a voice shouted back.
Marrill opened her mouth. She was
full of questions but could scarcely decide which to ask first. Before she could make a sound, the old man slipped out of view.
She shook her head. “I don’t guess you know what’s going on?” she asked Karnelius. He glared up at her with his one good cat-eye, the rest of his body still in full-on puff mode and rumbling with growls.
Marrill had absolutely no idea how to approach this situation. She thought back to what her mom had told her about jumping in with both feet, even if it seemed scary at first. Marrill took a deep breath, steadied herself, and sloshed closer to the ship. She craned her neck and called out, “Mr.…” She hesitated. “Mr. Sir?”
The old man popped back into view. “You’re still here, then?” he asked. Then he frowned. “Or rather, we’re still here. Hmmm. Unexpected.” He drummed his fingers on the railing.
“So,” she plunged ahead, “pretty neat trick, making a boat appear like that out of nowhere. Are you guys magicians or something?”
“Wizard, actually,” the old man said. “Good question, though. My turn: You wouldn’t have set eyes on a certain bit of map, would you?”
Marrill had no idea what he was talking about. “Huh?”
“Tell her it’s a scrap of paper,” the invisible voice shouted.
The old man’s face gave a flash of exasperation before he turned back to her. “A bit of parchment, perhaps? In these parts? Have you seen it?”
Marrill used the toe of her left foot to scratch at where the water tickled the calf of her right leg. “I…” Her brain sank back to the first part. “Wait, you said a wizard?”
His laughter sounded like a cloud tastes, light and fluffy and slightly damp. Which was weird, because she’d never really considered the taste of a cloud before. It felt, she had to admit, magical, which sent a little thrill down her spine.
“Yes, I certainly did!” the old man responded. “Now back to my question, about that map—any sightings?”