Four Dead Queens(6)

It had been six months since I’d seen my parents. Six months since my father’s accident. Six months since I’d fled my home, unable to look my mother in the eye, and shut off that part of my heart, never to look back.

“It was worth it,” I said. I’d do anything for Mackiel. While he was only two years older than me, he was both a friend and a mentor. And the only family I had left.

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.