Four Dead Queens(7)

“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.