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ONE
We were servants by fate, sisters by choice, and thieves by skill and practice. And we were looking for coins to steal.
Orange and crimson blossomed across the western sky as the sun began to descend. The market had been busy. The strongholders mostly wore patched tunics, and they were lean from winter, but they looked thrilled to be outside again after a pale and drizzly winter when the wind never seemed to stop howling. The air was dusty from shuffling feet and smelled of woodsmoke and fried pastries.
The curfew drums would beat at sunset, so strongholders and visitors alike hustled to get in the day's last business before the stronghold's gates were closed. One last boot to be mended, one final loaf of bread to be sold . . . and one more coin to be lifted.
Coins bought freedom, so I watched the market from a narrow alley between the winter-worn shops, waiting for an opportunity to take one more.
"Thank the gods spring is finally here," said Wren, the woman who stood beside me, her skin dark brown, her black hair in twists that fell across her shoulders. The hood of her dark green tunic was pulled up over her head, but her clever eyes scanned the market. "Took long enough."
"It was a miserable winter," I agreed, letting my gaze drift across the stream of marketgoers finishing the day's errands. "But light has returned to the stronghold. Sunshine means people." I grinned at the bustle of people. "And people mean opportunity."
A skilled thief was particular. Very particular. A novice might target one of the servants who shouldered baskets and bundles for their masters. But servants would be blamed if something went missing, and we didn't take from someone who couldn't afford it. Take only a little, my father had said. And wisely.
We didn't have to wait long. Only a few strides away, apparently thinking the move was hidden by shadows or skill, a man slipped a carved figurine from the charmseller's narrow table into his pocket, smirking as he walked toward the tall stone gatehouse in unscuffed boots, the tooled leather purse at his waist heavy with coin.
"From your extremely inappropriate whimper," Wren said, "I'm guessing that's our man."
"My whimper was appropriate for the heft of that purse. He has very bad hands." That was an insult to the rest of us. And more importantly, he clearly didn't need the bauble more than the charmseller-with his worn tunic and threadbare apron-needed to sell it.
We could have confronted the man or called out his theft, but that would have violated my father's other rule: Never be noticed. Law in the Western Gate was meted out by the soldiers garrisoned in the stronghold, and they cared more about bribes than justice. Being unnoticed helped you stay alive.
But we had other ways to balance the scales.
"Let's go," I murmured, and we left the alley and split apart, weaving through the market to play our parts.
Wren came up behind the man, just to his right. I approached from the front and to his left. He wore an arrogant smirk that erased any guilt I might have felt from taking his coin.
The pinch took only a moment. Wren bumped the man's right shoulder as she passed him; at the same time, I slipped a coin from the pouch at his left, palmed it, and kept moving. He'd already turned his attention to Wren, who was energetically apologizing for the slight.
I didn't turn back. That's how you got caught.
Ahead of me, the charmseller's gaze was on the block he was working with a small blade into a squat statue of the god of the Aetheric, a tiny flame in its cupped hands. The Aetheric realm was inhabited by the Anima, souls of the dead that no longer had a physical form but hadn't yet passed into the next realm, Oblivion, the Great Nothingness. Shoppers bought charms and wards and figurines to convince beneficent Anima to help them, and malicious ones to stay away. Our realm, Terra, was a haunted one.
There were shadows beneath the man's eyes, and hollows beneath his cheekbones carved by hunger. Even though desperation was no stranger to me, I rarely went hungry. Wren and I were bonded servants, given over to a woman we called the Lady by people who couldn't care for us or who'd wanted the bond money more than the hassle. They got the money, we got the debt, and each day's work-odd jobs the Lady arranged to make us seem legit, or thieving when there wasn't work for us-repaid a sliver of what we owed. The Lady was calculating and cold, but she kept us fed because otherwise we were no use to her.
After a moment's consideration, I kneeled as if to pick something up, and added a coin to the one I'd nicked.
The movement had him looking up, frowning at me. "Can I help you?"
He didn't know us. There were four markets in the stronghold, one near each gatehouse. We visited them all, varying our routines so we didn't raise suspicion.
"These were under your table." I made to dust off the coins on my dark leggings, then held them out.
He blinked in surprise when I dropped the coins into his palm, shiny and full of promise. He looked at the coins, then me, gauging if there was some trick or grift and I might snatch them away again. It was easy to look unassuming. My eyes were interesting-either green or brown, depending on the light. But my brown tunic badly needed mending. The same was true of my pitted belt and low boots. And unlike the high piles of curls favored by the stronghold's wealthy residents, my long brown hair was braided, the end secured with a thin scrap of leather.
"Thank you," he said.
I gave him a wave, then melted back into the crowd before he could ask any questions, his murmured prayer trailing behind me.
"How much did you give him?" Wren asked when we met in the alley again.
"Enough."
She clucked her tongue. "You're soft, Fox."
"I'm not soft. I'm righteous."
"A righteous thief. You think the garrison commander will buy that?"
"Absolutely not," I said with a smirk. "Which is why I choose not to get caught."
Wren rolled her eyes and tapped her knuckles against the ground to erase whatever bad luck I might have triggered by saying that.
Some people believed you could ask the gods for help. My father taught me our fates were woven in a tapestry, but the true structure-the weave, the tangles, the knots-was hidden from view and out of our hands-and those of the gods. That made sense to me. Surely the Terran gods were too busy with mountains and tides and sunrises to worry about our little tragedies.
Across the road, children kicked a leather ball back and forth, singing a verse with each kick. "West for lilies and mountain high! North for ice and burning fire! East for green things, watch them grow! South for fish and ocean flow."
Carethia's four border strongholds: the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Gates. Walled cities with garrisoned armies to guard the nation against foreign enemies.
"One prince for each gate! Who will win? They'll fight 'til their father brings them home again!"
Carethia was ruled by Rhenish Lys'Careth. He was the twenty-third Emperor Eternal, so the title was more wish than reality. The nation was named for his Lys'Careth ancestor who'd conquered four nations and united them into one Carethian whole. The gates were supposed to be proving grounds for the emperor's sons, to prepare them to rule the nation. (Daughters need not apply. A horseshit rule if you asked me, but no one did.) The most recent former Prince of the Western Gate had managed almost a year in the stronghold. In the meantime, he'd refused to meet the strongholders, ignored drought and the traveling sickness, and spent the stronghold's funds on parties. Hundreds of strongholders had died of a famine he could have prevented, and he had been killed by the same illness he'd ignored.
If the Emperor Eternal knew what had gone on here, he'd done nothing about it. No food or supplies or healers-not even words of encouragement-made their way from the City of Flowers, Carethia's wealthy capital. The Emperor Eternal hadn't even sent a replacement prince to clean up the mess. The Western Gate's palace-its gleaming narrow tower of pale green stone rising like a spear in the center of the stronghold-was still empty, just as it had been for months before the former prince's arrival. If a Carethian prince's job was to outlive his brothers, the Western Gate was a deadly foe.
"Let's get back to the manor," I said. "They'll beat the curfew drums soon anyway."
A drumming began then, but not the patrol's single beat. This was a thundering-the massive warning drums atop the stronghold wall pounded by garrison soldiers. And the ground rumbled beneath our boots.
"Soldiers," Wren said, tension in the word.
She wasn't the only one concerned. Around the market, tables were folded, doors closed and barred. But the garrison soldiers hadn't made a move to close the gatehouse portcullis or doors-forty feet high and made of the strongest timbers Mount Cennet could supply.
There was a moment of strained silence, anticipation a prickle in the air, and then firelight flickered in the gatehouse's shadows. A moment later, they emerged: five columns of soldiers in black leather armor with silver trim and helmets capped with a black plume of feathers. The first of them carried fluttering banners of black. Most bore the silver silhouette of a tiger, claws sharp and ready to strike. The widest in front read "Etoris Eni Vistes," the motto of the Lys'Careth family. It meant "persistence in victory."
I frowned. "These aren't the emperor's soldiers."
"Wrong uniforms," Wren agreed. "And the Emperor's banners have an eagle."
That left only one other option.
"The Emperor Eternal made his choice," I said. "The new Western Prince has arrived."
TWO
We definitely weren't leaving now. Other curious (nosy) people emerged from shadows and doorways, gaping at the flags and soldiers and armor. Strongholders knew royals could be useless at best, treachero's at worst. But the army was still quite a thing to see.
Mounted soldiers followed those on foot, and the market's shadows had lengthened by the time the first carriage rolled through the gatehouse, pulled by a pair of sleek black horses. It was silver and gleaming atop black wheels, its roof rising to a steep and dramatic point, its shutters tightly closed. The carriage was circled by guards wearing dark uniforms like the other soldiers, but minus the armor and helmets. Three more conveyances followed, all closed tight. I guessed the prince didn't want to grace us with a glimpse today.
"I bet he's ugly," Wren said.
I didn't care much about the man, but I was dazzled by the shine. "Can a man with silver carriages be ugly?"
"You mean, will the coin make him handsome? I'd say it depends on the size of the coin, but he's royal. They're all ugly of heart."
"Fucking Lys'Careths," I murmured.
"Fucking Lys'Careths," she agreed.
And they weren't the only trouble brewing. A pain in my chest-a sharp pinch near my heart-alerted me to a new danger, and a faint green haze bloomed in the air like clouds at the edge of a storm.
"Aether," I warned. "Strong." Aether was the stuff of the Aetheric realm-its energy and substance. Anima bore traces of it, but this was more than a trace . . .
"Where?"
I looked up, around, trying to locate the Anima as Aether spread like smoke in the dry air. "I can't tell. It's spread out."
"Friend or foe?" Wren asked.
"Not a friend." There was a sharpness to it, as if the Aether's edge had been honed to a fine blade.
Sparks fired at the edges of the magical haze as the pale outline of a wide-winged moth fluttered toward us. "Luna," I said quietly as the soldiers continued marching.
The moth shuddered, then expanded into a new shape-the hazy outline of a slender young woman with pale skin, straight blond hair chopped at the chin, and eyes that swam with silvery magic. An Anima-and our friend. She was the only thing from the Aetheric who didn't cause me pain. Maybe because we'd known her for years, or maybe because she was a Guardian, a kind of emissary between our world and hers, and with more skills and power than a standard Anima.
She nodded a greeting at Wren. Anima, if they were powerful enough, could choose to be visible to humans who couldn't otherwise sense them.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Someone is manipulating Aether," Luna said in the silent language of gestures she'd created and had taught us to speak. Anima used Aether to appear in this world. Creating sound required even more power than being seen, so speaking with her hands allowed her to conserve her power; it also helped her stay hidden.
"That's not possible," Wren said.
For nearly a century, the Aetheric god had roamed Terra for his amusement-seeing the sights, dining with the Terran gods, spilling Aether into our world. Humans had learned to use and manipulate that magic, and they'd called themselves practitioners. He disappeared suddenly a decade ago, apparently weary of humans. Without him, Aetheric magic all but evaporated. Even the ability to see Anima and detect Aether was relatively rare.
"It shouldn't be possible," I corrected.
Luna nodded. "A practitioner has been revealed."
"I just wanted a little damned sunshine," I muttered. "A few coins."
"Instead you got a prince too scared to show his face and the first Aetheric manipulator in years," Wren said sourly. "Lucky you."
I looked at Luna. "Where is the practitioner?"
Luna shook her head. "Hiding from me. I'll keep looking," she said, and disappeared.
"I don't like this," Wren said, and slipped her small blade into her hand. She'd learned how to fight as a child, when that had been her only way to stay alive.
Someone ran through the alley, pushing past us to get to the road. It was a man in the usual tunic and trousers of a strongholder. But the hands that shoved me were hot enough to burn, and a river of Aether flowed behind him.
Its color was wrong. Not the color of new leaves, but of rotting ones.
He rushed into the market proper, toward the marching lines of soldiers. And then he simply disappeared. None of the soldiers had seen him.
"Did a man just run past us," Wren asked quietly, "and then disappear?"
