A bonfire of some sort, maybe?
We’d found passable eighteenth-century garb in the costume storage compartments: a chemise, long skirt, jacket, linen cap and neckerchief—covered by a long wool cloak—for me, and for Nico: synthetic buckskin breeches, linen shirt, and a thick hooded hunting frock that falls just to his knees.
The wind gusts as it rolls in off the sea, blowing my hem up several inches. We pull our woolen outer garments closer around our now shivering bodies, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference; the temperature feels like it’s dropped at least ten degrees since we left the ship. On the eastern horizon, a line of low, gray clouds stretches like a sheet for several miles north and south of us.
“Snow clouds,” I say. I pull my cloak’s hood up over my head. “If we’re lucky, we’ve got a couple of hours before that system moves in.”
Nico turns to check the ship’s visibility status again, and I point out the obvious: “You can go back to the ship if it makes you feel better. I can handle a simple recon mission.”
He laughs. “Like you did at Tower Hill? Nope. Thanks for playing. I’m not taking a risk that you’ll go off script on this one.” He chews his bottom lip as he considers me with a long sideways glance. “Where you go, I go.”
“Suit yourself.” I pause, glancing over my shoulder with Nico as he looks one more time. Still invisible. I take it as a good omen.
Instead of the quaint cottages and gray-shingled business establishments I remember, the main street is a hodge-podge of ramshackle apartments shoved together in a discombobulated stack that reminds me of a toddler’s clumsy, haphazardly built block tower. The edifices aren’t flush along their front—some are set several feet deeper than the unit right next door—and each door is painted a different color, making the whole structure look like a disorganized rainbow.
The apartment structure reaches skyscraper-esque height in some areas, and they butt up against each other so close, there isn’t a sliver of daylight through one building and the next.
“Not what you remember?” Nico says.
“Not even close.”
As jarring as Main Street’s aesthetic is, the most unnerving and noticeable detail about the town is the empty streets: There’s not a soul in sight. There are no animals around, either; no horses tied at hitching posts outside places of business, no dogs sniffing for food.
The only thing keeping me from thinking we’ve just dropped into a ghost town is the muted drone of a crowd—like the one at Lady Anne’s execution—coming from the East.
“This is weird,” I say, still scanning buildings on both side of the road. “Are they all on holiday?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” Nico says, fidgeting with the strap of the leather rucksack slung across his body. Inside the bag are two phasers. He opens the flap and digs them out, handing one to me. “Just in case.”
Nico tucks his phaser into the waistband of his breeches and conceals it with his hunting frock. I do the same with mine.
I nod toward the East. “Sound is coming from that way.”
“I’ll take point. You cover our backs.”
The streetscape changes when we turn right and head down the next avenue. The domiciles on this street are a dramatic change from the compact conditions we’d just seen. This street screams affluence: Stately homes feature Arabesque iron lace balconies, covered passageways, and repeating arches from one building to the next. If I didn’t know better, I’d say New Orleans’ French Quarter, during the years of Spanish influence, had been transplanted here.
Childhood memories are imperfect, but there isn’t a single familiar sight. Acadia of 1755—the year the Great Expulsion began and my childhood ended—doesn’t exist anymore; this place is definitely not my home.
Even the ocean, its brine coating my lips as the wind hits my face, smells different, tastes different. The air is also tinged with soot, the result—no doubt—of that smoke cloud rising in gradient plumes of silvered gray and black.
The smoke pillar looks bigger, more ominous, and I’m not altogether convinced it’s due to the point of view I have here compared to our view on the outer edge of town.
Nico seems to notice it, too. “Is it just me or does that smoke look worse?”
“Not just you,” I say.
“Can we take a short cut through there?” He points to a narrow alleyway on our right.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I recognize nothing here.”
He gives me a quick, sympathetic look, but doesn’t slow his gait as we move into position at the entrance to the backstreet. We pull our phasers and advance down the alley, settling into our ingrained recon patrol patterns. Nico checks everything on the left, I check the right side, both of us careful to spot-check sections of roof we can see.
When the top crate in a pyramid of boxes stacked against the left wall topples into our path, we swing around to lock phasers on whoever—or whatever—is moving around inside the pile. Out of the splintered wood, several streaks of gray scurry past and disappear around the corner behind us.
Nico lets out a slow breath. “Rats.”
My skin crawls. “I hate rats!”
It takes several more turns down other streets and alleys to find the wharf. The docks are an explosion of noise and heat, the latter emanating from a burning ship in the harbor—the light of the fire slices through the fog like a hot knife through butter. To the right of the ship that’s engulfed in flames—and minutes away from sinking into the bay—sits a smaller ship.
I’m so transfixed by the fire that I don’t realize Nico has moved until his hand stretches down into my face from above me. When I look up, I realize he’s
