Mindless hot fury flooded William, sweeping away all reason and restraint. He raised his head to the sky and snarled, giving voice to his rage before it tore him apart.
For years he’d tracked Spider as much as the Legion would permit him. He’d found him twice. The first time he’d ripped apart Spider’s stomach, and Spider broke his legs. The second time, William had shattered the Louisianan’s ribs, while Spider nearly drowned him. Both times the Hand’s spy slipped through his fingers.
Nobody cared for the changelings. They grew up exiled from society, raised to obey and kill on command for the good of Adrianglia. They were fodder, but to him they were children, just like he had once been a child. Just like Jack.
He had to find Spider. He had to kill him. Child murder had to be punished.
A man stepped out of the Wood. William leapt off the porch. In a breath he pinned the intruder to the trunk of the nearest tree and snarled, his teeth clicking a hair from the man’s carotid.
The man made no move to resist. “Do you want to kill me or Spider?”
“Who are you?”
“The name is Erwin.” The man nodded at his raised hands. A large ring clamped his middle finger—a plain silver band with a small polished mirror in it. The Mirror—Adrianglian Secret Service—flashed in William’s head. The Hand’s biggest enemy.
“The Mirror would like a word, Lord Sandine,” the man said softly. “Would you be kind enough to favor us with an audience?”
TWO
CERISE leaned over the tea-colored waters of Horseshoe Pond. Around her, massive cypresses stood like ancient soldiers at attention, the knobby knees of their roots straddling the water. The Mire was never silent, but nothing out of the ordinary interrupted the familiar chorus of small noises: a toad belching somewhere to the left, the faint scuttling of Edge squirrels in the canopy above her, the persistent warbling of the bluebill …
She rolled up her jeans and crouched, calling in a practiced singsong, “Where is Nellie? Where is that good girl? Nellie is the best rolpie ever. Here, Nellie, Nellie, Nellie.”
The surface of the pond lay completely placid. Not a splash.
Cerise sighed. A long wet smudge flanked by swipes from clawed paws marked the mud five feet from her. Nellie’s trail. When she was fifteen, tracking rolpies through the swamp was an adventure. She was twenty-four now and trudging through the Mire in the middle of the night stumbling into water and sinking up to her ankles in sludge was a lot less fun. She could think of much better ways to spend her time. Like sleeping in her nice warm bed, for example.
“Here, Nellie! Here, girl. Who is a good girl? Nellie is. Oh, Nellie is so pretty. Oh, Nellie is so fat. She is the fattest, cutest, stupidest rolpie ever. Yes, she is.”
No response.
Cerise looked up. Far above, a small chunk of blue sky winked at her through the braid of cypress branches and Mire vines. “Why do you do this to me?”
The sky refused to answer. It usually didn’t, but she kept talking to it anyway.
A chirp echoed overhead, and a white glob of bird poop plummeted from the branches. Cerise dodged and growled at the sky. “Not cool. Not cool at all.”
It was time for emergency measures. Cerise leaned her sword against a cypress knee, anchoring the scabbard in the muck, shifted her weight, pulled the backpack off her shoulders, and dug in the bag. She fished out the tangle of a leather face collar. It was designed to hug the rolpie’s muzzle and the extra strap locking behind her head guaranteed the beast wouldn’t get out. Cerise arranged it on the mud for easy access and extracted a can opener and a small can.
She held the can out and knocked on it with the can opener. The sound of metal on metal rolled above the pond. Nothing.
“Oh, what do I have? I have
A small ripple wrinkled the surface about thirty feet out. Gotcha.
“Mmmm, yummy, yummy tuna. I’ll eat it all by myself.” She locked the can opener on the can and squeezed, breaking the seal.
A brindled head popped out of the water. The rolpie sampled the air with a black nose framed with long dark whiskers. Large black eyes fixed on the can with maniacal glee.
Cerise squeezed the top of the can, letting some of the fish juice drip into the pond.
The rolpie sped through the water and launched herself out onto the shore. From the bottom up to the neck, she resembled a lean seal armed with a long tail and four wide half legs framed with flat flippers. At the shoulders, the seal body stretched into a graceful long neck, tipped with an otter head.
Cerise shook the can. “Head.”
Nellie licked her black lips and tried her best to look adorable.
“Head, Nellie.”
The rolpie lowered her head. Cerise slipped the collar on the wet muzzle and tightened it. “You’ll pay for this, you know.”
Nellie nudged her shoulder with her black wet nose. Cerise plucked a chunk of tuna from the can and tossed it at the rolpie. Razor-sharp teeth rent the air, snapping the treat. Cerise swiped her sword off the ground and tugged on the leash. The rolpie lumbered next to her, wiggling and pushing herself across the swamp mud.
“What the hell was that? Breaking out in the middle of the night and taking off for a stroll? Did you get tired of pulling the boats and decided to take your chances with Mire gators?”
The rolpie squirmed along, watching the can of tuna like it was some holy relic.
“They can bite bone sharks in half. They’ll look at you and see a plump little snack. Brunch, that’s what you’d be.”
Rolpie licked her lips.
“Do you think tuna grows in the mud?” Cerise plucked another chunk and tossed it to Nellie. “In case you didn’t know, there is no tuna in the Edge. We have to get our tuna from the Broken. The Broken has no magic. But you know what the Broken does have? Cops. Lots and lots of cops. And alarm systems. Do you have any idea how hard it is to steal tuna from the Broken, Nellie?”
Nellie emitted a small squeal of despair.
“I don’t feel sorry for you.” Tuna was a pricey commodity. It took four days to get to the Broken, and crossing the boundary between the Edge and the magicless world hurt like hell. Of the whole family, she and Kaldar were about the only ones who managed to do it. The rest of the Mars had too much magic to cross through the boundary. Trying to pass into the Broken would kill them.
Cerise slogged through the mud. Growing up, she was always told that her magic was a gift, a wonderful, rare, special thing, something to be proud of. The magic might have been a gift, but in moments of despair, as she sat poring over the ruins of the family’s finances, she saw it for what it really was—a chain. A big heavy shackle that kept the family locked in the Mire. Were it not for all that magic, they could’ve escaped into the Broken long ago. As it was, the only way out of the swamp lay through the border with the Dukedom of Louisiana into the Weird, where magic flowed full force.
Louisianans used the Mire to dump their exiles. Criminals and troublesome bluebloods, anyone too inconvenient to keep but too risky to kill, were sent to the Mire. And once you crossed that boundary between the Weird and the Mire, the Louisiana Guard made sure you never made it back.
The vegetation parted, revealing the dark water of Priest’s Tongue Stream. A green Mire viper lay in the mud. It hissed as they approached. Cerise hooked the snake with her sword and tossed it aside.
