Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Maurice let me take the bed while he fished all night with the trawler out.
He’d bring his catch back to the South Docks and sell to the markets there, since it was his only source of income now.
When I woke after a full night’s sleep, my mood had improved, and my hope was refilled.
Today, I would find my mother and use the rest of the money to get us far from Valveron, maybe even all the way to Sanctuary.
Bria couldn’t be far ahead of us. It was just a matter of catching her.
The outsider who was shadowing me could find the buyer himself—and take his violence and insecurities with him.
The fishing boat’s bathroom was no more than a single stall for a toilet and a shower head without a curtain, but there was a sink and a door, which was more than I’d had for the last few days.
Maurice had placed the clothes he’d cleaned for me next to the door.
I dressed quickly in the foggy mirror, then combed my hair.
The Forge die rested on the edge of the sink, and I plucked it carefully from the lip of the iron basin, careful not to knock it down the drain.
I turned the die in my hand, staring into the mirror. My reflection looked back. Past the pale complexion, the green eyes that reminded me of Mother, the crack of my lips, and the wispy black strands of wavy hair framing my face. I focused on the die and summoned the power of its first rune.
Water.
I was out of practice with the element. Water wielders were rare, even in Valveron, and that had made it difficult for me to find a bloodline to siphon. It was so different with the dice, where the Archetype was always within reach, somehow inexhaustible.
I let the power fill my bones, testing it by collecting the dew from the mirror and the vapor from the air, pulling them into a single drop.
“Nina?” A voice spoke on the other side of the door. My concentration broke, and the drop fell down the sink.
I slid the door open to find Max leaning against the doorframe, staring down at me.
It seemed he’d showered before me. There was no sign of the soot and grime of the boiler room.
He was standing so close, I scented the cigarillo he’d just smoked on his breath.
Had I been in a rush, I might have crashed into him.
“What?” The single word carried no hint of pleasure at seeing him this bright and early.
His lips parted, and he stood in silence for several moments before he finally spat out, “We’re about to dock.”
“Great.” I went to step around him in the sliver of space between his body and the doorway, but he blocked me with an arm, gripping the frame. “Do you mind?”
“Let me see your arm.”
“Why?”
“You said I hurt you last night. Let me see it.”
I rolled my eyes but pulled up my sleeve anyway. “I’m fine. You’re not as strong as you think.”
The corner of his lips curled. Why was I looking at his mouth so much?
“I think you’re the first person who’s ever told me that,” he murmured, brushing his thumb across the pebble-sized bruise on my elbow. It melted away beneath his thumb. “It’s not often I… lose control. I don’t know what happened.”
“It’s not the first time you’ve left your mark, either,” I noted. “There was the pub, then the alley, then the prison…”
He shook his head, like they didn’t count.
“Before was different. I was hunting you. I didn’t care what happened to the strange woman who stole my dice.
Now, we’re working together, and I…” His tongue darted across his teeth, like I was dragging these words from him by force.
“I need your help. You were right. I need to earn your trust, and I’ve done a shitty job so far. ”
“Is this your incredibly long-winded way of apologizing?”
His eyes fell away, looking at anything but me. “I suppose.”
“You’re ridiculous.” I shook my head in admonishment and shoved his arm away. “But I’ll take it.”
He nodded curtly before returning to the kitchen a few paces away. A small pot of water was heating on the stove. Beside it was a coffee maker. “Have you ever been to Driftend?” Max asked me.
“Honestly, I haven’t been outside of Valveron.”
He looked sharply over his shoulder, lifting his brow. “You’ve never left the city?”
I shrugged. “We were broke, and I worked practically every day. There wasn’t exactly time to take my unstable mother on a vacation.”
“You have no other family?” he asked, pouring the heated water over the dry coffee grounds.
I sat on the bed and waited. “No. It’s always just been me and Mother… and Bernard, of course. He was roommates with my father at the Academy before my parents met. We stayed with him after Father died, and he eventually took me on as his apprentice. After a bit of convincing on my part.”
“They were at the Academy? How did your father die?” he inquired.
I shrugged. It wasn’t a story I discussed much with anyone, mostly because there were so many details I didn’t know.
“Bernard claims he wanted to change the way magic was distributed through society. He wanted to eliminate bloodlines, but he could never get the support he needed to make real changes.” My throat tightened.
“He wanted to understand magic, not control it. The Academy didn’t like that.
” I glanced at Max. “He was caught in an unauthorized area, looking through one of the other engineers’ studies.
Bernard came to our apartment that evening and told us he’d been killed by enforcers, trying to escape the consequences of what he’d done. ”
Max leaned against the counter, his gaze falling distant. “Were you close to him?”
I shook my head. “I lost him long before he was killed. Looking back, it was better that way, I suppose—losing him in pieces. First to his cause, then to his curiosity, and then ultimately to his death.”
“Your surgeon and your father, they worked together?”
He was very curious about them both. It was the first time that he’d probed my past. “Bernard chose the Vitalis Archetype to study, but my father went a different path after their surgical track. Instead of receiving a bloodline, he went to work in the labs.”
He scoffed. “Then he was a fool. Nothing good happens in the labs.”
“You speak as if you know for certain.”
Max shifted as if uncomfortable, folding his arms. “I have some experience in the area.”
“Why do you hate surgeons?” I asked. His head snapped to the side to look at me, as if surprised I’d mentioned it. “Yesterday, you said you had no love for surgeons. Of all the clinical occupations, why them?”
He sighed before handing me a mug of steaming coffee. “I think you already know the answer. I’ve been through a few operations. Each one was the closest to torture I hope to ever experience.”
I thought back to the scars over his back. If he’d truly received those raised lines from a surgeon, the person should be banned from practice. Even an apprentice like myself could suture skin back together more neatly.
“You wouldn’t have felt that way with my surgeon.
Bernard was good at what he did, but most of all, he cared.
He would never leave his patient in that kind of pain.
If a life didn’t improve, he saw it as a failure on his part, and he vowed to help every patient until they were satisfied with their quality of life. ”
“And if he couldn’t, off to the buyer they went.” He arched a brow while assessing my reaction.
“He never killed anyone for the buyer,” I spat.
“Of course not.” He winked before taking a long sip of his own coffee, wincing as he swallowed. “Let’s talk about Driftend instead.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to me.
It was an old map, fragile from use and frayed at the corners.
In the center of the page was Valveron, a city-state completely independent of the Northern and Southern Continents, only connected by Valveron, the narrow strip of land known as the City of Progress.
The Continents were mostly rural areas dotted with junctions of civilization.
Valveron was the largest power on the map, a trade bottleneck, dominating the world in early industrialization, modern technology, and—the most coveted resource—essence.
Everything that passed between Continents went through Valveron.
Whoever controlled the city controlled the rest of the world.
Besides the Freelands, a cluster of isles on the other side of the sea, but few ships had ever successfully traveled there.
Driftend was a small point just inside the borders of Valveron’s direct control. When the lines were drawn centuries ago, Driftend was strategically included in Valveron’s orbit, thanks to the riches beneath the surface of the land.
Coal. Lots of it. Once it had been used for cooking, heat, and blacksmithing.
Now it kept the ships running up and down the canal, connecting Valveron to the other cities of the Continents and across the sea.
When steam energy was first developed at the Academy, the city quickly adopted the new technology.
It didn’t take long before horse-drawn boats were replaced with steam engines of all sizes and a railroad that could transport anything from people to freight.
Factories lined the sea, prompting trade and revenue for the city.
And the fuel source for all of this lay below Driftend.
It all happened before my time, but when my mother was still lucid in my youth, she used to wonder at the ships and the trains.
She promised one day we’d cross the sea and see the Freelands on the biggest steamship the world had ever seen.
She said we’d ride a proper train across the country in a private car.
Mother had been full of dreams once—dreams of a life outside Valveron.
Now I had escaped the city, but I was on an adventure very different than the one she’d imagined.
“Why do you think the body trail comes through here?” Max asked me.