Chapter One #2
Even the Cymreans are here for the display, all the way from their empire across the Sapphire Sea to the east. Poisoners and imperialists, all of them.
They’ve been licking their lips at Eireann for two centuries, ever since our first High King betrayed the Old Ones to seize power and held off a Cymrean invasion in the aftermath.
Now, five years after the uprising, every betting hall in Quay-side has odds on how long before the Cymreans move to annex us for the metals locked deep in our western hills.
Go figure—an empire built on war doesn’t have the mines to supply its own forges.
None of the Cymreans would bat an eye at the Black Quay. To be fair, they’ve probably seen worse. Their nobles are notorious for poisoning each other for every petty grievance and sticking the putrefying corpses of rivals onto newly seized forts.
“There’ll be more up there soon,” mutters one grizzled woman as she wanders up to our stall, eyes flitting over the groaning figure up on the Black Quay before settling on our wares. “ ’Specially with so many nobles here.”
Right. My stomach twists.
The Assay—the contest where the daughters of the noble families on Eireann fight to the death to be the next High Queen—is about to begin.
I keep my face neutral and lay out a selection of blades—a couple of daggers, some knives small enough to fit into your palm, another the length of my forearm. The steel shines, but it won’t for long. My father uses cheap alloys to make his weapons, but no untrained eye will catch that.
The man behind her agrees, coughing. “Treason’s contagious. Spreads like a fever. Last thing we need is to remind the nobles and the High King of how close we got last time.”
The woman smirks, a hungry light in her watery eyes. There’s longing there too, enough to draw a ripple of tension up my throat as she tuts softly. “All those noblewomen, tearing each other to shreds for power and a prince.”
“What do you expect when they’ve got to give up their inheritances to compete?
” The man shakes his balding head. “Heirs to the counties with the Seven Wells. Not that those are worth anything now, with magic drained dry. But all that land, the harvests, the trade? You wouldn’t catch me giving it all up to risk my life for a crown. ”
“Eh, you never had the stomach for a good gamble,” the woman barks with a laugh.
Bitterness bites deep in my chest.
Once, ours was an isle ruled by goddesses—warriors, poets, mothers, and scribes—and the land was steeped in shimmering black tendrils of magic, flowing through the Seven Wells into the very earth beneath us.
If there was a chance to bring that back, to revive the Seven Wells and magic itself, would anyone be brave enough to take that risk?
The nobles had let the High King drain the Seven Wells after the uprising five years ago, and execute all the mages the gardai could find. Before that—twenty years ago, not long before I was born—they’d let him banish the Martyr, the leader of the mages across the isle.
Needless to say, any mages still alive after both the Martyr’s banishment and the uprising executions had the good sense to flee five years ago.
They took their caoranachs with them too—the winged serpents fed off magic, drawing from the Seven Wells for centuries, and had bound themselves to the strongest of the mages.
Now there’s nothing left in any of the Wells, the source of all magic on the isle.
All we can do is hope that one day the Martyr will return to save us.
If she’s even still alive, after twenty years of exile.
Does anyone know where she went?
I draw in a chilled breath as the pair walks away. At the next stall over, threads of silver-gray mist weave between satchels of sage and rosemary bundled into little charms against heartbreak and trickery.
The hopeful lilt of a pipe grabs at my attention. It’s so persistent, so stubborn despite the chill in the midsummer air, that focusing on work feels impossible. I lock up the stall and follow the sound. With every step, I search the crowds, looking for my sister.
In the bustling market, bodies dance and weave to the tune.
Someone picks up a beat with a wooden spoon while a pair of feet stomp out a rhythm, and a singer weaves a tale of some foreign land with dark pools and a long-lost heir.
Couples join in the dance—men and women, women and women, men and men.
Defiant laughter and stubborn joy rise beneath the weak sunlight struggling to break through the mist, and my throat tightens.
My mother loved to dance too.
At the edge of the crowd where the stalls thin out, a small boy in patched brown trousers huddles under a thin cloak. He keeps his face down to where a tin cup sits empty on the damp ground. At his side, a girl with hollow eyes begs.
An ache flares in my chest like a wound, one only half healed. I flick a thin bronze coin their way, and the girl almost leaps to catch it.
My eyes flit to the boy still hunched over in the dirt. He lifts his chin to meet my stare, and a shudder trails down my spine.
Both his eye sockets are empty, the hollows carved with twisting scars—the mark of a thief.
The scars are so pink, they can only be recent—and probably came from the gardai.
The boy tilts his head, then snaps it toward the slums at the edge of the market.
Fear grabs me then.
Most days, the market is a riot for the senses, with shepherds from Eireann’s inland valleys milling around with grain farmers from the north and miners from the western cliffs with their minerals and ores; herbalists and artisans come from the south and its wild sea coves.
But now—now the bodies move through the lanes not in a swell but in a swarm.
A horde.
A mob.