Excerpt from Chapter One

by Jirina Linnea

      Since its installation, the door to the Finnegan family estate had followed the same sequence of sounds — a sigh, a creak, and a click — as it swung back into the frame. On this morning, the sequence held a note of finality, for this would be the last time Jules ever heard it, if all went according to plan.

      The winding road that stretched from Whitebrooks’s High City to the docks was a familiar one, but Jules’s mind lingered on the mundane details of the path. The tree with a knot in its trunk that resembled a face, the iron gate bent out of shape where one of his schoolmates had lost control of his Myr-Handling. The small patch of grass that the sunlight never reached, the sea glass ornament hanging from a lamppost that cascaded multicolored lights onto the road when the sun began to set. He plucked each scrap of these banal landmarks as he went, placing them neatly away in a corner of his mind reserved for nostalgia.

      His custom-made leather boots tapped out a steady rhythm on the cobblestones as he tried not to let his mind wander back up the hill to all he was leaving behind. That task became easier when the cobblestones gave way to the packed earth of the Mid City Town Square, leading him past the executioner’s platform that stood as a proud monument before the temple of Dyon.

      Unlike the higher levels, work and bustle never fully ceased in Whitebrooks’s Low City. The warm smell of freshly baked bread intermingled in a conflicting combination with the acrid smoke and oil pumping from the factories along the water’s edge. With each step past the sun-bleached shacks, Jules could make out more of the sounds that formed the raucous symphony of Whitebrooks harbor. Wood and metal creaked and groaned as ships rolled in the gentle tide, horse hooves landed with hollow thuds against the docks as they dragged carts in their wake. Bells clanged, steam hissed, and below it all was the cacophony of voices — chatting, laughing, bartering, yelling orders.

      Jules was prepared for this day. But no amount of preparation could fully erase the anxiety that beat against his ribcage like the wings of a trapped bird as he slipped through the crowd toward the line of ships.

      People jostled him as they passed, and Jules shoved one hand into his pocket, finding reassurance in the smooth metal of the coin, there. The cream-colored shirt and long purple vest he wore belted at the waist would not paint him as a target for potential thieves, the way his usual getup would have. The satchel slung over one shoulder might draw some attention from a keen-eyed pickpocket, but Jules was willing to make that sacrifice if necessary. Nothing inside the pack was more valuable than the single bronze coppin beneath his fingers.

      There’s a ship called the Ambition. Find it. Give this coin to Captain Delian. There had been a finality in Saige’s voice, as well, as he had whispered those words to Jules two nights ago.

      The thought of his friend made longing seize Jules’s heart with such force, he halted in the middle of the docks, ignoring the dirty looks and muttered swears tossed his way by the people forced to circumvent him. For a moment, he wanted to give in to it. For a moment, every muscle in his body called out for him to move — to walk in the opposite direction until he reached The Seahorse at the far end of the docks. It would have been so easy to stay; to cling to the familiar. To walk through that door with the flaking turquoise paint and up the stairs to Saige’s room.

      The idea was so tempting that he almost convinced himself he could make it work. He could return to his home at the top of the hill. He could settle for the life his family expected him to lead, and he could accept that happiness would never be there to greet him when he awoke to face each day.

      Except it wasn’t just happiness he would be giving up if he stayed. Whether it was mere days, or if he was able to continue to hide behind his shield of lies for years to come, the fact hung like a noose around Jules’s neck that eventually he would be caught. And when he was, that metaphorical noose would become abruptly, inescapably real.

      Jules turned back toward the line of ships bobbing in the harbor, and chose the hard path.