style="font-size:15px;"> A tattoo the size of his thumb occupied that spot: a simple yet elegant design of a single stalk of lily of the valley, with three small, bell-shaped flowers and a razor-sharp stem. The ink was black as night, carved so deep into his skin that it had become a part of his living flesh, just as the Order of the Lily had consumed his life. And then destroyed it.
The sight of the tattoo brought back memories as vivid as they were painful. It was as though no time and all the time in the world had passed since he had stumbled up the gleaming marble steps to Alaric Esson Kerlan’s home. Kerlan was the founder of the largest business enterprise in Cyrilia. The sprawling Goldwater Trading Group held monopolies over most of the prominent industries in the Empire—timber, nonferrous metals, weaponry, and the prized blackstone mined in the far north at Krazyast Triangle—as well as private ownership of Cyrilia’s busiest trading port, Goldwater Port.
The trading port that Ramson had run, up until several moons ago.
But few associated the Goldwater Trading Group with the most notorious criminal organization in Cyrilia: the Order of the Lily, which ran underground businesses with traffickers and illegal Affinite trades. Indentured labor was the backbone of the Goldwater Trading Group, and the cheap employment contracts it purchased from its owner’s criminal organization helped keep its prices the lowest in Cyrilian markets.
Amid all this was Alaric Kerlan: successful businessman who had built his commercial empire as a foreigner to Cyrilia with merely a cop’stone to his name, and ruthless Lord of the Lilies in the dark underbelly of Cyrilia.
On the day of Ramson’s initiation, Kerlan had strapped him to a hard iron table in his basement and crushed a white-hot tong into the flesh of his chest. You feel this, boy? he’d gritted out to a screaming, half-delirious Ramson. You’ll only feel pain like this twice in your life. The first time, when you’ve earned my trust and passed the gates of hell into the Order of the Lily. The second time, when you’ve broken that trust and I throw you back into hell. So remember this moment, and remember it well. And ask yourself if you ever want to feel this kind of pain again.
Kerlan had flung the iron tongs onto the floor and asked the stencilmaster to tattoo Ramson.
Ramson closed his hand over his wrist, blocking out the sight of the tattoo and the memory of the searing pain from the brand. In the silver-blue sheen of an impending wintry dawn, he could just make out the outlines of the two sleeping girls, huddled beneath a ragged fur blanket, their chests rising and falling with each breath.
Which meant it was time for him to move.
He stole across the dacha, carefully planting his feet near the walls where the old wooden floorboards had the least flex. He had noticed the small worktable by the door as soon as he’d stepped inside last night. Its worn surface was strewn with papers and scrolls and pens.
Life had taught Ramson that he would never allow himself to get the short end of the stick. Even as the conditions for his end of the Trade had rolled off his tongue, smooth as marbles, another plan had quickly taken form in his mind.
This girl was by far the most powerful Affinite he had seen in this empire throughout all his years of working for Kerlan’s organization. He’d studied enough about Affinites to surmise that hers was likely an Affinity to flesh. He could draw up an unending list of people who would kill for her talents. Which was why she was the key to his regaining his standing in the Order of the Lily.
Alaric Kerlan was a harsh, brutal person—the type of cold-eyed, stone-cut demon of a man one needed to be to succeed in his vast criminal empire—yet he was also a logical one. He’d seen Ramson’s uncanny talent for business and negotiation from the start, and trained him from running small errands to gradually managing parts of his enterprise. By age eighteen, Ramson had become a Deputy of the Order with the precious Goldwater Port under his purview. Controlling Cyrilia’s largest port meant he held a hand and a generous cut in Cyrilia’s lifeblood of foreign trade, from anything as harmless as Bregonian fish and Nandjian cocoa to powerful Kemeiran weaponry.
It also meant he had the power to start distancing himself from the Order of the Lily. For most of his employment under Kerlan, Ramson had been a grunt running menial tasks and conducting side schemes to raise the margins of the criminal organization. He’d heard of the blood trades they conducted, yet with the little freedom he’d had to choose his projects, he’d kept to conning rich men and swindling businessmen: taking down competitors of the Goldwater Trading Group to allow it to maintain its monopoly in the Empire.
The darkest deeds of the Order—assassinations and trafficking—had been beyond what Ramson could stomach, and he’d gone out of his way to avoid being assigned to any such tasks.
Until a year ago, when Kerlan had chosen him for a suicide mission that had resulted in him being arrested, stripped of his ranking, and thrown into Ghost Falls.
He’d failed Kerlan in many ways: botched the most important job of his life, left the Order without a Deputy, and left his betrayer to roam free for the duration of his imprisonment.
He’d fix all that; with the witch’s help, he’d root out the mole in Kerlan’s ranks and claw his way back as rightful Deputy of the Order, Portmaster of Goldwater Port. And when all that was done … he would hand her over to Kerlan. To have an Affinite as powerful as her under the Order’s control would be the cherry on top of his cake.
He’d take it back—he’d take it all back. His title. His fortune. His power.
But Ramson hadn’t become the former Deputy of the most notorious crime network in the Empire just by luck. He was thorough and calculating in every aspect of his job, and he made an effort to understand everything down to the colors of his associates’ window curtains and bedsheets. There was nothing not worth knowing.
And if there was any due diligence to be done in this ramshackle little dacha, it had to be on the worktable.
The table was strewn with objects—a wealth of information. He palmed a few dusty globefires that had burned out, reduced to empty glass orbs filled with ashes, and carefully pushed aside some blank parchments and charcoal pencils.
The first thing he discovered was a book, its cover worn to the point that he could barely make out the title: Aseatic Children’s Stories. Somebody had written several lines of a poem on the cover page inside; the elegant penmanship resembled that of a professional scribe.
My child, we are but dust and stars.
Ramson set the book aside.
He picked through a dozen or so blank scrolls before he hit treasure in the form of a map.
With practiced fingers, he wiggled it loose. The map unfurled with a sigh.
Like the children’s book, it showed signs of wear: someone had penciled in notes all across the outline of the Empire in the same beautiful penmanship. Some of the notes were smudged with age, while others were as new as a freshly minted contract.
The notes were brief but to the point, written in formal Cyrilian. Buzhny, one read, directly on top of where the small town of Buzhny might have been on the map. Inquiry; no sign of alchemist.
Pyedbogorozhk, said another; Inquiry for bounty hunter. Received name from trader.
The map was gold. The witch—if this was, indeed, her map and handwriting—had written the history of her mysterious mission all over this map like a set of footprints.
