MOTHER OF EXILES
1902—New York
The early morning sky was heavy with clouds, and a thick mist coated the water as the ferry slouched through the Upper Bay that separated Brooklyn from New Jersey. At the stern of the ship, Esta Filosik looked like any other passenger. Her long, dark hair had been pulled back in an unremarkable style, and the worn skirt and heavy, faded traveling cloak were the sort of garments that encouraged the eye to glide past without noticing their wearer. She’d torn the hem out of the skirt to lengthen it, but otherwise the pieces fit well enough, considering that she’d liberated them from an unwatched clothesline that morning. But beneath the coarse material and rumpled wool, Esta carried a stone that could change time and a Book that could change the world itself.
She might have appeared at ease, uninterested in the far-off city skyline, now no more than a shadow in the hazy distance behind them, but Esta’s attention was sharp, aware of the few other passengers. She had positioned herself so that she could watch for any sign of danger and also so that no one could tell how much she needed the railing behind her for support.
The ship churned through the dark waters, coming up alongside Liberty Island—though it wouldn’t be called that for another fifty years—and the lady herself loomed over them, a dark shadow of burnished copper. It was the closest Esta had ever been to the statue, but even this close, it was smaller than she’d expected. Unimpressive, considering how much it was supposed to symbolize. But then, Esta knew better than most that the symbolism was as hollow as the statue. For those like herself—those with the old magic—the lady’s bright torch should have served as a warning, not a beacon, for what they’d find on these shores.
She wondered if her disappointment in the statue was an omen of things to come. Maybe the world she’d never thought to see would be equally small and unimpressive once she was finally in it.
Somehow, she doubted it would be that easy. The world was wide and vast and, for Esta, unknown. She knew everything about the city, but beyond it? She’d be working blind.
But she wouldn’t be alone.
Standing beside her at the railing was Harte Darrigan, one-time magician and consummate con man. His cap covered his dark hair and shadowed his distinctive storm-gray eyes, making him look ordinary, unassuming . . . like any other traveler. He kept it pulled low over his forehead and turned his back to the other passengers so that no one would recognize him.
Without letting Harte know she was studying him, Esta watched him out of the corner of her eye. When the bottom had fallen out of her world, she’d made the choice to come back because she’d wanted to save him. Yes, she needed an ally, someone who would stand with her in the battles to come. But she’d come back here, to this time and place, because she’d wanted that ally to be him. Because of who he was and what he’d done for her. And because of who she was with him.
But his mood was as unreadable now as it had been ever since she’d woken in the early morning to find him watching her. He must have waited up all night, because when she’d finally awoken in that unfamiliar boardinghouse room in Brooklyn, he was sitting in a rickety chair at the end of the narrow bed, his elbows propped on his knees and his eyes ringed by dark circles and filled with worry. How he had managed to get them both through those final few yards of the Brink, she still didn’t know.
She wanted to ask him. She wanted to ask so many things—about the darkness she had seen on the bridge, the way the inky black had seemed to bleed into everything. She wanted to know if he’d seen it too. Most of all, she wanted to lean into him and to take what support and warmth she could from his presence. But the way he had been looking at her had made her pause. She’d seen admiration in his eyes and frustration, distrust, and even disgust, but he’d never before looked at her like she was some fragile, broken thing.
At the moment he wasn’t looking at her at all, though. As the boat churned onward, Harte’s eyes were trained on the receding horizon and on the city that had been their prison for so long. Every lie he told, every con he ran, and every betrayal he’d committed had been to escape that island, yet there was no victory in his expression now that freedom was his. Instead, Harte’s jaw was taut, his mouth pulled flat and hard, and his posture was rigid, as though waiting for the next attack.
Without warning, the somber note of the ferry broke the early morning calm, drowning out the noise of the rattling engines and the soft, steadily churning water. Esta flinched at the sound, and she couldn’t stop herself from shivering a bit from the brisk wind—or from the memory of that darkness bleeding into the world, obliterating the light. Obliterating everything.
“You okay?” Harte asked, turning toward her with worry shadowing his features. His eyes searched over her, as though he was waiting for the moment he would need to catch her again when she collapsed.
But she wouldn’t collapse. She wouldn’t allow herself to be that weak. And she hated his hovering. “I’m just a little jumpy.”
She thought Harte was about to reach for her. Before he could, she straightened and pulled back a little. If they were to be partners, they would be equals. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow her current weakness to be a liability.
Harte frowned and kept his hands at his sides, but Esta didn’t miss the way his fingers curled into fists. Skilled liar that he was, he couldn’t hide the hurt that flashed across his features any more than he could completely mask the worry etched into his expression every time he glanced at her.
Esta forced herself to ignore that, too, and focused on staying upright. On making herself appear stronger than she felt. Confident.
Harte gave her another long look before finally turning back to watch the land recede into the distance. She did the same, but her concentration was on what waited for them when the ship finally docked.
They had an impossible task ahead of them: to find four stones now scattered across a continent, thanks to Harte. Like Ishtar’s Key—the stone Esta wore in a cuff around her upper arm—the stones had once been in the possession of the Order. The Dragon’s Eye, the Djinni’s Star, the Delphi’s Tear, and the Pharaoh’s Heart. They had been created when Isaac Newton imbued five ancient artifacts with the power of Mageus whose affinities happened to align with the elements. He’d been trying to control the power in the Book that was currently tucked into Esta’s skirt, but he hadn’t been able to. After Newton had suffered a nervous breakdown, he’d entrusted the artifacts and the Book to the Order, who later had used them to create the Brink and establish their power in the city—and to keep Mageus trapped on the island and subjugated under the Order’s control. But Dolph Saunders and his gang had changed that.
Still, even if she and Harte managed to navigate the far-flung world, to find the stones and retrieve them, they still had to figure out how to use them to get the Book’s power out of Harte and to free the Mageus of the city without destroying the Brink. Because, in the greatest of ironies, the Brink also kept the magic it took. If they destroyed the Brink, they risked destroying magic itself—and all Mageus along with it.
Esta was jarred from her thoughts when the boat lurched as it came up against the dock. Another blast of the horn, and the engines went silent. The few passengers around them began making their way toward the stairs.
“Ready?” Harte asked, his voice too soft, his eyes too concerned.
That worry sealed it for her. She took another moment to look at the skyline in the distance before turning to him. “I was thinking—”
“A dangerous proposition,” he drawled. But his eyes weren’t smiling. Not like they should have been. He was still too worried about her, and she knew enough to know that fear like that was a luxury they couldn’t afford. Especially with all that was on the line.
“I think we should split up,” Esta said.
“Split up?” he asked, surprised.
“I can’t get us tickets to Chicago with you in the way. You keep looking at me like I’m about to fall over. People will notice.”
“Maybe I keep looking at you like that because you look like you’re having trouble staying upright.”
“I’m fine,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.
“You think I don’t know that you’ve been leaning on that railing like it’s some kind of crutch?”
She ignored the truth—and the irritation—in his statement. “I can’t lift a couple of tickets with you following me around.”
Harte opened his mouth to argue, but she beat him to it.
“Besides, you’re supposed to be dead,” she reminded him. “The one thing we have going for us is that the Order isn’t looking for you. We can’t afford for someone to recognize either one of us in there, and that’s more likely to happen if we’re together.”
He studied her for a moment. “You’re probably right—”
“I usually am.”
“—but I have one condition.”
“What’s that?” she asked, not at all liking the crafty expression in his eyes.
He held out his hand. “Give me the Book.”
“What?” She pulled back. The Book was the reason he’d planned to double-cross Dolph’s gang in the first place, and for a moment she wondered if she’d been stupid to think there was something between them.
“You want to split up, fine. We’ll split up. But I get to carry the Book.”
“You don’t trust me,” she said, ignoring the flicker of hurt. After all she’d risked for him . . . But what had she expected? He was a con man, a liar. It was part of what she admired in him, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t have wanted him to be anything else.
“I trust you as much as you trust me,” he told her, a non-answer if ever there was one.
“After all I did for you . . .” She pretended to be more irritated than she felt. In truth, she couldn’t blame him. She would have done the exact same thing. And there was something comforting in falling back into their old roles, that well-worn distrust that had kept them from falling too easily into each other.
“You have the cuff with the first stone,” he told her. “If I’m holding the Book, we’ll be even. Plus, if either one of us runs into trouble, we won’t be putting both of the things we have at risk.”
She could argue. She probably should. But Esta understood implicitly that agreeing to his demand would be a step toward solidifying their partnership. Whatever she might feel for Harte paled in comparison to all that they had left to do. Or so she told herself. Besides, if he already had the power of the Book inside of him, he didn’t really need the Book itself, did he? What he needed was the stone she wore in the cuff beneath her sleeve, and he wasn’t asking for that.
“Fine.” She brushed off her disappointment as she slipped the Book from where she’d kept it within her cloak and held it out to him.
A small tome of dark, cracked leather, the Ars Arcana didn’t look like much. Even with the strange geometric markings on the cover, there was nothing overtly remarkable about it. Maybe that was because the power of it was no longer held within its pages. Or maybe that was just the way of things—maybe power didn’t always appear the way you expected it to.
Harte took it from her, and the moment his long fingers wrapped around the leather binding, she thought she saw the strange colors flash in his eyes again. But if they’d even been there at all, the colors were gone before she could decide.
He tucked the Book into his jacket and then adjusted the brim of his cap again. “You go first. I’ll follow in a minute.”
“We should decide on a place to meet.”
“I’ll find you.” His eyes met hers, steady. “Get us a couple of tickets and wait for me on the platform of the first train to Chicago.”
To keep the artifacts out of the hands of Nibsy Lorcan, Harte had sent most of them out of the city. To keep the Order from finding them, he’d scattered the artifacts. The first stone waited in Chicago, where one of Harte’s old vaudeville friends, Julien Eltinge, was performing. They would be one day behind it, and there was a small chance they might even be able to get it before Julien received the package.
But Chicago was only the first of their stops. After Chicago, there was Bill Pickett, a cowboy in a traveling rodeo show who had the dagger. The crown had been sent to some distant family in San Francisco, which was an entire continent away. Worse, she and Harte weren’t the only ones after the Order’s artifacts or the only ones who needed the secrets of the Book. They would never be able to find them all before Logan appeared in New York in a week, where Esta had left him, and told Nibsy everything—about the future, about who Esta really was, and about every one of her weaknesses.
But they would go as quickly as they could. When they had the four, they would return to the city, where the last stone waited, protected by Jianyu, and then they would fight alongside those they’d left behind.
If there’s anyone left.
“I guess I’ll see you in a bit, then?” God, she hated how the rasp in her voice betrayed every worry that was running through her head and every hope that she was unwilling to admit.
Esta didn’t do worry. She didn’t do nerves or second-guessing or regrets. And she wasn’t about to start, no matter how pretty Harte Darrigan’s gray eyes might be or how weak she still felt from whatever had happened to her as she’d crossed the Brink. The only way through was through—and she didn’t need anyone to carry her.
Proving that much to herself as well as to him, she started to go, but he caught her wrist gently. She could have pulled away from him if she’d wanted to, but the pressure of his hand gripping hers was reassuring, so she allowed herself the moment of comfort.
“I’m not going anywhere, Esta,” he told her, his eyes serious. “Not until we finish this.”
And then he’ll be gone.
The unexpected sentimentality of the thought startled her. She couldn’t allow herself to become so soft. Hadn’t Harte just made that much clear? All that could matter now was fixing her mistakes—or the mistakes that she could fix, at least. The others—and there have been so many—she would just have to learn to live with. She would free the Book before its power could tear Harte apart, and then she would use it to destroy the Order, the rich men who preyed on the vulnerable. Esta would finish the job that Dolph Saunders had begun, even if she had to sacrifice herself to do it.
And before it was over, she would make Nibsy Lorcan pay—for Dakari, the one person who had always been a friend to her. For Dolph, the father she had not been allowed to know, and for Leena, the mother she would never know.
The first step was getting the stones back, and they would start in Chicago. One step at a time. Nothing is more important than the job.
Esta cringed at how quickly Professor Lachlan’s words had come to her. No, she corrected herself. Nibsy’s words. They were the words of a traitor, not a mentor and definitely not a father. She didn’t have to live by them any longer, and she certainly didn’t want them in her head.
Pulling her hand out of Harte’s without another word, Esta set off across the upper deck. She kept her head down as she quickened her steps to catch up to the meager stream of early morning passengers making their way from the docks into the larger, busier train terminal. She glanced back just before she stepped through the wide doors, but Harte was nowhere in sight.