Instinct got to Lu before she could react in a more proper, ladylike way: she wound her fist and socked the pickpocket in the nose.
The boy snapped his head back with a howl. He cupped his face, one wide, alarmed eye gaping at her, the other covered by an eye patch and a tangle of black hair.
“You hit me!” he cried, sounding honestly shocked.
He wasn’t much older than her, his features windbeaten and dark, so he likely wasn’t part of the local Mecht syndicate. His clothes were tattered, and the hand he had against his face showed a glossy branded R behind the curved V and crossed swords of Argrid. The brand Argrid’s Church gave to those they captured and cleansed of magic use.
As those details swept over Lu, so did dread. She had assaulted someone.
Vendors and customers stared. Two of the soldiers who had been overseeing the immigrant ship suddenly focused on her.
Lu looked back at the pickpocket. With the sharp points to his features and the russet hue to his brown skin, he looked Argridian, which annoyed her beyond her dread. Her father was Argridian, as were many of the former revolutionaries. Though they had all fought to be accepted as law-abiding Grace Lorayans, others, like this boy, encouraged the hatred most felt toward Argrid.
The boy patted his nose, hands coming away covered in blood. His dress was familiar, the eye patch in particular—
“Devereux Bell?” Lu realized, and the boy’s eyebrows vaulted toward his hairline. “You’re trying to look like Devereux Bell?”
A notorious raider known the island over by his missing right eye—and the fact that he wasn’t part of any raider syndicate. The only moral beacon most raiders had was loyalty to their syndicates. But Devereux Bell’s renown came from being one of the few raiders who dared to sail and thieve with only his crew on his side, successfully operating as an unaligned raider longer than anyone, more than a year.
Successful meaning he had neither yielded and joined a syndicate nor been killed by one.
Children mimicked his missing eye when they pretended to be the infamous brigand. The raider syndicates hated him for stealing magic from their territories without paying dues; Grace Loray’s Council despised him for much the same reason, but they had never caught him, as he knew the island so well that he could escape even the heaviest pursuits.
The boy smiled, teeth red. “Who wouldn’t want to be the most dreaded raider on Grace Loray?”
The soldiers were nearly upon them. The boy hadn’t noticed. Lu cut her eyes to them, something the raider was sure to note.
But he continued to smile at her. “Who are you?” he asked.
The soldiers descended on him, each grabbing an arm.
“Causing the lady trouble?” one bellowed.
The boy’s smile waned when he looked up at the soldiers. “Oh, take me away,” he trilled. “I dare not strive to again see the light of day.”
Lu and the soldiers raised three pairs of eyebrows in confusion. But the raider was still smiling pleasantly. Was he mad?
One of the soldiers cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon, miss—he won’t bother you again.”
Lu nodded absently. The soldiers hauled the boy away, and as well as he could with one eye, the raider winked at her, blood rushing down his face.
A sharp chime carved through the air, bells echoing the time. Ten thirty now.
Lu flexed her sore fingers and cut to the left, where the soldiers headed to the right, toward the castle that sat on a cliff over Lake Regolith. She was even more grateful now for her planned visit to Annalisa in the infirmary before she had to return to the treaty negotiations—it would give her heart time to come out of her throat.
But Lu looked back at the soldiers and the raider one last time, their group shuffling through a crowd of people in sweat-dampened neckerchiefs, salt-rimmed tricorne hats, crocodile-skin ornaments over tattered breeches and mud-soiled hemlines. Most were citizens of this island, good Grace Lorayans staffing Council-approved stalls or receiving shipments of plants from soldiers, working just as hard as the people who had spilled their blood to give them freedom.
This island had come far since Argrid’s rule. All the protection and support that the syndicates offered, the Council could provide; all the freedoms that raiders thought they had in disobedience would be so much more sustainable in unity. And boys like that raider, who wasted their days pickpocketing, could become something that would benefit themselves and society.
Grace Loray was a country of second chances. So Lu believed, with all her heart.
Of all the cities on Grace Loray, New Deza most represented the island’s history. The place had started as a Mecht settlement called Port Visjorn, for a type of white bear sacred to the Mechtlands, until Argrid picked it as their capital and renamed it in their own image. One-story cottages from the original Mecht settlement cowered beside six-story Argridian apartments, wood structures sulked against stone ones. It was chaotic to look at, and more than a little sad to see an obvious reminder of Argrid’s fondness for inserting itself where it wasn’t wanted.
But there was something comforting about New Deza. As if it said, Hey, I survived the revolution—you can too, and you’re probably far less mangy than I am.
Which was why Vex had picked it as the port he’d get arrested in. He liked this city.
But he hadn’t expected his mark to hit him. He’d thought she’d scream or struggle over her bag, enough to rile soldiers into arresting him—but he had not expected the girl to be so goddamn accurate with her fist.
By the time the guards tossed Vex into a communal cell under New Deza’s castle, his nose was still bleeding. He chose a spot where his uninjured eye could watch the rest of the cell, but since he had to keep his head tipped back, he couldn’t get a good look at who was in there with him. He heard voices—gruff, male—and had a moment of panic when he had to choose between not bleeding to death and getting a look at his cellmates.
He should’ve expected the girl to be aggressive. What had drawn him to her was the bullet hole in the cover of the book she was holding—it was clearly a memento of the revolution. Most people wanted to heal from the war’s scars and move on, but here this girl stood, in the middle of the marketplace after having outright yelled at a vendor who was clearly a raider, holding a relic of the war in her arms.
Vex had walked up to her and stuck his hand into her satchel. And only realized afterward what an asinine thing that had been to do. The girl had to have endured the worst of the war, if she had mementos with bullet holes in them, and he’d assaulted her without a single thought of what other scars she might have.
Vex closed his eye. Both his crewmates had told him his plan was idiotic. Nayeli had smacked him. Edda had told him that if he got arrested, the soldiers would toss him into a communal cell and someone was bound to recognize him.
“What good’ll that do, huh? What if the Council realizes they’ve got Devereux Bell in custody? You won’t have to fear Argrid, because Grace Loray will hang your ass.”
Though Argrid may have lost the war with Grace Loray, some Argridian lowlifes still lived on the island. And they thought a stream raider of Argridian ancestry with no syndicate to support him should have some allegiance to his country of origin. Or so Vex’s blackmailers continued to say every time they threatened to hurt him or his crew unless he stole magic for them. Over, and over, and over.