Demon Marked

docks. The taverns were opening early, hoping to make a few extra deniers before midday . . . and the good citizens of Fladstrand were probably praying that her crew wouldn’t venture beyond the docks and into the town itself.
    Unfortunately for them, Lady Corsair ’s crew wasn’t in Fladstrand to drink. Nor were they here to cause trouble, but Yasmeen wasn’t inclined to let the town know that. Letting them tremble for a while did her reputation good.
    Dawn had completely faded from the sky by the time Lady Corsair breached the mouth of the harbor. Yasmeen stood behind the windbreak on the quarterdeck, her spyglass aimed at the skyrunners tethered over the docks. She recognized each airship—all of them served as passenger ferries between the Danish islands to the east and Sweden to the north. Several heavy-bottomed cargo ships floated in the middle of the icy harbor, their canvas sails furled and their wooden hulls rocking with each swell. Though she knew the skyrunners, Yasmeen couldn’t identify every ship in the water. Most of Fladstrand fished or farmed—two activities unrelated to the sort of business Yasmeen conducted. Whatever cargo the ships carried probably fermented or flopped, and she had no interest in either until they reached her mug or her plate.
    When Lady Corsair ’s long shadow passed over the flat, sandy shoreline and the first rows of houses overlooking the sea, Yasmeen ordered the engines cut. Their huffing and vibrations gave way to the flap of the airship’s unfurling sails and the cawing protests of the seabirds whose flight paths had been interrupted by the balloon. Below, the narrow cobblestone streets lay almost empty. A steamcart puttered along beside an ass-drawn wagon loaded with wooden barrels, but most of the good people of Fladstrand scrambled back to their homes as soon as they spotted Lady Corsair in the skies above them—hiding behind locked doors and shuttered windows, hoping that whatever business Yasmeen had wouldn’t involve them.
    They were in luck. Today, Yasmeen only sought one woman: Zenobia Fox, author of several popular stories that Yasmeen had read to pieces, and sister to a charming antiquities salvager whose adventures Zenobia based her stories on . . . a man that Yasmeen had recently killed.
    Yasmeen had also killed their father and taken over his airship, renaming her Lady Corsair . That had happened some time ago, however, and no one would consider Emmerich Gunther-Baptiste charming , including his daughter. Yasmeen had seen Zenobia Fox once before, though the girl had been called Geraldine Gunther-Baptiste then. As one of the mercenary crew aboard Gunther-Baptiste’s skyrunner, Yasmeen had watched an awkward girl with mousy-brown braids wave farewell to her father from the docks. Zenobia had been standing next to her pale and worn-looking mother.
    Neither she nor her mother had appeared sorry to see him go.
    Would Zenobia be sorry that her brother was dead? Yasmeen didn’t know, but it promised to be an entertaining encounter. She hadn’t looked forward to meeting someone this much since Archimedes Fox had first boarded Lady Corsair —and before she’d learned that he was really Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste, not the writer she’d been led to believe he was. Hopefully, her acquaintance with his sister wouldn’t end the same way, with Yasmeen throwing Zenobia to a mob of zombies.
    A familiar grunt came from Yasmeen’s left. Lady Corsair ’s quartermaster stood at the port rail, consulting a hand-drawn map before casting a derisive look over the town.
    Yasmeen tucked her scarf beneath her chin so the heavy wool wouldn’t muffle her voice. “Is there a problem with the directions, Monsieur Rousseau?”
    To avoid the ridiculousness of asking around town for Zenobia’s location—and giving someone a chance to warn the woman that a mercenary was coming for her—Yasmeen had overpaid a Fladstrander fisherman for the information, instead.
    If he’d misdirected them, Yasmeen wouldn’t hesitate to ask for her money back.
    Rousseau pushed his striped scarf away from his mouth, exposing his short black beard. With gloved hands, he gestured to the rows of houses, each one identical to the next in all but color. “Only that they are exactly the same, captain. But it is not a problem. It is simply an irritant.”
    Yasmeen nodded. She didn’t doubt Rousseau could find the house. Though hopeless with a sword or gun, her quartermaster could interpret the