Demon Marked

have known I’d wait, but he was late anyway. The sketch wouldn’t be worth anything to him if he died there.”
    Zenobia’s chin tilted up at an unmistakable angle, a combination of defiance and pride—as if she felt the need to defend her brother. “Perhaps he was late for the same reason you stayed: money.”
    Yes, Yasmeen believed that. If she had followed Archimedes’s orders and flown directly to the Ivory Market, he could have quickly sold the sketch. Which meant that he’d risked his life those three weeks because if he’d left Venice without the sketch—or access to the money—he’d have been dead anyway.
    He’d owed someone, and they intended to collect. Few debts would need a da Vinci sketch to cover them, though. Even small salvaged items like those Archimedes collected in Europe sold high at auction. Of the baubles in Zenobia’s parlor, the miniature alone would purchase a luxury steamcoach.
    “Does he really owe so much?”
    “Yes.”
    “So you changed your names.” Yasmeen had to laugh. “He said he was trying to escape your father’s legacy.”
    “No. Just Wolfram’s own.”
    Zenobia’s sigh seemed to hang in the air. They’d almost reached the Rose & Thorn before she spoke again.
    “Is there anything else? For Lady Lynx,” she added, when Yasmeen raised a brow.
    “Yes.” The walk here had reminded her of one rule that she’d been fortunate to have learned before Archimedes Fox had ever boarded her ship. “Don’t let her go soft for a man.”
    Zenobia stopped, looking dismayed. “A romance adds excitement.”
    “With a man who tries to take over everything? Who wants to be master of her ship, or wants the crew to acknowledge that she’s his little woman.” Yasmeen sneered. God, but she imagined it all too easily. “What man can tolerate his woman holding a position superior to him?”
    Zenobia apparently couldn’t name one. She grimaced and pulled out her notes. “Not even a mysterious man in the background? More interest from the readers means more money.”
    Yasmeen wasn’t always for sale, and in this matter, the promise of extra royalties couldn’t sway her. “Don’t let her go soft. Give her a heart of steel.”
    “But . . . why?”
    The woman had begun that morning tied up and gagged. Now Yasmeen was going to threaten a man’s life to make certain it wouldn’t happen again, and yet she had to ask why . Shaking her head, Yasmeen started for the inn.
    “Because there’s no other way to survive.”

CHAPTER 2

    Yasmeen flew into Port Fallow from the east, high enough that the Horde’s combines were visible in the distance. After their war machines had driven the population away and the zombies had infected those remaining, the Horde had used the continent as their breadbasket. They’d dug mines and stripped the forests. Machines performed most of the work—and what the machines couldn’t do was done by Horde workers living in enormous walled compounds scattered across Europe, while soldiers crushed any New Worlder’s attempt to reclaim the land.
    But thirty years ago, Port Fallow had been established as a small hideaway for pirates and smugglers on the ruins of Amsterdam, and had boomed into a small city when the Horde hadn’t bothered to crush it. Either they hadn’t considered the city a threat, or they hadn’t been able to afford the effort. Yasmeen suspected it was the latter. Only fifty years ago, a plague had decimated the Horde population, including those living in the walled compounds. A rebellion within the Horde had been gaining in popularity for years and, after the plague, had increased in strength from one end of the empire to the other. Now, the Horde was simply holding on to what they still had, not reclaiming what they’d lost—whether that loss was a small piece of land like Port Fallow or the entire British Isles. No doubt that in the coming years, more pieces would come out from under Horde control.
    Just as well. A five-hundred-year reign was long enough for any empire. Yasmeen would be glad to see them gone.
    But then, she’d be glad to see a lot of people gone—and currently, Franz Kessler was at the top of her list.
    It wouldn’t be difficult to find him. Port Fallow contained three distinct sections between the harbor and the city wall, arranged in increasing semicircles and divided by old Amsterdam’s canals: the docks and warehouses between the harbor and the first canal, with the necessary taverns, inns, and