Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1)
Amanda Foody
DAY ONE
“To be frank, reader, you’d be better off not visiting the city at all.”
—The City of Sin, a Guidebook: Where To Go and Where Not To
ENNE
If I’m not home in two months, I’m dead.
Her mother’s warning haunted her as Enne Salta lugged her leather trunk down the bridge leading off the ship, filling her with an inescapable sense of dread.
If I’m not home in two months, I’m dead.
It’d been four.
For the first time in fifteen days, Enne stepped onto dry land. Her balance veered from side to side as if she expected the gray cobblestones to tilt like the sea, and she white-knuckled the pier’s railing to compose herself. If the ground weren’t so littered with cigar butts and grime, she might’ve kissed it. Two weeks battling seasickness on a floating monstrosity could do that to a lady.
A woman shoved past her, not noticing Enne’s petite frame. The force of it nearly knocked Enne over. She glared at the woman’s ostentatiously feathered hat as it disappeared into the crowds.
Hmph, she thought. A lady shouldn’t rush. Barely five seconds in the so-called City of Sin and already people were rude.
As more passengers disembarked from the ship, the crowds around the customs tables swelled with hundreds of people, hollering and waving passports and jostling each other in an effort to reach the front of the lines. Most were young men, probably visiting New Reynes to sample its famous casinos and nightlife—but the number of families present surprised her. This city was no place for children.
And, she reminded herself, staring up at the sinister, smog-stained sky, it was no place for her, either.
As Enne joined the queues, she dug through her belongings for her tourist documents. Her purse was stuffed: her passport, a handful of gingersnap cookies leftover from last night’s dinner and a copy of The City of Sin, a Guidebook: Where To Go and Where Not To. As she fished out her papers, something fell and clinked when it hit the ground. Her token.
She scooped it up and clutched it to her chest. Her mother, Lourdes, had given her this token. It was two inches long and gilded, with an old Faith symbol of an eye etched on one side and a cameo of a past queen on the other. The Mizer kings had used these tokens as party invitations. It was probably illegal to own it—any remnants from before the Revolution twenty-five years ago had been destroyed, just like the Mizers themselves. But Enne couldn’t bring herself to throw away something so rare and precious. She tucked it safely back into her pocket.
With nothing to do but wait, Enne pulled out her guidebook and compared its cover to the city in front of her. The photograph of Luckluster Casino matched the stories of New Reynes: red lights that flashed without flame, women of loose morals dancing on street corners in sparkling, skin-tight corsets, gambling den owners beckoning passersby with seedy smiles and the allure of fast fortune.
But neither the stories nor the cover bore any resemblance to the city before her. From what she could see, New Reynes was a wasteland of metal and white stone. The factories in the distance glinted as if coated in liquid steel, and the clouds were so black she swore the rain would fall dark as coal.
Panic seized her as she examined the skyline—white and jagged as teeth.
All you know are stories, Enne told herself. And not all stories are true.
“Next!” called the man at the customs table, and Enne hurried to his desk. He snatched the papers from her hands. “Erienne Abacus Salta.”
She cringed at the sound of her full name. No one called her that but her teachers.
The man wore round spectacles rimmed in faux gold, making his eyes appear magnified as they traveled from her face and slithered down her body. “A Salta, eh? Then you’re a dancer.” By the way he said “dancer,” drawing out the s sound and licking his lips, Enne knew he wasn’t picturing her ballet at finishing school.
Her cheeks reddened. City of Sin, indeed. She was not that kind of dancer. She. Was. A. Lady.
He glanced back at her paperwork. “From Bellamy. Seventeen years old. You know, you hardly look seventeen.”
She flushed deeper and counted backward from ten, lest she say something indecent and break one of Lourdes’s sacred rules.
Ladies should never reveal their emotions. That was the first rule.
The man checked the birth date on her passport, shrugged and returned to her travel documents. “Blood talent is dancing, of course. What is the Abacus family talent?”
“Arithmetic,” she answered. Every person possessed two talents, one inherited from each parent. The stronger one was known as the blood talent, and the weaker was called the split talent. Enne’s Abacus split talent was so weak it might as well have been nonexistent, as if all her ability had gone to pliés and pirouettes rather than to simple math.
The man scribbled her talents and family names into a grease-stained booklet. “How long is your stay?”
“The summer,” Enne said, trying to make her voice sound strong. School began again in September, and this was Enne’s final year before graduation, before her debut into society. All her life she had perfected her fouettés, memorized her table settings and obsessed over every salon invitation...all to graduate and earn the title of lady. She wanted it more than she wanted anything. It was all she’d cared about...
Until Lourdes went missing.
No matter how scared or how alone she felt, Enne swore to remain in this disgusting city until she found her mother. For however long it took. But secretly, selfishly, she hoped she’d find Lourdes before September. Without her debut, she wasn’t sure who she was supposed to become.
The man tapped his ballpoint pen at the bottom of the document. “Sign your name here. If you can’t write, just put an X. And if you can read, go ’head and verify everything.”
The document was a horror of fine print. At the top of the page was a check box for those with Talents of Mysteries. During the reigns of the Mizers, the various kingdoms had required every citizen to be classified into one of two categories based on their talents: Talents of Aptitude and Talents of Mysteries. Both Enne’s blood and split talent were considered Talents of Aptitude; anyone could develop a skill in dancing or arithmetic, even if they would never compare to those born with a family talent.
Talents of Mysteries, however, couldn’t be learned. Crudely put, they were magic—and even the Mizer kings, who’d had powerful Talents of Mysteries of their own, had considered them to be a threat. Before the Revolution, there had been harsh restrictions on where people could live and who they could marry based on their talents. It was one of the many reasons the Mizers were overthrown. And so Enne was shocked to find such a classification in an official document in New Reynes, the Republic’s capital, the home of the Revolution. It was archaic. Distasteful.
She signed her name in her best calligraphic script, ready to move on.
With a dreadful thud, the man pounded her passport with a wooden stamp bearing the Republic’s insignia, a circle with a bolt of lightning inside, meant to resemble an orb full of volts. The signature of Chancellor Malcolm Semper—the “Father of the Revolution,” and still the Republic’s leader twenty-five years later—was engraved over it.
Handing her the papers, the customs man said, “Enjoy New Reynes.”
As if she could enjoy herself when her mother was lost in this rotten city.
Enne shoved her way out of the crowd and stared blankly at the vast New Reynes skyline. At the unfamiliar fashions of the people around her. At the bleakness of the city’s polluted sky. She had no idea where to begin. As she crossed the street, the people waiting to be reunited with their families looked straight through her, as though she didn’t exist.