She stepped up to the very edge of the docks and peered down. The cloud tide was low today. A vague greenish tint along the top of the clouds indicated a rising Miasma, hopefully one that the sun would bake away before it reached the level of the town and sickened those who could not reach higher ground.
Marie eased up beside her, getting down on her knees and clinging to a bollard in order to peek over the edge. She winced as a sudden updraft caught her hair. The wind lifted Isabelle’s skirt and whipped it around her calves.
“I wish you’d at least hang on to something,” Marie said.
“I’ve only got one hand and I need it for this.” Isabelle waited for the gust to subside and, holding her breath, dropped the phials into empty air. The bottles tumbled and fell, like glittering jewels. Yes, yes, yes! The green bottle drifted downward fluttering like a leaf on the wind while its twin dove straight for the crushing depths.
Isabelle squealed in delight. “It worked. It worked!” Not that she’d ever had any doubts. Not many. A few. She hopped up and down, much to Marie’s consternation.
“Saints, Izzy,” she gasped. “You’re going to fall off!”
Isabelle skipped back from the edge and reached down to pull Marie to her feet. “Did you see that? It worked!”
“Yes,” Marie said, looking more relieved to be away from the precipice than excited for Isabelle’s achievement.
Isabelle babbled on, lifted by the force of her own ebullience. “That means the lodestones in the flux oscillator don’t have to be continuous as long as they’re balanced.”
Marie gave her an exasperated look that was much older than her thirteen years. “Which means what?”
“It means I can build a bigger distiller.”
“I mean, what are you going to do with it, build a ship?”
Isabelle stopped hopping about, her attention arrested. “Maybe I could.” And wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could just sail away, escape forever her wicked father and brother?
“You’re mad!” Marie protested, though the spark of adventure rekindled in her eyes.
“Maybe,” Isabelle said faintly, retreating to that inner dark place where she could concentrate and the good thoughts happened. She knew how aetherkeels worked, but that wasn’t the same as being able to build one.
“Witch!” bellowed a ragged masculine voice. “Breaker’s get.”
Isabelle snapped out of her reverie to see three of the Iconates stalking down the pier toward her, hatred etched into their faces. The one in front was a gaunt man with hollow eyes. When he spoke, ropes of yellow spittle, thick as phlegm, dangled from his lips, a sure sign of the galfesters. Indeed, his voice sounded as if his tongue were made of mud. “Caught you in the act, didn’t I? Throwing potions in the air, calling sickness up from the depths. Breaker take you back!” He shambled toward her.
Fear drained thought from Isabelle’s mind. She stepped back but realized she had nowhere farther to go.
“Stay back!” she shrieked. This was just the sort of thing her governess was always threatening would happen to her if she stepped out of bounds. The wicked men will get you, barbarians and heretics.
“Leave us alone,” Marie said, stepping forward. “My father is Lord du Bois and she is the comte’s own daughter.”
Galfesters laughed, spitting up bubbles of slime. “Think I don’t know that, little witch? Great lord’s daughter had the mark of corruption. Now the sheep die on the hillside. Now the nets bring up no aerofish. Now good, faithful people die while the corrupt thrive. You think we don’t know why? You think we don’t know where the curse comes from, Breakerspawn? You murdered my wife! You killed my son!”
Shock and disbelief overcame Isabelle’s fear. “I did not,” she protested, but there was no arguing with the madness in those eyes. People had been accusing her of being the Breaker’s get all her life. Even the household servants whispered it when they thought she couldn’t hear.
“Pit worm,” Galfesters muttered, shambling straight for Isabelle. She scampered left but his friends spread out to block her escape. Two more steps, and he’d be on her. There was no place to run. Marie whipped out her maidenblade.
“Marie, don’t!” Isabelle cried. The short blade was supposed to be a girl’s last defense against dishonor, meant for her to cut her own throat rather than allow herself to be ruined by a rapist. Isabelle’s governess had spent many hours drilling Isabelle on exactly how to make the cut, always with the breathless suggestion, “Think of the great honor you will do your family.”
But Marie aimed the knife at Galfesters, a kitten hissing at a mad dog.
Galfesters rounded on Marie. “Cursed b—”
There was a loud ceramic crack and an explosion of pottery shards around Galfesters’s head. Someone had hurled a crock at him. He toppled in a spray of baked clay and landed hard on the edge of the pier. Isabelle skipped aside. His club flew end over end out into empty space. His cronies blinked at him, then whirled to see what had felled him.
Jean-Claude, rushing from the alley, bellowing like bull, was on the first one before he could react. The musketeer threw an elbow at his head. The Iconate spun halfway around in a shower of blood and teeth and sprawled on the ground. The last one thrust a boat hook at Jean-Claude but hit only air as the musketeer glided to one side, seized the haft, and yanked his assailant off balance. A swift kick and a thudding blow to the neck laid him out like a rug.
Galfesters groaned and pushed himself to his elbows.
Marie, still livid, stepped forward and gave him a sturdy kick in the ribs. “That’s what you get!”
The Iconate waved an ineffectual hand at his attacker. “Pit spawn.”
Jean-Claude stepped in, planted his knee in Galfesters’s back, grabbed a fistful of hair, and yanked his head back. “If Isabelle is the Breaker’s get, then I am her hellhound. Now, who ordered this attack?”
Galfesters’s wild stare fixed on Isabelle. “Pit spawn! Cursebringer! Your fault—”
He lunged against Jean-Claude’s hold, ripping out clumps of his own hair in his frenzy.
Isabelle extended a trembling finger down the quay. “He was standing by the schooner.”
With a grunting effort, Jean-Claude wrapped an arm around Galfesters’s throat. Isabelle circled away from him. Her heart was pounding, and a wild urge to flee kept clawing at her mind.
Jean-Claude glanced Isabelle’s way. One glinting blue eye caught her wide-eyed stare.
“Stay put,” said the musketeer in a tone of such steel conviction that Isabelle’s normally restless soles felt nailed to the ground. Jean-Claude squeezed until Galfesters stopped twitching, then let him go with a plop. There must have still been some life in him because he coughed, and phlegm drizzled from his mouth. Jean-Claude searched through his clothes. The musketeer muttered imprecations under his breath and moved on to the next man.