Page 2 of The Dagger and the Flame
‘Come,’ said Mama, nudging her back towards the house. ‘Let’s put some colour back into those cheeks. It’s nothing a little sugar won’t fix.’
As Seraphine watched her mother bolt the back door behind them, she tried to unpick the strange smile on her face, the spring in her step as she went to the kitchen cupboard and retrieved the remaining half of yesterday’s sugar loaf. A rummage in the drawer produced a candle and then the cake was between them, the lone candle alight.
She stared at Mama through the flame. ‘Do you have a secret birthday I don’t know about?’
‘It’s after midnight,’ said Mama, gesturing to the clock on the wall. ‘Which means it’s the birthday of Saint Lucille.’ Mama’s favourite saint. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about the other twelve – the ancient original ones, who once stalked the length and breadth of the Kingdom of Valterre with true magic in their veins. Lucille, the last of them, was young and clever and almost recent enough to touch. She was the Saint of Scholars, and Mama saw herself as a scholar, too.
For her part, Seraphine preferred the allure of stories over the mercurial nature of philosophy. She rarely prayed, and only ever to Saint Oriel of Destiny. Seraphine was a dreamer, not a scholar. But that was not the fault of Saint Lucille. Or the cake. ‘Make a wish, Seraphine.’
Seraphine frowned again, but this night was so utterly baffling already, she didn’t see the harm in making a wish. So, she closed her eyes and made the same one she always did. For a grander destiny, for the freedom to go far beyond their little farmhouse in the plains, to hurl herself headlong into the kind of adventures she read about in her books. A life that made her heart gallop, that made her feel like she was trulyliving.
She blew out the candle and she and her mother perched on the countertop, setting the strange incident in the garden aside and devouring the remains of the sugar loaf. But when Seraphine went to wash her plate in the sink, she saw Mama’s ring sitting in the soap dish.
She held it up, suspicion nagging at her once more, but Mama only laughed as she snatched it from her. ‘There it is! Itlooks likemywish came true.’ She slipped it onto her finger. ‘Now, to bed with you before we push our luck.’
Seraphine was too tired to press the matter. If she was honest with herself, a part of her was too frightened to prod at the lie until it fell apart. There had always been a darkness in Mama, and Seraphine feared that if she looked directly at it, it might become a part of her too. It might destroy their careful little life.
‘Goodnight, Mama.’ As Seraphine pressed a kiss to her cheek, she swore she saw a spark in her mother’s burnished brown eyes. The sign of a different, secret wish that had yet to come true.
‘Sweet dreams, my little firefly.’
That night, Seraphine sat on her windowsill, waiting for the tabby cat to return, but as the full moon gave way to the blushing dawn, she nodded off, dreaming of terrible beasts with sharp fangs leaping at her from the shadows.
One year later
Chapter 1Seraphine
It was midnight in the city of Fantome, and Seraphine Marchant was running for her life. Pippin was doing his best to keep up. They were following the Verne, the pebble-grey river that wound through the heart of Fantome like an artery. From the arched stone entrance on the outskirts of the city, it led them through the north quarter and onto Merchant’s Way, where the taverns were lit and bustling, echoing with the caterwauls of drunk sailors.
Seraphine barely noticed them. It was the beginning of autumn, and a light rain was falling. It kissed her cheeks, mingling with her tears. Her chest burned, as though a fist was closing around her heart, but she didn’t dare slow down. She could still smell the smoke that had driven them from their farmhouse only hours ago. It coiled in her hair and sat heavy in her lungs.
Keep moving, she told herself.Don’t look back.
Every time a memory of the fire reared up, Seraphine shook it off violently, but the flashbacks were becoming harder to ignore. The shock was fading. Beneath it waited a rising swell of grief and anger. Questions tumbled over one another, demanding to be answered.
Don’t stop. Don’t think.
Beside her on the street, Pippin was splashing in and out of puddles, trying to cool his singed tail. Soon, his shaggy grey face was sopping. Seraphine tried to pick him up, but he wriggled free.
‘Little gremlin.’ She sniffed. ‘Have it your way.’
Saints, her legs ached, and her body was so tired all her bones felt like lead. She wished she was riding Scout, the dappled mare’s strides sure and quick beneath her, but the fire had sent Seraphine’s beloved horse fleeing through the fields and there hadn’t been time to look for her. It was too late to turn back now. Seraphine herself should have been dead by now. But Saint Oriel of Destiny clearly had other plans for her.
Though Seraphine hadn’t grown up in the bustle of Valterre’s capital city, she had visited Fantome so many times that she knew the street layout like her favourite constellations, and knew how dangerous they became when the sun went down.
When she was a little girl, Mama used to bring her into the city every Sunday. They would set out from their farmhouse in the plains at first light, taking a wagon to arrive in the city by late morning. At the harbour market, Mama would buy a pocketful of jam-and-custard pastries and they would wanderalong the Verne, giggling as they licked the sugar from their fingers.
Afterwards, they would browse for hours at Babette’s House of Books, Seraphine selecting a well-thumbed fairy tale, while Mama – always clever, and forever straining beyond the reaches of her imagination – pored over yellowed encyclopaedias about alchemy and invention, with text so small Seraphine had to squint to read it.
When the street lanterns flickered to life and the air chilled, they would head home, Mama’s hand tight around Seraphine’s as they left the darkening city behind them. For it was in the falling shadows of Fantome that the Cloaks and Daggers roamed. The rival guilds, one of thieves and the other of assassins, were both powered by Shade – the only magic the once-blessed Kingdom of Valterre had left at its fingertips. Shade was a substance, controlled by those brave enough to step, or foolish enough to fall, into the underworld. The fine black powder was a mundane substance, unworthy of the divine majesty of Valterre’s long-dead saints, those twelve magic-borne figures who had founded the city over a thousand years ago, filled it with life and beauty, made it glitter like a sea of stars.
Shade was the dust that lost golden age had left behind. A volatile substance that bent shadows to the will of man. For those skilled in the art of dark magic and trained by the Orders, Shade could be used to steal. To spy. To kill. To avenge. To survive.
The Daggers consumed Shade in small doses, temporarily turning their bodies into deadly weapons where one touchalone could kill. The Cloaks never consumed Shade. Rather, they wore it, allowing them to blend in with the night and take from it whatever they wished. They might have considered themselves nobler than their rivals, but to dance with Shade at all was to tempt fate.
Mama’s job as a smuggler meant that Seraphine had lived in close proximity to Shade her whole life. Both as the boneshade plant, raw and trailing roots when it arrived from the far hills of Valterre, and as the fine black powder it became once Mama had painstakingly baked and ground the plant into dust.
Seraphine had filled more vials with Shade than she could count, but she had never dared experiment with it herself. Even the touch of the glass felt like ice against her fingers. A cold breath of warning. Then there was Mama’s guiding voice, always close to her ear as they worked side by side at their workbench, reminding Seraphine that while Shade was what they did, it was not who they were.
