Quicksilver

A thief from a plague ward steals her way toward catastrophe

Saeris Fane is twenty-four and starving.

A thief from a plague ward steals her way toward catastrophe

Saeris Fane is twenty-four and starving. She lives in Zilvaren's quarantined Third Ward, a slum where six ounces of dirty water is all the immortal Queen Madra will spare her people per day. Caught stealing scrap iron in the wealthy Hub, a guardian chokes her—then drops his golden gauntlet in disgust when she claims to carry plague. She snatches four pounds of gold and sprints for the fifty-foot wall dividing the wards. Climbing one-handed with the gauntlet jammed on her wrist, she hauls herself to the top while the armored guard bellows threats below. The gold hums and vibrates against the stone in a way that makes sand grains dance. This piece of armor could buy her brother Hayden an education, a home, a life beyond the Third. She carries it to Elroy's glass forge, where the old man who loved her dead mother begs her to throw it back before Madra's men tear the ward apart.

Saeris kills the queen's guard to save her brother

Hayden has been beaten by Carrion Swift—a charming smuggler and Saeris's former lover—after a card game gone wrong. When Saeris emerges from the tavern where she confronted Carrion, Hayden has vanished with the bag containing the gauntlet. She races toward their squat and finds him pinned against The Mirage by thirty guardians in full phalanx formation, the stolen gold damning in his hand. Saeris confesses she is the real thief. When soldiers close in, she draws a blade and fights—killing two guardians and severing a third's hand. Captain Harron's unit overwhelms her. She pushes Hayden away with calculated cruelty, calling him a burden so he'll flee rather than follow her to certain death inside Madra's palace.

A dying thief draws an ancient sword and summons something inhuman Harron drags Saeris before Queen Madra in a cavernous hall beneath the palace. The immortal queen demands to know if the Fae sent her, then orders the entire Third Ward destroyed. Harron drives his sword through Saeris's stomach and buries a dagger in her shoulder. As he prepares the killing blow, something ancient rises inside her—she liquefies his dagger into threads of molten quicksilver that crawl up his body like living vines. Harron screams. Saeris drags herself to a raised platform, cuts her bonds on an ancient sword embedded in stone, and pulls it free. The floor erupts into a pool of roiling silver, and from it rises a massive dark-haired warrior with jade green eyes threaded with metallic filaments. He sees the sword in her hands and freezes.…