The Reader Read Free

share her straight brows or her teardrop eyes, dark as onyx. Everything was wrong. It was
never
him.
    Her father had been dead for six years, her mother for ten, but that didn’t stop her from seeing them in complete strangers. That didn’t stop the ache in her heart when she remembered, again, that they were gone.
    She shook her head and blinked rapidly as she approached the furrier’s, where a harried-looking woman was pawing through chinchilla furs with one hand while gripping the arm of her young son with the other. The little boy was crying, her hold on him so tight her fingers puckered his pink skin.
    â€œDon’t you ever leave my sight again! The impressors will get you!” When she shook his arm, his entire body wobbled.
    The furrier, a plain woman with spindly arms, leaned over the counter, digging her hands into a stack of fox pelts. “I heardanother boy disappeared this week, just down the coast,” she whispered, glancing sideways to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Half-hidden behind her armful of pelts, Sefia pretended to take a greater interest in the paper envelopes of goods in the next stall, each one painted with a picture of the spices inside: cumin, coriander, fennel, turmeric . . .
    â€œSee?” The mother’s voice rose in pitch. “This is impressor country!”
    Sefia’s pulse quickened.
Impressors.
Even the word sounded sinister. She and Nin had been overhearing bits of news about them for a couple of years now. As the story went, boys were disappearing all over Kelanna’s island kingdoms, too many to be runaways. There was talk of boys being turned into killers. You’d know them if you saw them, people said, because they’d have a burn around their neck like a collar. That was the first thing impressors did—brand the boys with red-hot tongs so they’d have that exact scar.
    The thought of the impressors made Sefia hunch her shoulders, suddenly conscious of how exposed she was in this sea of strangers, these watchers and whisperers. Checking behind her, she caught sight of a flash of crimson among the stalls. Redcoats. They were headed her way.
    As soon as the woman and her son left, Sefia dumped Nin’s pelts on the counter. While the furrier thumbed through them, Sefia fidgeted impatiently, glancing around at the swirling crowd, reaching behind her every so often to reassure herself that the mysterious angular object remained inside her pack.
    Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Stiffening, Sefia turned around.
    Behind her were the redcoats.
    â€œHave you seen this woman?” one asked.
    The other held out a yellowed sheet of paper, curling at the edges. A fading sketch. The features of the wanted woman were hooded and indistinct, but there was no mistaking the slope of her shoulders, the matted bear-skin cloak.
    Sefia felt as if she’d been dropped into dark water. “No,” she said faintly, “who is it?”
    The first redcoat shrugged and moved to the spices stall. “Have you seen this woman?”
    The other smiled sheepishly. “You’re too young to remember her, but thirty years ago she was the most notorious thief in the Five Islands. They called her the Locksmith. Someone a few towns over said they spotted her, but who knows. She’s probably long dead by now. Don’t you worry.”
    Swallowing, Sefia nodded. She recognized the story. The redcoats passed into the crowd again.
    The Locksmith.
    Nin’s old moniker.
    She agreed to the first price the furrier offered her and dumped the gold coins into her purse beside a piece of rutilated quartz and the last few rubies from a necklace she’d stolen in Liccaro. Was it enough? It had to be enough.
    Stowing her purse, she brushed the bottom of her pack once more and plowed into the crowd, elbowing the other shoppers aside in her haste to leave town.
    Once she reached the jungle, she began to run, breaking brush, catching on