The Package

The wind off the Kael Shelf came in fast and cold this time of year, which meant the crossing from Morveld to the Amber Chain was three hours in good conditions and a death sentence in bad ones.

Tachi had made it in two hours and forty minutes, personal record, wind behind her the whole way.

She was still three minutes late.

The client was already gone. In his place, on the receiving dock, was a sealed package addressed to someone on an island that officially did not exist, pinned under a flat stone with a note that read: *Deliver this and we're even. Don't open it. Don't let anyone else open it. For the love of everything, don't lose it.*

The handwriting was her father's.

Her father had been missing for two years.

Tachi sat down on the dock and held the package, which was approximately the size and weight of three stacked books and gave off no heat and made no sound and felt, when she turned it over and over in her hands, completely unremarkable.

She thought about the island that didn't exist. She had seen it on exactly one map in her life, a map that had subsequently been confiscated, and she had been eleven years old and had only glimpsed it for a moment, but she remembered the name.

Nullas.

She thought about the note. *We're even.* Her father had owed someone a significant debt for as long as she could remember. She had never known who.

She picked up the package and attached it to her harness.

The wind was picking up. The next window opened in twenty minutes.