Eloise nearly twisted her ankle disembarking from the public carriage, landing unsteadily on the crooked cobblestones of Esterwell, one of Wayfort’s larger port cities. The porter tossed her luggage unceremoniously after her, and the carriage drove away with a lurch, wheels splashing mud along the length of her skirts.

Her purse was achingly empty, her last coins spent on the fortnight-long journey from Brinovia. Muddy and unkempt, she dragged her trunk over to the side of the street and sat down to steady herself.

She hadn’t initially planned on making the trip over the border. She had hoped to win sympathy from old friends in Brinovia, having spent nearly a week calling on acquaintances, outfitted head to toe in black. But everyone from her formerly closest compatriots to the most distant acquaintances received her with the bare minimum of niceties, many taking the earliest opportunity to slander her family with accusations of the basest sort. It quickly became apparent that Lucius had carefully planted awful rumors about her and her family, utterly ruining their standing in good society. Taking their home had clearly not been enough for him. Even her attempts to find work in her home country had proved impossible.

But, no one would give two figs about a minor noble’s daughter in Wayfort. She wouldn’t be able to capitalize on her name, but nor would she need to bear its being sullied repeatedly. Besides, she was here to make money by any means necessary.

Not for herself, of course. She may be ruined, but there was still time and opportunity for Rosabella and Phoebe to have dowries and marry well. As such, she would take any job that would have her.

Determined, she turned to begin the arduous process of hauling her trunk down the street—and found it gone. Her heart sank, but she was too numb now to let even this latest disaster cause her to break down. Only a cold, empty anger filled her. She cursed, loudly and ineffectually, and kicked at the wall, which accomplished nothing but a throbbing pain in her toes. Now limping slightly, she went down the main street in search of employment.

The first few places at which she inquired said they weren’t looking to hire anyone, but the looks they gave Eloise suggested their reticence was due more to her unkempt state than to any real lack of need. Walking into the wealthier section of town, she spotted a pump on the edge of one of the grander households. Creeping up to it as stealthily as she could, she began to wash up, hoping no one would spot her.

“What are you doing?”

An older woman in a maid’s outfit was staring at her inquisitively. “I… well…” she stuttered. “That is—”

“Just because the young miss sees fit to give away her hand-me-downs to the likes of us, doesn’t mean you can just run out and get dirt all over everything!” The maid folded her arms, arching a brow in disapproval.

Eloise could do nothing but stare for a moment, puzzled. Did this woman think she was one of the household servants? She started to offer a protest before realizing that she could twist this woman’s assumption to her advantage. “Of course,” she said apologetically. “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.”

The woman huffed and nodded towards the house. “Hurry up and get back to work,” she said.

“Right, right,” said Eloise. “Would you be so kind as to remind me what I’m meant to be doing?”

“Lord,” said the woman. “You don’t have to talk like them, too. Best remember your place, girl. And it’s in the kitchen, helping Cook, as you well know. Anyone would think you just got here. Now, get on with you, and change back into something more fitting for service.”

Once Eloise got dressed in a clean uniform she found in the laundry, she located the kitchen, where she was instructed to chop some onions. She appraised the group of vegetables before her, squat and reddish-purple. How hard could this be, really?

She thought she was doing a half-decent job of it, cutting the globes of onion into long, curved strips, but the cook looked over and frowned. “Christ’s sake, don’t use the butcher knife! You’ll lose a finger. And what’s this? Why haven’t you peeled it?”

Thus chastised, she tried to remove the dried skin from the strips, but soon felt a strange stinging sensation in her eyes. How odd, she thought, and began to rub at them with her hands.

The sharp pain in her eyes increased tenfold, and she gasped as tears started to fall, clouding her vision. But she was told to chop onions, and chop onions she would. Determined, she picked up the knife again, just as another surge of prickling tears forced her eyes shut.

She took a few steps forward, back towards the cutting board, and sighed with relief when she felt the wooden whirls of the board under her fingers—

A cacophonous crash, and she screamed in surprise, eyes fluttering open.

Flour was settling gently on every surface of the kitchen like falling snow, from the pots and pans, to the stove, to the cook, who was now glaring at Eloise in frozen fury. The knife, which had clattered to the floor after piercing the bag of flour, spun wildly in a threatening circle until finally coming to rest, pointed straight at the cook.

Eloise winced.

“I’m back,” called a cheerful voice. A girl resembling Eloise poked her head into the kitchen, mouth falling open at the disaster that greeted her. “What in the blazes happened here? Who’s this?”

Eloise was well on her way out the door before the girl could finish her sentence, trailed by a litany of curses and a threat to call the guard on her if she showed her face again.

So, she couldn’t cook. She crossed that possibility off the list of potential fields she could work in. As she walked on, she saw a sign advertising a pub called The Ivory Otter. Perhaps, if she couldn’t cook food, she could at least serve it.

The pub was happy to hire her, and though she was not particularly good at the work, her first few evenings as a barmaid passed uneventfully. The other barmaids mostly kept to themselves, so she did the same, whiling away the hours listening to the local gossip as she came and went from the kitchen, carrying beers and platters of food that inevitably slopped onto the laps of her customers when she wasn’t paying attention.

The evenings were especially ripe for storytelling, and her fourth evening there was no different.

“You think you have a story? Bet you haven’t heard the latest about the Bloody Hawk!”

The voice, beer-laden and excited, came from the streetwalkers’ corner of the tavern; the favorite spot of the women of the night. When Eloise glanced towards them, pausing before a table of raucous men, she saw that a man was seated among their number, gesticulating broadly as the women hung onto his every word.

“I heard,” said another man, “that he single-handedly captured a passenger ship, and burned the works with everyone onboard still alive.”

“Rubbish,” said the first man. “He looted it beforehand. They had livestock aboard. Hawk and his crew roasted some hogs in the flames.” He leaned in with a devilish grin. “And if they feasted on meat other than just pork… well, who was there to stop them?”

The corner exploded in delighted gasps of horror.

“Well, I heard that he’s on the run from the law in five separate countries,” said a third man, “Killed some duke in England, didn’t he? And ravished his wife to boot!”

“So, who is he really, this Hawk?” piped up one of the women, a buxom redhead. “Doesn’t anyone know?”

The conversation stalled for a moment as the men tried to look anywhere but each other. “Well, no one knows, is the thing,” the first man finally admitted. “But whenever the law comes down on him, he always manages to escape its clutches, sure as a wolf from a hunter.”

Eloise was just as entranced as the women of the night, heart in her throat. Who could this mysterious and vicious man be? This was a port city; would he ever come here? She’d not thought of encountering pirates on her journey.

As she watched the group of gossips start arguing among themselves, the sudden pressure of a hand on the back of her skirt brought her back to herself. A sick feeling twisted in her gut. An accident, surely, she thought. Someone must have been moving past and brushed too closely against her. The tavern was crowded, after all.

Then the hand grabbed her backside and squeezed, hard and deliberate, as though she were a fruit at market.

Rage rose within her like a growing flame. Turning swiftly, she upended the beer she was supposed to be taking to table four onto the man’s smirking face.

The man who owned the Ivory Otter was apoplectic with rage when he learned what she’d done. “The nerve of you, mistreating a customer that way!” he shouted.

“He pinched me,” protested Eloise. “What of my mistreatment?”

He threw up his hands, exasperated with her. “That’s part of the job, missy!”

“Then I don’t want it!” she shouted. She threw her apron at the owner and stormed out into the night.

She stomped past the docks, slowly beginning to calm, before she realized she was being followed. She kept walking, hoping she was wrong, hoping that he would go away, but when she turned into a dark street, she felt hands on her waist, spinning her around. “Come on, then,” said the same man, face still damp with the beer she’d poured onto him. “How much do y’want? I’ll pay you, whatever the cost.”

She tried to shake him off. “Let go of me. I’m not interested.”

He pushed her against the alley wall and reached for the neckline of her dress, tearing a strip of cloth from her bodice down to her waist. Eloise clenched her hands into fists as her breast was exposed, panic surging through her. She tried to scream, to squirm, to do anything to escape him, but he was too strong. If this was the end…

The grip on her arms slackened when a man dressed in a deep red greatcoat pulled the man off her, and Eloise sagged forward, her body hurtling towards the ground. Catching her effortlessly in his arms, the gentleman in red steadied her back against the wall before whipping out his sword and laying the blade against her attacker’s throat.

“Make another move on the lady, and you’ll regret it,” he warned.