Chapter 1

Everyone in Thresh owes somebody. My job is to make sure they owe the Bank.

"Three silver," says Hollis the baker, and pushes the coins across his counter like they're his own teeth. "That's all I've got, Mira. I swear on my mother."

"Your mother's alive, Hollis. She sold me a meat pie on Tuesday."

"I swear on her pie, then."

I look at his wrist. To anyone else in the shop it's a plain wrist, floury, with a burn scar from the oven door. To me there's a thin line of gold light wrapped around it, just under the skin, like a thread of honey. A debt-mark. The Gilded Bank's ink. I can read it the way other people read a sign over a door.

Hollis Brant. Principal: twelve silver. Interest: two silver a month. Due: yesterday.

Twelve silver for a new oven, borrowed in spring. He's paid four. He's behind.

"Three now," I say, and sweep the coins into my purse. "Two on the first of every month after that, until you're clear. I'll mark it as a plan, not a default."

Hollis stares at me. Behind him the bread in the window is going golden, and the smell of it is so good I have to remind myself I had breakfast. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"The last collector broke my till."

"The last collector was an idiot." I take the pencil from behind my ear and write the terms on a slip of Bank paper, and the gold thread around his wrist shifts and resettles, rewriting itself to match. Magic is just bookkeeping with better handwriting. "Don't miss a payment, Hollis. If you miss one, they won't send me next time."

He nods so hard his hat slips. When I leave, there's a warm roll in my coat pocket that I definitely did not see him put there.

Humans can give you things. That's allowed.

Fae are a different matter.

* * *

My rules for working the Low Quarter are short, and I keep them the way other people keep saints' medals.

Never drink anything the fae pour.

Never accept a gift from the fae.

Never tell the fae your name.

I broke the first rule once, when I was nineteen and stupid, and lost every memory of my twentieth birthday to a very charming man with antlers. I have never broken the other two. That's why I'm still alive and still employed, and why there are only nine years left on my contract instead of a lifetime.

Nine years. My father borrowed against his own future to keep a roof over us, and then his future ran out before he did. The Bank does not forgive a debt because the debtor dies. It simply finds the next name on the paper.

Mine.

So I walk the Low Quarter with my pencil and my purse and my rules, and every debt I bring in shaves a few days off my sentence. Collectors call it working down the ledger. Some of us make it to the bottom. Most don't.

When I get back to the Bank that afternoon, there's a page waiting for me at the collectors' door. A boy of about twelve in a gold-buttoned jacket, looking at me like I'm a corpse that hasn't been told yet.

"Miss Kett," he says. "The Director would like to see you."

* * *

The Gilded Bank of Thresh is the tallest building in the city, which is saying something in a city built on bribes. Nine floors of white stone and gold leaf, and on top of it all, the Director's office, which has windows on every side so he can look down at everyone who owes him.

Director Grieve is a small, neat man with silver spectacles and very clean hands. He's never been anything but polite to me. That's what frightens me about him.

"Miss Kett." He doesn't stand. He gestures to the chair across from his desk, a desk so polished I can see my own face in it, looking tired. "I hear you put Hollis Brant on a payment plan this morning."

News in this building travels faster than coin.

"He'll pay," I say. "He can't pay if he can't bake."

"Mm." Grieve smiles. "Compassion is a lovely quality in a person. It's an expensive one in a collector." He opens a drawer and takes out a file.

It's black.

I have worked for the Bank for six years, and I have never seen a black file. Ordinary debts come in buff folders. Bad debts come in red. There's a rumor among the collectors that the black files live in a vault under the building with the lights off, because the debts in them have been unpaid so long they've started to go strange.

Grieve sets it on the desk between us and folds his clean hands on top of it.

"Three hundred and four years ago," he says, "a prince of the Winter Court came to this Bank and borrowed a sum I won't bore you with. A very large sum. As collateral, he pledged the only thing he had that was worth that much." He lifts one hand and lets it fall. "His true name."

The room goes quiet. Somewhere far below, the counting-house bell rings the hour.

"The debt comes due at the next new moon," Grieve says. "Thirty days from tonight. The prince has never made a payment. Not one copper in three centuries. He's been living in our city for the last forty years, perfectly comfortably, under our noses, and he's laughed at every collector we've sent."

"How many have you sent?"

"Seven."

"And?"

He considers the question with real interest, like it's a puzzle. "One came back and couldn't remember his own name. One came back and resigned to grow roses in the countryside. He seems very happy. One married a willow tree." He pauses. "The other four did not come back."

"I see," I say, because I can't think of anything else.

"I'm offering you the file, Miss Kett."

"Why me?"

"Because you're the best we have at the one thing that matters with the fae." He taps the black cover. "You count. You count everything. You never take a drink and you never take a gift and you never, ever give your name. The others were brave. You're careful. Careful is rarer."

I hate that he's right. I hate more that I'm pleased.

"And the terms?"

"If you bring me the prince's name by the new moon," Grieve says, "your contract is cancelled. Nine years, gone. You walk out of this building a free woman with a full purse." He lets that sit for a moment, the way a fisherman lets a line sit. "If you fail, your contract doubles."

"Eighteen years."

I look at the black file. I think about my father's handwriting on the paper that sold me. I think about being thirty-three before I'm free, versus being twenty-four.

"I want it in writing," I say.

Grieve's smile widens, just slightly.

"Miss Kett," he says, sliding a contract across the desk with a pen already resting on top of it, "everything in this building is in writing."

I read it twice. Then I sign.

* * *

The prince's name on the file is Thane, which is not his true name, obviously. Nobody walks around under their true name, least of all a fae who's pawned it.

He owns a gambling house in the lowest part of the Low Quarter, where the streets slope down to the river and the fog never really lifts. It's called the Moth and Lantern. I've walked past it a hundred times. I've never gone in.

The doorman is seven feet tall and has bark instead of skin on the backs of his hands. He looks at me, at the Bank's gold pin on my coat, and grins with too many teeth.

"Collector number eight," he says. "He's been expecting you."

Inside, the Moth and Lantern is warm and dim and smells like candle smoke and spilled wine and something sharp and clean, like snow. Card tables fill the main room. Humans play at some of them, fae at others, a few brave idiots at mixed tables. Brass lanterns hang from the ceiling on chains, and moths circle every one of them, pale gray moths, hundreds of them, never quite touching the flame.

He's at the back table. I know it's him before I see his face.

Every debt-mark I've ever read has been a thread. A single line of gold around the wrist. His isn't a thread. It's a chain. Line after line of glowing script wrapped from his wrist almost to his elbow, written so densely it looks like lace. I've never seen a debt so heavy. I've never seen anyone wear one so casually.

He's dealing cards to no one. Long pale fingers, silver rings. Hair the white of frost on a windowpane, falling past his shoulders. A black coat with a high collar, open at the throat. When he looks up, his eyes are the palest blue I've ever seen, so pale they're almost colorless, like ice over deep water.

He's beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful. I mark that, the way I'd mark an overdue payment, and move on.

"Collector," he says. His voice is low and lazy and amused. "Sit down. You're making the moths nervous."

I sit. I keep my hands on the table, where he can see them and I can see his.

"Prince Thane."

"Just Thane. I'm not much of a prince these days." He shuffles the deck one-handed without looking at it. "Can I get you a drink?"

"No."

"Something to eat?"

"No."

"A chair cushion? You look uncomfortable."

"I'm fine."

"You're very rude," he says, delighted. "None of the others were rude. They were all terribly polite right up until they started weeping." He leans back. "What's your name, collector?"

"Nice try."

He laughs. It's a real laugh, low and warm, and it does something irritating to the back of my neck.

"You know why I'm here," I say.

"You want my name. Everyone does." He fans the cards across the table in a perfect arc. "Here's my offer. One hand. Just one. If you win, I'll tell you something about my debt that your Director didn't put in that pretty black file. If I win, you tell me yours."

"My name isn't on the table."

"Then what is?"

I think. Fae deals are like contracts with a hole in them, and the hole is always where you aren't looking.

"If you win," I say slowly, "I walk out and you never see me again. You get rid of collector number eight. That's worth something to you."

He tilts his head. The lantern light slides over his hair like water. "Is it?"

"Isn't it?"

He looks at me for a long time, long enough that I have to make myself hold still. Then he gathers the cards and deals.

"Agreed," he says.

The game is called Crowns. Five cards each, three rounds of draws, highest court wins. It's a gambler's game, built on luck.

Except that luck is just numbers nobody bothered to count.

I watch the cards he discards. I watch the cards he doesn't. I count what's gone and what's left, the way I count coins, the way I count the days left on my contract, without even meaning to. By the third draw I know there are only two crowns left in the deck, and he's holding one, and the other is the next card.

I draw it.

I lay my hand down. Crown of Winter, three queens, the frost knight.

Thane looks at my cards. Then at me. The lazy smile slips, just for a second, and something sharper looks out from underneath it.

"You counted," he says softly.

"You didn't say I couldn't."

"No. I didn't." He sets his own cards face down without showing them. "A deal's a deal, collector. Here's your secret."

He leans across the table. Close enough that I can feel the cold coming off him, like standing at an open window in winter. Close enough to smell snow and smoke and something underneath it, sweet, like crushed winter roses. His eyes don't leave mine.

"Your Director," he murmurs, "has already sold my name. Twice. To two different buyers. And in my experience, collector, when someone promises the same thing to two people at once, it's because he's expecting one of them to die before they can collect."

I stop breathing.

He sits back, satisfied, and picks a single card off the top of the deck. The Crown of Winter. My card. Frost spreads across its painted face as I watch.

"For luck," he says, and flicks it to me.

I catch it. Of course I catch it. Six years of grabbing coins before they hit the floor, and my hand moves before my head does.

The card is so cold it burns.

And around my left wrist, where there has never been anything but the Bank's old faded thread, a new line of light curls into being. Not gold. Silver. Bright as frost on a windowpane.

Owed to Thane of Winter: one favor. Due: on demand.

I stare at it. Then I stare at him.

"Never accept a gift from the fae," Thane says gently, gathering up his cards. "Didn't anyone ever tell you, collector?"

For the first time in my life, I'm the one in debt.