Marlene & The Three Keys
Inside The Key of Fire
Brass Market winds through the black stone and patched metal of Cinder Ward. Above it, the red star Hearth holds its place in the sky. Marly moves across the rooftops with Doblin, while down below, the arrival of black-coated officers can silence a street.
At home, the Veylan family makes do with repairs, careful accounts, and the remnants of an older family history. Among those remnants is a strange dark key, hidden in a false-bottomed box. The Key of Fire begins the story of Marlene and the three keys.
From Chapter One
The Thief
Halfway across a spice roof, the Rimwind came hard off the darkward streets and lifted a red-brown veil of dust from the vent slats. It carried the whole market with it: hot oil, crushed cinderfruit, wet basalt, animal musk, old copper, pepper smoke, somebody’s burnt supper.
Below, Brass Market folded through Cinder Ward in crooked lanes of black stone and patched metal, its awnings pulling against their ropes while glassreed chimes knocked softly together in the wind. Far Hearthward, the red star sat where it had always sat, low and enormous, burning through a bank of mauve cloud and throwing every chimney, wire and rooftop into the same long direction of shadow. A pale neighboring world hung above it like a clipped coin.
From Marlene & The Three Keys: The Key of Fire by Gerald Cerda.
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