Through the crack between canvas and boat, we watched a sliver of sky, the moons rising in the distance. Marau was nearly full, a fat blob of gray that seemed to swallow light instead of give it off, casting a long, low shadow against the river.
“I can’t believe I was in there almost a month,” Durrel said. “Marau was full that night too — the night Talth died. I noticed it when they took me away, and I remember thinking how odd it was, to die on the night of Marau’s full moon. Like a bad omen.”
I pictured him dragged off by clumsy guards who didn’t care that he was a nob, who hadn’t even let him finish dressing. “Didn’t you say anything? Didn’t you struggle, try to get away?”
He was silent a long moment, staring into the stars. “I didn’t really believe it at first,” he said. “I couldn’t make myself believe that she was dead. And once I was in the cell, I thought surely they knew they’d made a mistake, and it would all be straightened out by morning.”
His voice, his eyes, his whole being were far away, but his body was lean and warm against mine, his breath moist and warm against my cheek. With a shiver of alarm, I realized that wasn’t as annoying as it should have been. I pulled myself in tighter. I was close enough to count his sandy eyelashes, trace the curve of his jaw and the long, cool line of his neck. He turned his face toward me, lifting his fingers to smooth aside a strand of hair that had come loose from my cap. The water brushing the hull sounded impossibly loud in the silence between us, like the whole world was holding its breath. His hand fell away from my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and turned that boyish face away from mine again. “I didn’t mean —”
“It’s all right,” I said, but my voice cracked and nothing actually came out. I pulled my knees up to my chest as a kind of heat washed over me. Oh, gods. Rat was right. I was out of my depths, and sinking fast.
Durrel twisted his fingers together in his lap, and I think we were both relieved when a moment later, we heard a sound and I slid upward against the boat rail. “What was that?”
“What?” he whispered, but by then it was clear — hoofbeats, and the accompanying rattle of a wagon. We lifted the canvas a little more and peered out. The harbormaster had heard too; he’d stepped out of his little hut and stood waiting outside, as if expecting them. “Is it Karst?”
The horses arrived, one man riding, another driving a wagon draped with black cloth. I moved closer to the gap and tried to get a better look at the wagon, but it appeared to be empty. The rider dismounted and crossed the pier in long, determined strides to meet with the harbormaster. He wore a nondescript dark doublet and trunk hose; anyone who saw him in a well-lit tavern would think nothing of the clothes. Out here on a moonslit night, he blended right into the shadows.
But not well enough. As the rider stood and spoke to the harbormaster in tones too low to make out, I thought he looked familiar, and I felt Durrel stiffen beside me. I held his arm hard with my fingernails, lest he propel himself out of the boat, but he just stared grimly ahead, his jaw set.
Cwalo had told me about suspicious Ceid shipments, and we were on a Ceid dock — so what in Marau’s name was Lord Ragn doing here?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I whispered Durrel’s name, but he ignored me, just sat still and stony in the boat, watching his father with an expression I couldn’t begin to make out.
His lordship was still speaking to the harbormaster, both men gesturing at the water. Ragn dipped a hand inside his doublet and passed a packet to the official, who took a moment to verify the contents before tucking it inside his own clothing. From the size and shape of the object, I had a good idea what it was — banknotes, tucked inside a courier’s pouch. The bribes alone nearly bankrupted the estate. What was he up to?
Durrel’s frown intensified, and I thought he’d forgotten I was there. Back near the street, the hooded wagoner absently stroked the cart horse’s sturdy neck. A workhorse, but very fine; I could see the gloss on its hooves from here. From the Charicaux stables, no doubt. The wagoner, then — a Decath servant? He was dressed like his master, in colorless dark livery and hat. It wasn’t Karst, that much was clear. This man was slimmer, slighter, moving with an easy grace around the horse.
What were we waiting for? A boat, obviously, but which one? I strained my gaze through the darkness, trying to make out a likely craft from among the traffic. Near the opposite shore, a wealthy family’s canopied barge dragged easily through the water, its lanterns bobbing like tiny moons as music and conversation drifted across the river. Docked at a neighboring pier, a tall-masted merchant ship sat silent and hulking, the only movement on its decks the irregular passing of the sailor who’d drawn the night watch. Occasionally one of the small, swift hired boats so common in Gerse cut through the glittering current but did not stop. Finally a shadow shifted on the water, almost unseen, and I turned my head to watch a low, blocky craft staining the reflected moonslight. I sat up straighter in the rowboat.
“There,” I whispered, pointing. The vessel was dark, its cargo a formless mass on deck I couldn’t make out clearly, but I felt a twinge of certainty as it came within sight.
“Which one?” Durrel peered in the direction I indicated. “Where? I don’t see it.”
“That little barge,” I said, “with the striped hull —” But Durrel shook his head, though he was looking right where I was pointing. A few minutes later, the boat pulled up to the Ceid pier, and Lord Ragn strode forward to grab the lead ropes and help the boatman steer into the dock. Someone moved on board; I leaned in closer, caught a murmur of greeting, a stifled cough, perhaps a yawn. The servant with the wagon turned just slightly into the scattered moonslight, and I saw him raise an arm to stretch or readjust, a pistol held easily in that hand.
The mooring ropes secured, the boatman climbed ashore, and his voice broke through the night. “Easy there. We’ve made it. You can get out now.” Wordlessly the shapeless lump in the boat shook off the dark blankets concealing it, and revealed itself to be three human passengers, a man, a much younger woman, and a small child. With their faces cast up to the moons, I could see worry and relief in their expressions.
“Come.” Lord Ragn motioned to the passengers, who climbed awkwardly onto the dock. The young woman reached behind her to scoop up the child, and the moonslight caught something on her wrist, her neck, and flashed it back to us. Long silver chains, heavy silver bangles — the sort worn to dampen magic.
“There you go. You’re almost there. You’ll be safe soon.” Lord Ragn steadied the woman as her footsteps wavered, gave the man’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, tousled the child’s hair, and finally stooped to retrieve a bundle of belongings passed up by the boatman. His lordship led the family to the wagon, where the stable hand helped them aboard.
I was confused, and judging from the tension rising off my companion in the boat, he was just as nonplussed. Lord Ragn was the Ferryman? How was that possible? But the evidence seemed clear. The documents at the ready, the bribe for the harbormaster, this late-night landing where no one could see. . . .
He couldn’t be stashing refugees at Charicaux, though. These imported oranges would have to be moved along in the market fairly quickly for this operation to remain undetected. Decath would need allies, associates — someone to produce those documents we’d found, shuttle the refugees through the city, ferry them off to foreign lands before the Acolyte Guard picked up their scent, and encourage their silence and cooperation along the way. Allies like Karst and Talth Ceid. Lord Ragn had the connections, the Ceid had the money and the ships, and Karst had the muscle. And judging from the money we’d seen in the boat shed, it turned a tidy profit for everyone. I felt sick. I didn’t want it to be true.
“We should follow them,” I said, moving to climb out of the boat, but Durrel’s hand held me back. He was silent, watching his father and the servant ride off into the night. The expression on his face scared me — a mixture of disbelief and something far past anger. Betrayal.
I nudged him gently, but Durrel didn’t move, just kept staring into the darkness with enough force to bring down the moons.
“Durrel!” He finally snapped back and saw me. “That can’t be what it looked like,” I said desperately. “There must be some —”
“It all looked pretty clear to me,” he said, and there was a faint tremor in his voice, like a bowstring after a shot. “My father is a Ferryman.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” he said, and I flinched back, stung. “I’m sorry, Celyn. I didn’t mean that. I’m just —” He gave up.
“Let’s go talk to him,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll explain it to you. He’d have to, with the evidence right in front of us.”
“We don’t know where they’ve gone,” he said heavily, and I bit back my reply that if we’d followed them like I suggested, we might have that figured out. “And we can’t risk it, anyway. What if the Guard or the Ceid are watching my father, waiting for me to show up? I’d bring the authorities right down on top of those Sarists.”
I sat back, horrified. Of course he was right. Even if Lord Ragn was a Ferryman, that young family had trusted him to get them to safety. Our interference now would only jeopardize them. What could we do?
“What about Bal Marse?” I said abruptly, pieces finally clicking together. The movement of Sarist refugees could explain the magic I’d seen there. “Maybe they’ve been using it as a kind of way station.”
“You said it was empty, though. They can’t be using it still.” We stared at each other, neither of us speculating about who, precisely, “they” might be. Finally Durrel shoved aside the canvas covering to the rowboat and stood up. “Let’s go, then.”
I felt a twinge of guilt. I’d never mentioned tailing Lord Ragn to the Bal Marse warehouse — there hadn’t been time, and then it hadn’t seemed relevant, and now certainly wasn’t the right moment for it. I scrambled up after Durrel, who had stalked off across the docks, not even pausing to help me out of the boat (not that I needed it, but still. He was a nob, and usually nothing could make him forget that). He was silent and cold all the way across the city, moving at a pace practically fast enough to catch Lord Ragn’s party. I would not have been entirely surprised to see those horses tethered outside Bal Marse, still sweating.
But we didn’t. From the outside, the residence and its warehouse were as desolate as they’d been on my last visit. The grounds were streaked with mud from last night’s rain, and there was no sign of wheel tracks or hoofprints. Lord Ragn had taken his Sarists somewhere else.
While my back was turned, Durrel had scaled the stone wall surrounding Bal Marse and was straddling the decorative ironwork at the top. Pox. I hurried to catch him, but he was over and down and halfway across the barren courtyard by the time I closed the distance between us.
“What are you doing?” I called softly, and was ignored. Durrel skirted the house and came to a stop at last below a window overlooking a jut of stone. Before I could reach him, he had lifted his foot and was kicking violently at the stonework with the sturdy heel of his boot. “Durrel!”
Nothing. As he lifted his heel to strike again, I grabbed him by the elbow. “Stop!”
He shook me off, and the stone tumbled free from the wall. He hefted it with one hand, and I had a sickening, belated understanding of what he was planning. “Stop!” I caught him by the sleeve again and held fast, and he finally seemed to see me. “You’re scaring me.”
“The window,” he said simply. I tried to pry the stone from his fingers, but his grip was unbelievable; it was a wonder that rock wasn’t dented from it.
“The door is open,” I said, pointing behind us, to the unlocked kitchen door I’d used before. He looked at me for a moment, uncomprehending, then pitched the rock underhand across the courtyard, as if disappointed he hadn’t gotten to fire it through a window after all.
“Fine,” he said, shrugging away from me.
I let him go and followed him into the house. Once inside, though, he was subdued. The place was as silent and empty as it had been several days ago, but tonight the full moon of Marau shone through the windows, bathing the empty rooms in faint grayish light. He stopped inside the barren kitchens, tracing his fingers along a cupboard, a wall, a dry sink. It was strange to watch — almost like me searching for traces of magic. But I think he was looking for something familiar, some sign that the months he’d spent living here, married to the owner, had really happened.
I followed mutely as he walked dully through the rooms like a sleepwalker. Something pinched in my chest, watching Durrel pause in doorways, or at the foot of the stairs, and stare into the vast, unfurnished rooms.
“I don’t understand,” he finally said outside the abandoned Round Court. I could still make out the traces of magic on the floor, the spilled-looking stain, the brushstroked skirt-sweep, and I pointed them out, though I knew he couldn’t see anything. “Why gut the place?”
“He sold it,” I said abruptly. “The furniture, the tapestries, the candlesticks, the silverware. To make money —”
“For the refugees,” he finished, his voice taking on new life. A frown narrowed his forehead. “Wait. Who sold it?”
My frown matched his. “I don’t know.” I’d been thinking Lord Ragn, who could have had access to the building once Durrel inherited it, but it could just as easily have been Barris Ceid or Karst.
Durrel said, “Let’s keep looking.”
He led me through the back stair to the floor with the series of darker-on-darker rooms that I’d decided were Talth’s suite, and paused in the landing, looking around. Moonslight flooded the corridor from tall arched windows at both ends.
“My rooms were over that way.” Durrel pointed. “And Talth’s were there —” He took a step down the corridor. “That’s a lot of moonslight,” he said, and I instantly knew what he was thinking.
“It’s after midnight, close enough to the time Talth’s maid claims she saw you.” With enough light out here to plainly make out the set expression of his face.
“Stay there,” he said, and moved down the hall, closer to Talth’s door. As he stood in the light from the windows, I could see him clearly. “No, I can easily identify you,” he said. “It’s a little hard to imagine how she might have been mistaken.”
“So she must be lying. Maybe it was really Karst she saw, and she doesn’t want to say. He is a lot scarier than you,” I added.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “Let’s check Talth’s rooms.”
I was oddly reluctant to follow him inside. Even in the impenetrable darkness, even with no furniture to speak of, I couldn’t help the ridiculous and inappropriate thought that this was his wife’s bedroom — the bedroom he had, on occasion, as required, shared with her. That had nothing at all to do with me, but I balked in the doorway as Durrel disappeared into the tangle of chambers. I didn’t join him until I heard a muffled thump and an oath, and found Durrel inside, sucking on his knuckles.
“Slammed my hand in a drawer or something,” he said. Very little light filtered into these rooms, so it was a matter of distinguishing one black lump from another, and it was easy to see how someone could trip over or bang into something. The fixture that had given Durrel trouble turned out to be a panel near the stone fireplace in the biggest chamber. I traced my fingers around the door, feeling out the shape of the opening. It was big enough to step into, and it cast pale light into the rooms, striping the floor with shadows.
“How did you find that?” I asked.
Durrel gave his hand a shake, wiped his knuckles against his breeches. “It found me. I tripped into it and it just popped open.”
I stuck my head inside. There was no ceiling, just a small square of sky very far up there. “A skylight,” I said. “And stairs. This must go out to the yard down below.”
Durrel peered in over me. “But why?”
“Wait.” I pushed my way inside. There was a
platform just big enough to stand on beside the opening for the stairs. “Now swing the door shut,” I said.
“Definitely not! What if you get stuck in there?”
I made a grumble of impatience. “Presumably you’ll let me out again.” But I didn’t wait for him, reaching around the edge of the door to tug it closed. It gave a disconcerting click, but I was still bathed in moonslight, so it wasn’t immediately alarming. My fingers searched the panel, and there, a little above my head, I found it — a tiny hole in the wood, not quite big enough for my little finger. A squint. “I should have had you come in here,” I said. “I can’t see through it.”
“See through — Celyn, what?”
I found the catch for the door and tapped it open again. “It’s a watch-hole,” I explained, pointing to the squint. “For spying on this room. It probably used to be a garderobe, but they walled it in when they built these rooms. Bryn Shaer was riddled with them.”
Durrel was moving the door back and forth, peering through the squint at various angles, as if trying to guess what view of these rooms anyone hiding in that space might have had. “This is all fairly disturbing,” he said, and I didn’t press him to elaborate.
“But it’s not very useful, is it?” he added — but I didn’t answer, because I was kneeling in the little watch-hole, my fingers brushing the thin floorboards. “Celyn, what is it?”
“I don’t know, but I think there’s something here.” I bent closer to the floor, peering down the narrow stairs. There was an odd shadowy glint, almost invisible in the moonslight — but my searching fingers coaxed it into the light, teasing out pairs of shapes, poorly matched, scattering just the smallest trace of magic. “I think it’s footprints,” I said finally. They were all muddled together, as if the owner had shuffled his feet while standing in the cupboard. “They go down the stairs here.” I couldn’t see the whole set, not without touching them, but I descended a few steps, trying to make things out more clearly.
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