In the entry hall, presiding over visitors with his stern brow and tall hat, was a painting of the great explorer Jacari Bollard. He peered down at me as I wiped my muddy boots on the mat, doubtless wondering how one of his descendants came to be captaining a lowly wherry. He looked exceedingly upright and noble—no smuggling for Captain Bollard, no sir.
Under the portrait sat a polished case full of curios. The original charter for Bollard Company was kept there under glass, along with a sextant and several maps in the classic style, with monsters and serpents scrawled around the edges.
An old warning of danger. Here be drakons.
Ma signaled to a servant to take my oilskin jacket. “Of course you’ll want a hot bath. I’ll send up a maid.”
This was my fate laughing at me. The captain of a wherry doesn’t expect to be whisked up to the bath like a naughty child, not after I’d been shot at by pirates and set a tavern on fire. I hoped Markos didn’t take it into his head to do something stupid while I was gone.
After the maid left, I piled my hair on top of my head so it wouldn’t get wet and sank into the steaming copper tub. As I sculpted handfuls of bubbles into lopsided towers, I could almost pretend everything was as it should be. I wondered if my infamous ancestors—the blockade-running Oresteias or the intrepid Captain Bollard—had ever paused in the middle of their adventures for a long bath. Likely not.
But my life was suddenly a cursed mess. I rested my head on the rim of the tub, trying not to think about Pa, or Markos, or the Black Dogs. I did not succeed.
The dress the servants carried in was made from stiff blue brocade with a starched panel in front. It was cut low and topped with a jacket in a lighter blue that belted at the waist, puffing out over my skirts. The jacket sleeves were gathered with ribbon bows and a spill of lace. I would’ve liked to find a place in that sea of fabric to stash my pistol, but the servants annoyingly refused to turn their backs for more than a few seconds. I was forced to leave it behind.
So it was that I found myself herded down to dinner. The Bollard dining room was a wood-paneled hall with many tables. My mother and the elder members of the family sat at the head table, raised on a platform. The room was full of wine, olives, and loud talk. Silk curtains wove in and out of the rafters, creating a billowing ceiling.
The paintings were all of ships, each with a brass nameplate at the base of the frame. There was the Magistros, our flagship of the last century, a three-masted bark. And the Nikanor, lost at sea off the Tea Islands long ago, and in the most ornate frame of all, Astarta, which had been Captain Jacari Bollard’s own ship.
All that history staring down at me, and who was I? Just a wherryman in a heap of trouble.
Ma’s eyes skimmed over my town dress, lingering on my hair, which was pulled neatly back. “Much better,” she said.
Which was pretty rich of her, if you ask me, because she hadn’t bothered to change into skirts. She was still in the same doublet and turban she had worn on the docks. Ma was a woman who had made many unconventional choices in her life. I’d never understood why she was forever insisting that I dress properly and act more ladylike.
My uncle Bolaji was seated beside her. He was the head officer of Bollard Company, a broad man with a reddish-brown complexion who wore his black beard in three twists.
“The Black Dogs are not a respectable crew. I don’t like to bargain with such men,” he grumbled. Then he saw me. “Hello, Caroline. I trust your father is well.”
I stiffened at his words. “He—he is, thank you,” I managed to stammer. Black Dogs, at Bollard House?
“And yet they say a wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” Ma raised her eyebrows at Uncle Bolaji, downing the last of her wine.
He sighed. “You were correct not to turn them away. It is also said that a sailor must know the direction of the wind before he can set his sails.” They exchanged significant glances. “If the rumors we’ve heard are true, the wind has changed. Find out what you can.”
Ma stood. “I’m sure you’ll want to sit with your cousins, Caro. I have business.”
As a little girl, I had always resented those words. Tonight, as I watched Ma leave the dining room, they stirred a powerful curiosity. What business did she have with the Black Dogs? Was Victorianos even now sitting in the harbor? Captain Melanos’s men might be searching the docks.
I headed to the lower tables, weaving a path through the laden servants. Spotting my cousins Kenté and Jacaranda, I stopped and broke into a grin.
Heads together, they leaned over a tray of bread, hummus, and dates. Jacky was a year older than me and Kenté a year younger. I had spent many weeks with them at Bollard House over the summers. Jacky was my mother’s cousin’s daughter. In truth I wasn’t sure how Kenté and I were related, but all the Bollards called one another “cousin.” As children we’d climbed on shipping crates in the family warehouses and spent hours balancing on the dock posts, making up stories about the ships that puffed slowly up and down the river. Though my feelings about being a Bollard were complicated, I loved my cousins.
“Current carry you,” Kenté said as I joined them, the gold stud in her nose twinkling in the candlelight. “I thought you weren’t coming till summer!”
She wore her hair parted into four sections and twisted up in braids. Her dress was green and gold striped, and very handsome indeed. It showed off even more chest than mine, which was saying something, but this was Siscema. They did things differently in town.
“Current carry you.” It felt like days since I last smiled, but with my cousins it was impossible not to. The ominous sense of danger that had been constantly humming around me lifted a little.
“I don’t see your father,” Jacky said.
“It’s just me and Fee.” I dropped into a chair. “I’m making my first run up to Valonikos as captain.” I decided to leave it at that, lest they guess I was hiding something.
“Are you? Well done, Caro!” Kenté poured a glass of wine nearly to the top, shoving it across the table.
“Ooh, wait till Akemé finds out he missed you.” Jacky poked me in the shoulder. A sly smile stole across her face, which was a lighter shade that came of there being Akhaian blood in her branch of the family.
I took a date, hoping they wouldn’t notice me blushing. “He’s not here?”
Akemé was the sailor boy I’d slept with last summer, in what was my first and so far only experience of that kind. My cousins knew all—well, most—of the details of the encounter, and were determined to never let me forget it.
“Apprenticing in Iantiporos. With his father.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “I’ll tell him you sent him a kiss.”
“Jacaranda Bollard, you wouldn’t!” Kenté squealed, sloshing wine over the rim of her glass.
“Oh yes, she would,” I said. “Listen, you girls know anything about these Black Dogs?”
Kenté always knew the good gossip. As I expected, she seized on my question, her eyes narrowing. “I know they came into town an hour ago on that sloop Alektor. Down the river, from Doukas. Your ma’s put the captain to wait in the Blue Room.”
An hour. While I was luxuriating in the feel of hot water on my skin. How could I be so stupid? And how many ships did the Black Dogs have out looking for us? I’d never heard of a sloop called Alektor. I needed to get back to the docks and warn Fee and Markos.
“I heard Diric Melanos is the handsomest outlaw on the high seas,” Jacky said.
I almost snorted. How legend exaggerates. “He’s not here, is he?”
“No, more’s the pity.”
“What do they want?” I asked Kenté, my heart thumping erratically. I ripped off a chunk of bread and swiped it across the plate, scooping up hummus and oil.
“To negotiate.” She shrugged.
Ma was the chief negotiator for Bollard Company. That didn’t tell me much. “D’you know what about?” I asked with my mouth full, trying to sound as if it didn’t matte
r a bit to me.
“They’re looking for someone on a wherry.”
“Oh, ayah? Do the Bollards be stooping to bounty hunting now?” I demanded, with more snap than I’d meant.
“It’s something to do with a stolen cargo.”
My fingernails dug into the table. The filthy liars.
“How do you always know everything?” Jacky asked her.
For a flash of an instant Kenté’s face took on an odd glow. “Such is my fortune,” she said, candlelight playing on her brown skin and amber eyes. “The shadows favor me.” She laughed, and I realized she was only joking.
I leaned closer. “What do you hear of a cutter called Victorianos, out of Iantiporos?”
“Nothing at all. Why?”
I chewed in silence. The Blue Room was the Bollards’ second-best sitting room. I needed to somehow scheme my way in and find out what was going on.
“They say Captain Melanos captured a hundred ships, you know,” Kenté said. “During the skirmishes of ’88, when he was a privateer for Akhaia.”
Jacky laughed. “They also say the Nikanor was sunk by a great sea drakon, don’t they?” She nodded at the painting on the wall. “But that’s just a fish story.”
Kenté looked sharply at her. “How do you know?”
“Because there’s no such thing as drakons, of course.”
A shiver went unbidden down my neck. Everyone who’s ever read a story knows there is no better way to ensure that you are swallowed up by a drakon in the last chapter than to say there’s no such thing as drakons.
I knew Kenté was thinking the same thing, but she didn’t say it. Instead she dropped her voice low. “I know a story that has a drakon in it. It begins like this: Long ago, time out of mind, there was a girl who loved secrets. Fortunately for her, she lived in a great old house that had many of them. Late at night she used to creep like a ghost down the servants’ passage. It so happened that in this particular passage, there was a particular knothole next to a chimney. When she put her eyes and ears to that knothole, she could see and hear all that went on in the parlor beyond. It came to pass that one night—”
Jacky rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe there’s any drakon in this story. You’re just making it up as you go.”
Kenté stuck out her tongue, but her eyes crinkled as they met mine. A thrill ran through me, for I understood it wasn’t a story at all. Her words were for me.
I shoved my chair back. “I’m going to the washroom, girls.”
Kenté tapped the side of her nose with her finger.
There are many secrets in Bollard House. Lucky for me, Kenté knew most of them. She was right about the servants’ passage. I opened the door a crack and slipped through. The narrow hall had whitewashed walls and low-hanging rafters, a poor reflection of its fancier companion running parallel along the front of the house. Stacked crates and barrels lined the hall, all stamped with the Bollard cask and stars. This end of the passage was deserted, for most of the servants were occupied with dinner.
And in that way I was able to put my eye to the knothole by the chimney and spy on my mother’s meeting with the Black Dogs’ man.
Likely this was the very same Philemon that Captain Melanos had mentioned. He didn’t look like much to me. His beard was straggly and unkempt, and he kept pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead with a striped handkerchief.
“We heard about a massacre at Hespera’s Watch.” Ma pushed a glass of wine across the table.
The man smirked. “Only two people were killed, so it can hardly be called a massacre.” I itched to punch his ugly face. The Singers were real people—good people—and he thought the whole thing was a joke.
My mother waited with folded hands. “I heard the Black Dogs were responsible.”
“Diric Melanos took a contract from the Theucinian family to seek out and recapture a certain crate of stolen goods. By any means necessary, love.” He took a gulp of wine and grunted. “It’s good.”
A look of disdain, promptly hidden, floated across my mother’s face. She was probably thinking this man a waste of a fine vintage. The Bollards were particular about wine.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re seeking?” Ma poured herself a glass.
“Our quarry is a wherry. Called Cormorant.”
I rocked back on my heels.
Ma didn’t react. Didn’t even blink. I shook my head in awe. I was seeing why she was the Bollards’ best negotiator. So the man on the toll boat was right. The Black Dogs did know Cormorant’s name—not just Victorianos, but this other ship, this Alektor. And now Ma, too, knew they were looking for us.
“There are thirty wherries tied up at the docks,” Ma said. “Do you plan to set fire to them as well? Because I can tell you that if you do, you will never have the help of the Bollards.” She sat back in her chair. To someone who wasn’t paying attention, she might have seemed relaxed, but she was like a cat debating the right moment to pounce. “Philemon, is it? Do you mind if we talk plainly?”
“I love plain talk,” he said with a leer. I almost felt sorry for him.
“Some of those wherries you put to the torch at Hespera’s Watch were Bollard ships.”
“Now, t’weren’t me done that. It were Melanos. He’s young and he overdoes things.”
“Nevertheless.” Ma leaned closer. The man Philemon grinned, thinking she flirted, but I knew she was moving in for the kill.
“If we assist you in locating this wherry, this Cormorant,” she said, “naturally any fees we are paid would be in addition to the restitution the Black Dogs will already be paying Bollard Company for the destruction of its property. I believe it was four ships sunk, which brings the amount you owe to a quarter million.” She smiled, running her finger along the curved handle of the decanter. “Pending a ruling by the assessor, of course. And so, how much in addition to that sum were you looking to pay us for our assistance?” She tilted the carafe in his direction. “More wine?”
Philemon blinked.
I crept away from the knothole, my head buzzing with thoughts. So some of the sunken wherries were Bollard owned. Well, if anyone could get money off the Black Dogs, it would be Ma. She could squeeze coin out of a rock.
I suspected she was just stalling Philemon. She had no intention of helping him with his search—not when she knew Cormorant was right here. As soon as Ma got out of this meeting, I was in for a very firm interrogation.
Carefully I closed the door to the servants’ passage, listening for the soft click of the latch. I dared not stay another minute in Bollard House. I couldn’t outlast a questioning by my mother. She’d find out everything. I had to sneak upstairs, change back into my clothes, and escape at once.
I almost made it to the staircase before my uncle’s voice in the entry halted me. I dove around the corner, flattening myself against the wall.
Another visitor had come late to Bollard House. One I knew all too well.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Markos wore a coat I’d never seen before. Dark blue with gold trim, it cut away at the waist and fell in a set of long tails to his knees. A row of shiny buckles marched down his chest.
“Current carry you on this fine evening, sir.” He snapped his feet together and bowed.
With a small wave to dismiss the butler, Uncle Bolaji backed into the hall to allow Markos entry. “Yes, yes. I bid you welcome to Bollard House.”
“My name is Tarquin Meridios.” He stepped in from the misty drizzle, drawing himself up to his full height and removing Pa’s oilskin hat. His hair rippled back in crisp waves from his forehead. “I have the honor of being a courier for the Akhaian Consulate. I heard this was the house to come to. For you see, I have need of a ship posthaste.”
“Indeed I may be able to find passage for you on one of our ships,” my uncle said. “But why did you not come to our offices? We have premises in Broad Street, much closer to the docks.”
“Alas, due to my circumstances I
have come late to Siscema. For that I make apology, as well as for my disarray.”
Markos gestured to his clothes. I sniffed at the suggestion that there was anything wrong with the way he was dressed. He still wore Pa’s shirt and trousers, but that jacket was finer than anything we had aboard Cormorant. I saw Uncle Bolaji glance at it, clearly marking the quality.
“I was to bring a set of documents to my colleagues in the city of Valonikos,” Markos said. “By a series of misadventures, including but not limited to the theft of a fine horse by a band of brigands, I was forced to barter passage on a local wherry. But now I have need of greater speed.”
His lip twitched when he got to the part about the brigands. He was enjoying this. He would’ve been having a lot less fun if he knew one of the Black Dogs was sitting on the other side of the door, not twenty feet away.
“Your coming at this hour is unfortunate, for our representative is currently meeting with another client. In fact, I was just about to join them.” Uncle Bolaji scratched his head. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting in the hall until we’re through with the other business?”
“That would be more than adequate,” Markos said. “You have my thanks.”
I marveled at how adeptly he’d slipped back into formal speech. When we first met, I’d thought he was hopelessly stiff. But now I realized his manners were like a costume that he could put on or take off—an ability that certainly had its advantages.
“Unless …” My uncle paused. “Would you like to join the family at dinner?”
I couldn’t let him stay here, where Philemon might spot him. I edged out from around the corner.
“That won’t be necessary. I’ve already—” Markos glanced up and saw me. I shook my head vigorously, and his voice trailed off into an awkward cough. “That is …”
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