Page 12 of Saint
Zola took his time before he opened his mouth to speak again, but he fell silent when the door to the street opened and his gaze shot past me.
I turned, stopping short when a face I didn’t recognize appeared among the dozens of others that filled the tavern.
A black-haired girl with a pair of pale blue eyes rimmed in dark lashes shoved the door closed with one arm. Beneath the other, she had several long, rolled pieces of parchment that looked like maps.
“Not bad to look at either,” Zola murmured, a smile curling on his thin lips. “Eryss!” he called out, catching her attention.
It took her a moment to spot him and she hesitated before she made her way toward us, her gaze flitting from Zola to me and Clove and back again as she wove through the tables.
“Finally find someone willing to climb into your bed?” Clove gave Zola a bored look. We didn’t have time for this.
But Zola laughed again, clapping Clove awkwardly on the back. “There’s no coin to be made in love.”
The girl stopped in front of Zola, readjusting the parchments under her arm. Her long, dark hair spilled out of the opening of her jacket, and it wasn’t until she pushed her hood back to fall on her shoulders that I realized it wasn’t black. It was the darkest shade of red. The kind that looked like threads of fire when the light touched it.
The smooth fabric of her jacket was the color of the mossthat clung beneath the railing of theRiven,but it was set with shining brass buttons and her boots were worn but not shabby. She didn’t have the weathered look everyone else in the tavern did, as if she’d been carved from ivory. She definitely wasn’t Narrows-born, and clearly no one had told her that the Saltbloods didn’t venture beyond the harbor in Dern. If Zola was going to parade her from port to port, he’d only get her the kind of attention she didn’t want.
“My new dredger,” Zola said.
Clove’s eyes found me from the corner of his gaze. Zola had been saying for years that he was going to start running dives as soon as his license came through. That didn’t explain why he was still grinning like a cat.
He took hold of the girl’s arm, pulling her beside him, but as soon as his fingers touched her, she yanked free, giving him a taut look. A quick flash of fury darkened his face before he took a step back, as if to show her off. He was saving face, but it was clear he wanted us to see his prize.
He rambled on, recounting the broader details that had brought her to his ship, but when I glanced at the girl from the corner of my eye, she had lifted a hand to the candle on the table beside us, absently flicking her fingertips over the flame dancing on the wick.
“He’s not the friendliest helmsman, is he?” Zola turned to meet my eyes again. “Come on. Where are your manners, Saint?”
My jaw clenched as I finally turned to look at her, and I almost immediately wished I hadn’t. Freckles scattered over her olive skin, tracing over her cheekbones, along her jaw,down to the opening of her shirt where the hollow of her throat was visible.
She held her hand over the flame for another moment before she lifted it between us, meeting my eyes. She didn’t so much as blink. “Eryss,” she said, waiting.
Zola worked at opening a fresh bottle of rye as I took her hand and her calloused fingers brushed over mine, sending a pool of heat swirling in my palm. From the candle, I realized. But as soon as I felt it, I pulled my hand from hers, taking a small step backward, and her head tilted as her eyes narrowed on me.
I realized she was still waiting for a response.
“Elias.” My name rolled off my tongue so easily that it made my blood run cold for just a moment. Because it wasn’t the one I was known by. I hadn’t even planned to say it. In fact, I hadn’t heard the name spoken aloud in what felt like years.
Her eyes studied my mouth, as if waiting for me to say it again, and the hand that had just been in hers instinctively found my pocket. There was something about her that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Zola finally had the bottle open, turning back to us. “That’s better,” he said with an edge of ridicule. “You’ll find that this helmsman is the stuff of legends in these waters.” Zola took his pipe from his pocket, handing it to Burke to be filled.
He was setting my teeth on edge. I didn’t like the confidence I heard in his voice. He was up to something. Something big.
The girl shifted beside me and I turned to see her eyes locked on the crate at my feet. The one marked with the haphazard stripe of red wax. Her lips twisted to one side and I realized the hand she’d held over the candle flame was absently drifting toward the bottles. As if she hadn’t even meant to do it.
Clove shot me a look, but I watched her catch herself, her fingers curling into her palm before her eyes snapped up to me. A bloom of red lit in her cheeks, making her gray-blue eyes glow.
Zola’s voice was lost to the noise of the tavern as slowly, it clicked together, piece by piece. Maybe this girl was a dredger, like Zola said. But that wasn’t all she was. There was only one reason to look twice at that crate of rye. The gems. And the only person who could possibly know they were there was a gem sage.
Henrik’s warning echoed in my mind. If Zola was headed to Ceros to collect heavy coin, he was selling something. Orsomeone.He’d been making stops in the Unnamed Sea and keeping whatever he was doing there quiet. Even the harbor masters in the Narrows didn’t seem to know what he was running. If he was selling gem sages to merchants in Ceros, he had more powerful friends than I thought.
But if this girl was a gem sage headed to the auction block, it didn’t look like she had any idea.
I cleared my throat, tearing my eyes from the dredger. I had bigger concerns than whatever Zola had going, but if he was trading gem sages, he was about to become more than a Narrows-born trader. He could eventually fund an entire fleet with that kind of coin.
“Have a drink with us?” Zola turned his pipe in his hand as he tamped down the mullein leaves.
“Not tonight,” I answered, my eyes falling one more time on the girl before I lifted the crates from the floor. Her hand was still clutched in a tight fist, her gaze avoiding mine.
