Page 18 of Saint
The beat of my heart kicked up slightly as my eyes trailed over the corners of the claustrophobic room. I reached one hand up, touching my fingers to the wooden rafters above us. I could feel it—the faint vibration of footsteps. Someone was on the ship.
“Shit.”
I pulled myself through the narrow doorway and tore up the ladder, stumbling as I came back up to the deck and the sound of a splash hit the water on the other side of the jib.
“Hey!” I lunged forward, clawing my way around a stack of coiled rope, but when I slammed into the rail and peered down into the darkness, there was nothing. Only the ripple of moonlight on the water.
My breath fogged in the air as my eyes slid to the knot of rope beside my hand. A line was anchored to the iron rungs at my feet, draping over the side and disappearing into the black water.
Whoever it was, they were already gone.
When I turned back, Clove had already disappeared through the open door of the helmsman’s quarters. When I pushed inside, he stood before the desk with a coldness in his eyes.
“What?” I rasped.
“They’re gone.”
I could barely sift the sound of his deep voice from the wind outside.
“Henrik’s gems. All of them.”
I paced past him, rounding the desk and wrenching the tarp from the crates against the wall. They were unstacked neatly on the floor, only one crate missing. The one with the red wax mark.
“I haven’t left the ship,” he said. “I’ve been right here. Waiting.”
I pinched my eyes closed, swallowing down the sickness brewing in my stomach. Whoever had been here had been watching us. As soon as Clove climbed down to the docks, they’d taken their chance.
“One of the crew?” he guessed.
“No.”
There wasn’t anyone on the crew of theRivenwho’d been around long enough to pick up on the trade of fakes we’d been running. The only people who knew were me, Clove, Henrik, and Lander, the merchant in Sowan we sold them to.
The answer seemed to come to life in Clove’s eyes the moment it settled in my mind.
Zola.
He wasn’t smart enough to figure out what we’d been up to, but his new gem sage dredger was. She’d put it together in a matter of moments.
Nearly thirty-six hundred coppers worth of gemstones and fakes were gone. And it didn’t matter how friendly I’d become with Henrik Roth. His father would gut me when he found out.
7ISOLDE
The smith eyed me as I turned the pick over in my hand, pressing the tip of my finger to the point.
He hadn’t taken his attention off of me since I’d walked through the door. The only business the traders and crews of the Unnamed Sea usually did in the Narrows was picking up their inventory and drinking rye on the docks before heading back to Bastian or whatever port they’d hailed from to turn a mountain of profits. A Saltblood coming into his shop for dredging tools might be a first.
This smith, tucked into a back alley of Dern, was worth his salt—I had to give him that. The tools were solid, even if they didn’t have any of the frills that my gear in the Unnamed Sea had had.
My mother had given me my last set as a gift after one ofthe most lucrative dives we’d ever completed in Yuri’s Constellation, and they were the finest dredging tools I’d ever seen. Maybe the finest ever forged, and that was exactly why I’d left them behind. Each tool in the belt had my name engraved in the iron and set with gold, along with the stamp of my mother’s crest. At the time, I’d thought the gift was her way of telling me she was proud of me. But I could see now it was just another way of polishing the jewels in her own crown.
The lot of mallets and chisels and files that filled the tiny smith’s shop were nothing to look at. The metal was discolored in places where nickel had been melted with the iron, likely because the merchant was cutting corners. It was a flaw that I might not have noticed right away if I couldn’t hear the distinct ring of the nickel between my fingertips. Still, he’d managed to use what he had to make something that would withstand its intended purpose. That took an undeniable skill.
I set the pick onto the tray with the others I’d selected. I couldn’t have cared less what they looked like. They’d get the job done. Now all I had to do was untangle myself from Zola when we got to Ceros.
The smith hauled the scales onto the counter, setting the first piece into one side. “You’ll need a belt too?” he asked, marking the first number down on a scrap piece of parchment.
“Yes.”
