Page 21 of Saint
In the Unnamed Sea, the stories about the disappearing gem sages had seemed like folklore, a ghost story told overglasses of cava and cups of tea. But something about Saint’s words rang too true. There was more to them than a feud between two helmsmen.
If Saint was right and Zola was going to sell me to a merchant in Ceros, I would have little chance to get out of this mess once we got out on the water. The thought put a stone in my throat. I didn’t want to imagine what lay at the end of that fate. A room with a locked door. A lonely death. Years dictated by the amount of coin I could earn some guild member in Ceros. I’d lived at least one of those lives already.
But I also didn’t doubt that Saint was telling me what I needed to hear in order to get what he wanted—his gems. The way I saw it, I had two choices. If I trusted Zola, I risked the possibility that he was going to hand me over to a merchant. And not every story like that ended with being a prisoner in some guild member’s workshop. There were also rumors about merchants willing to pay just so they could cut a gem sage’s throat. The fewer of us there were, the more power and coin the Gem Guild had.
If I trusted Saint, I might save my own neck, but I’d also make an enemy of Zola and give up my only passage to Ceros. All of this—leaving Bastian and Holland and everything else—would have been for nothing.
The problem was, I didn’t trust anyone. And once theLunaset sail, the decision would be made for me.
The deck was crawling with crew when we came over the railing and Burke immediately got to work, taking his logfrom his jacket. Once he checked the coordinates and Zola returned, we’d be setting sail.
I eyed the cracked door beside the helmsman’s quarters in the passageway, where the coin master worked from morning to night. I didn’t have any friends on theLunaor favors to call in, but if the answers I needed were here on the ship, that was where they’d be. The coin master would already be at work in his tiny office, updating the ledgers with the trade they’d done in Dern before they went on to Zola to be checked.
The door of the cabin creaked as I gently pushed it open and the man only half looked up, lifting his quill from the parchment. His curling black hair was stuck under his cap, still wet from the morning rain.
“What is it?” There was a flinch in his eyes. I was the last person he’d expected at the door of his little stall.
I jerked my chin toward the deck, sounding as detatched as possible. “Harbor master’s looking for you.”
His brow wrinkled. “Harbor master?”
“Something about docking payment?”
He let out a heavy breath, pinching his eyes closed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Says we can’t go until it’s paid.”
“The man couldn’t keep a ledger if his life depended on it,” he muttered, getting to his feet.
He reached down, giving the chest on the floor a firm yank to be sure it was locked, and the ledger fell closed before he tucked it into his jacket. No coin master with any sense lefta ledger unattended. If it wasn’t with him, it was with Zola. But that wasn’t what I was after.
He wedged himself around the table in the cramped room, turning sideways to slip out the door. I started down the passageway behind him, following until he was climbing down to the dock. As soon as he was out of sight, I stopped short, scanning the deck. Burke was already unpacking the sextant, but there was still no sign of Zola in the harbor.
I turned into the passageway and slipped back inside the coin master’s cabin, letting the door fall closed behind me. The wall was fit with a series of locked cabinets behind iron grates that held the copper theLunakept on hand. From what I’d been able to gather in the last couple of weeks, the chest bolted to the floor was the same. But the coin master didn’t only keep the ledgers. He also handled the correspondence and contracts that ran theLuna’s operations.
The deep shelf that stuck out over the desk kept them within reach. I thumbed through their edges quickly, my eyes flitting over dozens of pages of folded and filed parchment. An array of handwriting penned in different inks covered their faces, their broken wax seals stamped with the insignias of ports and merchants. For someone who couldn’t even call himself a trader in the eyes of the Trade Council, Zola had certainly gotten his hands into a lot of business.
He’d steered clear of my mother, it seemed. There wasn’t a single parchment that bore her seal, and that was no surprise. She had no need of a low-level helmsman from theNarrows to do her bidding when she had the whole of the Unnamed Sea lining up to do it.
But there wasoneparchment that caught my eye.
My fingers stopped on a broken wax seal that was the color of amethyst. The same deep violet I’d seen Simon use in North End.
I slipped it out from between the others and unfolded it carefully. It was the same one given to Zola when I came to the docks that night. But it had been sealed and only now could I see that it was a contract, stamped with a merchant’s seal I didn’t recognize. The terms were written out above the signatures.
TRANSPORT AGREEMENT
Courier:TheLuna
Recipient:Oliver Durant
Route:Bastian to Ceros
Cargo:26 bolts Nimsmire silk
Payment of 8,000 coppers upon procurement, 15,000 upon October 12th delivery
I stopped, reading the numbers again. The sum was high, much too high for Nimsmire silks. And twenty-six bolts was a quantity no single merchant had need of. Especially in the Narrows.
