Page 4 of Saint
I took the long, cylindrical map case from the wall and pulled the strap over my head so that the case rested against my back. Then I raked one hand through my almost-black hair, tucking it behind one ear and pulling up the collar of my jacket. The purse was heavy in my palm as I stowed it in my pocket, and the ship creaked perilously around me as it began to slow. I wasn’t sure how many more voyages across the Narrows theRivencould take, but I wouldn’t have to find out either.
I caught my own gaze in the mirror for a moment more, brushing off the shoulders of my jacket. I didn’t look anything like the Saltbloods who sailed their fancy ships fromthe Unnamed Sea and plucked what little the Narrows had from our starving hands. Even so, in a month’s time, we’d be hocking theRivento whoever wanted the scrap iron and salvageable wood. Then we’d be sailing from Dern under a real trader’s crest.
Clove was already waiting beside the ladder when I came back out onto the deck. He leaned into the railing, eyeing Julian as he tied off the lines of the foremast with a hard set to his mouth. The young deckhand’s fingers faltered under Clove’s gaze, and he pulled at its length, starting again. There was no impressing theRiven’s navigator, and with a helmsman who steered them into storms that were the stuff of nightmares, the crew we picked up at each port never lasted long. A few times, they’d disappeared without even waiting to collect the coin they were owed.
It was just as well. There was no shortage of bastards in the Narrows who thought they were willing to die for copper. I usually got at least a few crossings out of them before they realized they weren’t.
“Ready?” Clove pulled on his cap as the deckhand finished, swinging one leg over the railing.
“Ready.”
I followed him down to the dock, where the harbor master was already waiting. Gerik studied the ship with a scrutinizing gaze, his lip curled under his pointed nose. TheRivenwas nothing much to look at, but I’d stopped being ashamed of her a long time ago.
“You know, every time you leave, I’m sure it’s the lasttime I’ll see this ship,” Gerik muttered, scratching at a page in his log with a feathered quill. His gaze lifted to the crate of rye being lowered from the railing behind us.
“Messages?” I asked, eyeing the opening of his jacket, where a stack of folded parchment was tucked against his chest.
“No,” he answered.
I clenched my teeth, the weight on my chest pressing just a little heavier. Every time we made port, I was sure the summons to the Trade Council would be waiting.
“I guess that means you still don’t have that license you keep promising?”
“I don’t.”
Gerik’s eyes squinted. “Then why are you unloading rye on my dock?”
I reached into my vest for the smaller purse of coin I’d known I would need. Now that the Narrows had its own legitimate Trade Council, every helmsman who sailed its waters was vying for a license to compete with the Saltbloods. Us included. But it took copper to get a license—a lot of it—and the only way to get that much coin was to tradewithouta license first and hope that everyone kept their mouths shut.
Gerik could be paid to look the other way, but he could also be paid to snitch. So far, we’d been lucky.
“It’s coming,” I grunted, handing the purse over.
“Says you and every other fool with a ship.” He took it, immediately turning on his heel. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Bastard,” Clove muttered.
He hated Gerik even more than I did. He hated mostpeople, in fact. We’d grown up on the wide-bellied fishing boats in Cragsmouth and we’d each pulled the other from churning waters more times than I could count, but that wasn’t the reason he was the only soul in the Narrows I trusted. Anyone could throw a drowning man a line. Finding someone who would catch hold of you before you fell overboard in the first place was harder, if not impossible.
I pulled the watch from my pocket, tilting it toward the lantern light. “Need to make this quick.”
Clove scanned the docks around us as I started toward the stairs, and a moment later, his footsteps sounded behind me. Dern was no more than a cluster of stone buildings along the rocky shore. It was an outpost of sorts that had slowly become a port when the ships from the Unnamed Sea started showing up here for grain, but the village hadn’t caught much attention from the new Trade Council in Ceros. Not yet anyway.
I climbed the steps and took the winding path that led up the hill, away from the busy main thoroughfare. Rosamund didn’t like being in the mix of things, but the longer our arrangement dragged on, the more likely it was that someone would get wind of what I was up to. It would come out eventually. But controllingwhenwas the key.
The shore grew steep as we reached the little cove, where a few piers reached out over the water. One of them had never been repaired after the storm that took its roof a few years ago, but the other two were still standing, and Rosamund’s seal adorned both.
I rapped on the door with my fist twice, and the lockturned a moment later. Ros’s apprentice, Nash, didn’t look happy to see us. He never did.
His eyes dragged over me from head to toe. “Back already?”
I leaned into the doorframe. “She here?”
Nash’s lips pursed as he inspected my shirt, and I ignored him. Not all of us had the steady place of an apprenticeship to keep our clothes mended and our hair trimmed. Not all of us wanted one either. I’d sooner find my death in the deep than live under a guild’s crooked thumb.
Nash pushed the door open, letting us in, and he locked it behind us. Inside, lantern light washed over the warm, golden-hued hull of a ship.
TheAster.
