Page 40 of Saint
15SAINT
There were false memories tied to the sound of the rye. They woke every time we came here.
Cragsmouth was a scant fishing village north of Dern where the cliffs crumbled down into the sea like a black wall. There was no rye growing there, but there were vast grasslands that rolled up into the hills. And they had the same sound as the croft, like rushing water.
Fishing had been the work of my father and his father before him, but I’d known from the time I was young that I wanted to sail one of the trading ships that crossed our paths when we were pulling in the nets.
My father had wanted it for me too.
Emilia reached out, touching the tops of the stalks as we made our way up the path toward the barn. She was a rye crofter by blood, growing in the same fields her grandmotherhad planted, but where her family had traditionally only sold the grain in bags at Sowan’s merchant’s house to traders from the Unnamed Sea, Emilia was the first to start distilling some of it in barrels.
The harvest had already begun and the rows were still filled with workers bent beneath bundles on their backs against the last moments of a brilliant sunset. Some of it would be packed into crates for the traders from the Unnamed Sea or sent by ship to Ceros. The rest would make its way into the barrels. In the end, if things went my way, both Emilia and I would hold its coin.
“You don’t look so good, Elias,” she said, plucking one of the rye stalks as she passed and crushing it in her palm.
“Thanks.” I let the bite of sarcasm touch the word.
“I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be.”
I followed her around the corner of the first wood-plank building, to the door that faced the fields. She hooked one hand into the iron ring, looking up at me.
“What?” she said.
“You need to be careful.” I lowered my voice. “With Hazel.”
The set of her mouth faltered for just a moment before it recovered. I’d warned her that the Narrows was crawling with rumors about gem sages going missing. I had one of them on my ship. And all it would take was one disloyal crofter running their mouth at the tavern to tip someone off about Hazel.
Emilia rolled the grain between her fingertips, falling quiet for a moment. I knew she was worried, even if she pretended not to be.
“And you need to be careful with that dredger,” she said, changing the subject.
I didn’t take the bait. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“We have new crew on the ship almost every time we come through Sowan.”
“You never bring them here,” she said, lower.
“I told you. She’s just a dredger.”
Emilia let it go. She didn’t often show any kind of curiosity about the inner workings of our crew, but I’d seen her eyes focus on Isolde more than once since she’d shown up at Lander’s.
“How’s the rye coming?”
She grinned. “It’s coming.”
She pulled the door open. Inside, dozens of barrels were stacked on iron racks, all of them missing the mark of the crofter who’d made them. That had been part of our agreement from the beginning. Partly to protect Emilia, but I also didn’t want anyone to know where to find the goods I was selling. Not until everyone knew they had to come to me to get them.
She took one of the tin cups hanging on the wall before making her way to a barrel at the back. The spigot gurgled as she pulled down the handle and the red-amber liquid came rushing out. The smell of it was already in the air before she handed it to me.
“Probably the best batch yet,” she said, nodding for me to drink. “I’ve got four dozen crates waiting to be loaded up for you.”
I lifted the cup, taking a sniff before I poured the rye into my mouth. The burn traveled over my tongue, down my throat, before pooling in my belly. The taste of wood and fire smoke lit in my nose. She was right. It was good.
If I’d told my father that I’d be trading rye when I finally got my own ship, he would have laughed at me. He’d never have believed it. Growing up, rye was the home brew that the fishermen drank to help drain the cold from their bodies after days on the water. Back then, it was only ale the taverns wanted. But the more people traveled from port to port, the more they were asking the barkeepers for rye. Now, even the Saltbloods were drinking it.
