Page 57 of Saint
She was waiting on coin, I realized. I reached into my belt and pressed a copper into her hand without giving her an argument. She wasn’t wrong about the traders from the Unnamed Sea or the Trade Council, and it was no secret thatthese people had no love for us. We’d sailed into these waters with more copper than they had ever had need of. Then wemadethem need it by increasing the demand for their grain without raising the price we were willing to pay. These shores had fed the whole of the Unnamed Sea and now that they were standing on their own two feet, our traders looked for any opportunity to knock them back down. My mother included. But if I did what I’d come to do, her fingers might finally lose their reach in the Narrows.
The woman inspected the coin before she propped her basket on her hip and pointed an elbow toward the ladder at the end of the street. “Follow that bridge toward the building with the four towers.”
She shoved into my arm as she continued on, muttering a curse under her breath.
I made my way toward the ladder, waiting my turn before I climbed up out of the still, warm air and into the sea breeze. The wood planks beneath my feet swayed just slightly with the movement as I walked, and I kept one hand to the rope walls, scanning the rooftops in the distance. The building with the four towers was easy to spot, just east, and the higher the bridge rose, the more of the path I could see that would take me there.
Ceros was nothing to Bastian. It didn’t look that much different from Sowan, except for its enormous size. No shining marble buildings or painted glass windows. No red cobblestones or smithed iron signs. Bastian was a glistening jewel, a beautiful place. But its heart had gone rotten a long time ago.
I took the nearest ladder down when I was only a fewstreets from the chamber and the heat that seemed to collect in the streets found me again, making me open up the neck of my jacket and let my hair fall down my back.
A few turns following the northwest spire of the building, and I was there, standing in the open market that snaked through the veins of the alleys behind it. The chamber looked more like a well-dressed pier except for the towers that stood at each corner. The sand-colored brick was set into a simple pattern, stretching across the walls and breaking at a few large windows that looked out over the street like wide, open eyes.
I stood there staring at it for a long while before I finally started walking.
I’d made the decision that night in my mother’s house as I stood there in my expensive gown, a glass of cava bubbling in my hand. We’d stood behind the heavy velvet curtain that opened to the hall and the gleam of candlelight reflected off the gem case holding the midnight, lighting my mother’s eye.
It will change everything,she’d said.
I’d known then that I was finished.
I’d given her the one thing she needed to curl her fingers around the world. And now I would place it in the hands of her enemy.
I climbed the stone steps to the wide wooden door of the chamber and pulled the brass handle until it opened. It was quiet inside, a stark contrast to the noise of the street, and I stepped into the dim light, where a long hall stretched before me. Brilliant blue paper covered the walls behindlarge, gold-framed portraits on either side. Beneath each one, a name was engraved on a brass placard that noted their guild. I felt small beneath the faces that were painted there, the same feeling I had in my mother’s house. I didn’t like it.
It was too familiar a scene. The men and women who filled the portraits were the likes of the guilds, even if they weren’t quite as bright and shiny as the high society in Bastian. Tailored suits and lace-trimmed frocks floated past me, and my hands tightened on the dredging belt. They weren’t Saltbloods, but they sure looked like them.
Below the gilded frames, a space on the marble was being cleared where the trader’s crests would be hung. Before I could imagine Saint’s crest among them, I kept walking. But I stopped short when my eyes caught sight of a placard that bore a name I recognized—Oliver Durant. The name I’d seen on the courier agreement with Zola and Simon.
My chin tipped up as I studied the rich colors of the portrait. The man’s wide face was set with a large nose beneath a severe brow. The dark curling beard matched the head of hair beneath his fine hat, and one hand was set on the grip of a gold-handled cane.
So, this was the man who’d planned to buy me. A gem merchant, like Saint predicted. An upstanding member of the guild. Maybe these bastards weren’t so different from the ones I’d grown up with, after all.
I took a small step forward, looking him in the eye. I didn’t want to guess at what his plans for me had been. Lock me up in the back of a shop somewhere in this teeming city? Tie a stone around my feet and drop me in the harbor to berid of one more gem sage who could spot the fakes he was trading? I was glad that I’d never have to find out. I had Saint to thank for that.
I closed my eyes, trying to scrub the helmsman’s name from my mind. I didn’t want to think about theRivenor what his face had looked like when I stood at the bottom of those steps. I didn’t want to remember that scent, like the deepest sea.
I put one foot in front of the other until the hall came to a stop at a circular vestibule with four bronze-plated doors set into the curved wall. When I found the one I was looking for, I raised a fist and knocked.
POST OF EDGAR MORANTON, GEM GUILD MASTER
It was simple. My mother hated the Narrows. She always had. But that hatred had grown into something else entirely when talk of a Trade Council in Ceros began to fester. She’d been wedged out of her own license to trade at their ports and giving the Narrows its own authority didn’t bode well for her prospects.
And if there was anyone who would ensure she was never given power in these waters, it would be the Gem Guild master. He wouldn’t want her stones fetching more coin than his.
The door opened and a young man’s face appeared. He was near my own age, if I had to guess. Maybe an apprentice, or a clerk of some kind. He could even be an heir.
“May I help you?” His narrow face was set with small, dark eyes.
My gaze found the bright beam of sunlight casting through the room behind him. “I’m looking for the Gem Guild master.”
“Regarding?”
“A sale.”
The young man’s brow pulled, his hand already moving toward the door again. “A sale?”
“The sale of a gemstone.”
