The rain began to fall as I waited in the alley, the mist that fell over Dern pushing through the streets like the spirit of a long-dead river.
West told me to wait before disappearing down the street, and when he finally returned, he was carrying a bundle in his arms that I couldn’t make out in the dark. He shoved the heap into my hands as he reached me, and I stepped back into the moonlight, looking down at it. It was a pair of boots and a jacket.
“No one is going to trade with you, let alone speak to you, looking like that.”
I could feel the flush dance over my face. The boots weren’t new, but they may as well have been. Their leather was polished, the hooks all shining. I stared at them, suddenly feeling embarrassed.
“Put them on.”
I obeyed, pulling the boots on each foot and tying up the laces as West watched the alley around us. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, leaning out to where the rainwater was falling from the corner of the rooftop above and soaking it.
He handed it to me, and when I didn’t move, he sighed. “Your face.” “Oh.” The heat came up in my cheeks again as I took the cloth, wiping
across my forehead and down my neck in long strokes.
“You should have let Auster stitch that up,” he said, tipping his chin toward the cut on my lip.
“What’s one more scar?” I muttered, irritated.
He looked as if he might say something, his lips parting just enough for me to see the edge of his teeth. But he pressed them together without a
word, holding the jacket open for me. I slid my arms in before he buckled the clasps one at a time.
“Don’t go straight for the dagger, look around a little first. Ask a few questions.” He pulled the hood up over my head, brushing off the shoulders of the jacket with his hands.
“What do I trade?”
He slipped the ring from his finger, pressing it into my palm.
I lifted it before me so that the gold glowed, a string of notches winding all the way around its surface. “What if it’s not enough?”
“You’ll figure something out,” he said gruffly. “Don’t mention my name, or Willa’s. If he asks who you are, just say you’re a dredger on a small ship making port for the night.”
“All right.” I held my hand out to him. He looked at it. “What?”
“Thirty-five coppers.” “I said thirty.”
I shrugged. “We’re negotiating.”
He gave me a long, incredulous look as he dug into his pocket and fished the coin purse out.
I studied him as he counted them into my hands, resisting the smile that was tugging at my mouth.
But when I looked up into his face, his brow was pulled, his eyes more tired than maybe I’d ever seen them. He was anxious.
The dagger may have belonged to Willa, but it clearly meant something to West too.
I dumped the copper into my pocket and turned on my heel, walking out into the alley and straight for the gambit’s shop. The rain hit my hood in heavy drops, and I climbed the steps, knocking twice on the rusted green door.
Footsteps struck the floor inside before it opened and a bald man with a long, dark beard stood in the doorway. I pulled my knife from its sheath slowly as I ducked inside, and the door closed behind me, the bell jingling. He didn’t even bother to look at me, making his way back to a stool in the corner of the shop where a lantern was lit over a mounted magnifying glass.
Beside it, a pipe was still smoking, filling the little shop with the sweet, spicy smell of mullein.
Candles fixed into old, grimy rye bottles were set on almost every surface, their light flickering off every shiny thing tucked into corners, on shelves, laid out on tables. Raw stones, polished jewelry, gold-plated cartographer tools. Little things that had once meant something to someone, somewhere. But for people like me, very little held more value than a roof or a meal. I’d given anything that had ever meant anything to me for both.
I picked up a comb set with a row of rare seashells like the ones Fret sold at the barrier islands, inspecting it. A matching hand mirror sat beside it, where my reflection looked back at me, and I stilled when I saw my lip. West was right, it needed to be stitched. The swollen skin was reddened around the edges, the bruising almost to my chin.
I moved to the next table before I could spend another moment looking at myself. I didn’t want to see what or who might look back at me in that mirror or how different she was from the one who used to live inside these bones.
“What’s this?” I picked up a bronze statue of a naked woman wrapped in a ship’s sail.
The gambit looked up from his magnifying glass, the pipe clenched in his teeth. He glanced at the statue without answering and then went back to work. “You either came in for somethin’ or you didn’t.”
I set it down, making my way to his worktable. My eyes searched the glass cabinets behind him, where shelf after shelf of knives were laid out. But I didn’t see the dagger.
A flash illuminated in the corner of the shop, and I turned toward the single beam of moonlight reaching through the murky window. It landed on a small wooden chest with a tarnished brass lock. Inside, the dagger lay in a narrow, velvet-lined box.
The gambit’s eyebrows rose when he saw what I was looking at. My fingers caught the edge of the lid and I lifted the glass.
I felt him behind me before I heard him, and I dropped my hand, stepping back. His face was turned up in a question, studying me as his arm
reached over my head. He picked the box up and set it down on the worktable between us.
“Just bought this off a trader,” his gruff voice turned up in a sudden friendliness.
“Can I?” But I didn’t wait for his permission. I opened the glass and picked it up, leaning into the window. It was even more valuable than I’d realized. The blue and violet stones were set in swirling patterns, sparkling so the light rolled like waves over their facets. Their unique voices danced between my fingers like the notes of a song. If I closed my eyes, I could pick them out one by one.
“How much?”
The man leaned back on his stool so his shoulders were pressed against the wall, puffing at his pipe until the smoke was billowing again. “Make me an offer,” he said.
I looked at him from the side of my gaze, calculating. He’d want more than what he’d paid Willa to make a profit. I wasn’t sure what the ring was worth, but it would be smarter to use the coin West had given me and keep the ring for trade in Ceros. “Twenty-five coppers.”
He laughed, a rattling cough catching in his throat. “Get out of here.” He reached for the dagger, but I clutched it to my chest when I saw the glint in his eye. That was my first mistake.
“Thirty.” I tried again.
“That’s Bastian made.” He lifted his chin, looking down his nose at me.
The great port city in the Unnamed Sea was known for its gemstone creations. Nothing as intricate as the dagger was made in the Narrows because anyone truly skilled with stones went to Bastian, where the Gem Guild was powerful and paid well. There was no shortage of apprenticeships and plenty of work.
It was also where my mother had learned everything she knew about gems. Everything she’d taught me.
My life had depended on bartering, and I’d already broken the most important rule of negotiation. He could see that I’d give him everything for it if I had to. If I didn’t, West would leave me in Dern, and I’d be right back where I was on Jeval.
“Thirty coppers and a gold ring.” I wanted to bite my own tongue off as I pulled West’s ring from my pocket and set it on the counter before him.
It was already more than he’d ever get from someone else, but I could see by the way his mouth twitched that he wasn’t finished with me yet.
A wicked smile curled on his lips as he waited.
“And these.” I clenched my teeth and fetched the gold bracelet I’d pinched and the two brass buckles from my other pocket, dropping them on the table. “If you throw in a dredging mallet.” Mine was still sitting at the bottom of the reef.
“Deal.” He plucked a mallet from the tray of tools behind him and waited for me to count thirty coppers before he handed it to me handle first.
If I didn’t have the bracelet to trade in Ceros, at least I could dredge.
I looked out the window, trying to find West’s shape in the dark. I couldn’t see him, but I felt him watching.
He’d made the same mistake I had, showing me that he cared about the dagger. And he didn’t just want it. He needed it for some reason. If I knew what that reason was, I might be able to find just a little leverage.
“You know anything about that trader you bought it from? The dagger.”
He dropped the coppers into a can behind him and pointed to a handwritten sign beside the window.
NO QUESTIONS
I glared at him. No one wanted to trade with a gambit who would talk about where the things in his shop came from. I wasn’t the first dishonest customer he’d had in a single day, and I wouldn’t be the last either.
He gave me the mallet and dismissed me with a wave of his hand.
When West saw me coming, he emerged from behind a cart down the alley, waiting with his hands in his pockets. I pulled the dagger free, holding it out to him, and the relief wasn’t hidden on his face.
He took it, giving me a nod. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a favor,” I reminded him. He’d paid me thirty-five coppers and passage to Ceros to get the dagger back, and I’d done it. Even if I only had a few of the coppers left, it was still more than I had before we got to Dern.
I followed him through the village streets, back toward the three leaning chimneys of the tavern. The heat of fire pushed through the door as we entered, and I looked for the crew, but there were only faces I didn’t know huddled around tables with glasses of rye. West wound between them, leaning into the counter beside the fire until a skinny woman with a pile of hair wrapped up in a red cloth on top of her head stopped in front of us. “West.”
“Supper. And a room.” He dropped three coppers on the counter, and she tucked them into her apron, smiling up at me knowingly.
I blushed when I realized what she was thinking. “No,” I said, lifting a hand, “we’re not—”
The woman winked at me, but West didn’t bother correcting her and I wondered if it was because I wasn’t the first girl he’d brought into the tavern and disappeared up the stairs with. That same uneasiness I’d felt as I watched West and Willa in the alley churned in my stomach.
He set a hand on the counter, leaning into it, and I eyed the pale line of skin encircling his finger. “The ring. Was it important to you?”
His hand curled into a fist, and he shoved it back into his pocket as he turned toward the stairs, ignoring the question. “Good night.”
I watched him climb the steps and a crack of light spilled down the hallway as he opened and closed a door.
“Come on, then.” The woman behind the counter looked disappointed, stepping past me with a ring of keys dangling from her hand. She unlocked the door beside West’s, where the candle had already been blown out. “Here we are.”
A small bed and washing basin sat against one wall of the tiny room and a chair against the other. I stepped inside.
“I’ll be back with somethin’ for you to eat.” She smiled, backing out of the room and closing the door softly.
I went to the window and looked out over the rooftops to the harbor, where the ships were only barely visible in the dark. When I could no longer hear the woman’s footsteps in the hallway, I looked over my shoulder at the wood plank wall that divided my room and West’s. No light
came through the cracks, and I took a step closer, crossing my arms and pressing my forehead into the wall.
In one night, I’d almost lost my passage across the Narrows, made and lost enough coin to get me by in Ceros, and unearthed the single most powerful weapon I’d had since leaving Jeval—the truth about what the Marigold was.
If West was running a shadow ship, it was likely the most dangerous place in the Narrows I could be. I’d chosen wrong when I fled to the barrier islands with Koy on my heels. Any trader would have taken my coin, but I’d run to the Marigold.
