If there was a stroke of luck to be had in this village, I’d just found it.
I started down the wall in the opposite direction, picking up my pace to head them off, and when I reached the next alley, I waited, watching for their shadows on the ground with my breath held in my chest. A simple grab, that’s all I needed, but it had been a long time since I’d done one and even longer since my late-night lessons with Clove.
Don’t hesitate, Fay. Not even for one second.
I could almost hear his rough, thundering voice. I had thought my father would be angry when he found out that Clove was teaching me to pickpocket, but I found out later that Saint was the one who’d asked him to do it. It was my mother who’d disapproved.
As soon as I could hear voices, I stepped out into the path, my eyes up on the rooftops, and I faltered backward, slamming into one of the women and knocking her sideways.
“Oh!” I caught her by the arms before she fell into the mud, and she looked up at me with wide eyes. “Please, let me help you.”
She steadied herself against me as I clumsily slipped the bracelet from her small wrist, and I bit down hard on my lip. It was a skill that needed practice, but I’d never had the guts to pickpocket on Jeval. Not when it could get me tied to the reef and left for dead. I looked up, sure that the woman had noticed the feel of my fingers at the clasp, but as soon as her eyes focused on me, she recoiled, her hands balling into fists at her chest and her mouth gaping open. “Don’t touch me!”
It took a moment for me to understand. I studied her face and looked down to my bare feet and ragged clothing. Both gave me away as a Jevali dredger, even if I wasn’t one by blood, and my busted lip told anyone who looked at me that I’d seen trouble in only the last few days.
The other woman wrapped one arm protectively around her, leading her away with a scowl on her face, and I bowed my head in an apology.
As soon as they were out of sight, I exhaled, trying to slow my erratic pulse. The gold bracelet shined as I turned it over in the light. It was maybe the only time looking like a Jevali would serve me well.
Another shadow moved in front of the window of the gambit’s shop before the door latch pinged, and I stilled when a figure appeared in the center of the alley. The light from the shop fell on a lock of golden hair peeking out from under a cap, and I sucked in another breath, my fingers closing over the bracelet.
West. He stood in the middle of the alley, his eyes on the closed door of the gambit’s shop. I slid myself down the wall and tucked myself behind the corner, my heart slamming in my chest again.
Before I could even turn to run, the shop door was swinging open and Willa came down the steps, stopping short when she saw him. His face was only half-painted in light, and he slid his hands into his pockets as the door closed behind her.
“How much?” His deep, even voice was sharp enough to cut through bone.
Willa smoothed the look of surprise on her face, coming down the steps to push past him, but he stepped in front of her.
“How much?” he said again.
I slunk back farther, watching them.
Willa turned to face him, squaring her shoulders to his though she was half his size. The lantern light deepened the color of her skin to a dark umber, making her bronze hair almost glow. “Stay out of it, West.”
He took the few steps between them and reached for her wrist, unwinding her arms and turning her around. She yelped as he lifted the hem of her shirt, checking her belt, and he stilled. The jewel-rimmed dagger she carried at her back was missing.
He pulled his knife from his own belt and started for the steps of the gambit, but she lunged forward, hooking her hands into his arm and pulling him back. “West, don’t,” she rasped, her eyes pleading. “Please, don’t.”
The knife was clutched so tightly in his hand that the light bounced off the blade as it shook. “How much did he give you for the dagger?”
“Twenty coppers.” Her voice was suddenly missing the anger I’d heard in her words only moments before. She sounded like a child.
West raked a hand over his face, sighing. “If you need something, you ask me, Willa.”
Her eyes were shining as she looked up at him, and even in the dark, I could see West’s jaw clenched tight. It suddenly dawned on me that there must be something between them. They didn’t spend much time together on the ship, but I could see its shadow in the way they looked at each other now. They were more than shipmates, and the realization made me bite the inside of my cheek. I was almost … angry, but the feeling was immediately replaced by humiliation. I didn’t like that I cared one way or the other.
“I owe you enough,” she whispered. Her cheek shined with a rolling tear and she reached up to wipe it away, careful to avoid the burn that was branded on her skin.
“I told you I’d take care of it.”
She stared at the muddy ground between them, her chin dipping down as if she was trying to breathe through the tears.
“When are you going to start trusting me, Willa?”
Her eyes snapped up then, filled with fire. “When you stop treating me like the Waterside stray you used to steal food for.”
He stepped back, as if the distance would ease the weight of her words. But it didn’t. They hung between them like the stench of a rotting corpse. Something never forgotten.
So Willa was telling the truth when she said they were Waterside strays. And she and West had known each other long before the Marigold.
“I’m sorry.” She sighed, softening. Her hand reached out for him, but he stepped to the side, making way for her as he slid his knife back into his belt.
She looked at him for a long moment before she started back down the alleyway. It wasn’t until she was out of sight that West turned again, and when his eyes lifted, I froze. He was looking right at me, his gaze like a focused ray of light, illuminating my hiding place.
I looked over my shoulder, but there was nothing. I was completely swallowed by the dark.
“Get out here.” He spoke so low that I could barely hear him over the sounds of the soft thunder above us. “Now.”
I hesitated before stepping out from the shadow and onto the cobblestone path. A cold drop of rain hit my cheek as his eyes ran over me slowly, the tension still wound tight around the set of his shoulders.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I told you”—I met his gaze—“I didn’t pay for a prison cell. I paid for passage.”
His gaze raked over me until it stopped on my hand. The gold bracelet was tangled in my fingers, sparkling in the lamplight. “You know what would happen if a passenger I brought to this village was caught stealing?”
I did know. He’d be fined for it. His license to trade in Dern’s merchant house could even get docked, depending on the number of black marks on his record. As helmsman, he was responsible for every soul that he brought into port.
I glared at him, dropping the bracelet into my pocket. “I gave you all my copper. I can’t go into Ceros with nothing.”
West shrugged. “Then you can spend the next six months here in Dern, scraping together the coin you’ll need to pay another trader to take you on.”
My eyes widened. He was serious.
“You’ve lost your passage on the Marigold,” he said, his eyes falling to my dirty feet. “Unless you want to make a new deal.”
“What?” I hardly recognized the sound of my own voice, pulled thin by the silence.
“Passage to Ceros and thirty coppers.”
“Thirty coppers?” My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “For what?”
For just a moment, a look lit in his eyes that I had never seen on him before. The hint of some frailty beneath all of that hard-edged stone. But it disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced.
“I need a favor.”
THIRTEEN
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 behin
d 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—”
Fable Page 8
