“This is the wherry Cormorant.”
“Ain’t what the paint says,” he pointed out, eyes flicking up and down from the paper to the boat. “Says this be the Octavia.”
“Our business requires the utmost secrecy. Captain Oresteia, will you please produce the ship’s papers for this man?”
I ducked into the cabin to grab them from the waterproof box where Pa kept his important things. With unsteady nerves, I passed them to Markos, who in turn handed them to the dock inspector. He wasn’t going to go for this. I just knew it.
“And here’s the contract for the timber,” I spoke up, suspecting Markos wouldn’t know to ask for it. With a bored half-lidded glance at me, Markos extended a hand palm up. I placed the paper in it.
“As you can see,” Markos said, “we are bound for the Free City of Valonikos with all swiftness on the Margravina’s business. We must discharge this cargo immediately and make way.”
The man tilted the paper into the sun. There was a design woven through the parchment that I hadn’t noticed before.
“It bears her mark and seal,” he admitted with a bewildered shake of his head. He was probably wondering why a courier would be aboard a cargo wherry, but was too awed by the letter to ask. He whistled to his men.
As they rolled back the hatch on the cargo hold and brought in the levers and crane, I asked Markos under my breath, “Who is Tarquin Meridios anyway?”
He grinned. “I made him up.”
“I am not saying you have a future as a criminal and scalawag,” I told him, “but that was mightily well done.”
A lone seagull fluttered down from the sky, lighting on a dock post. It tilted its head to one side and squawked at me.
Looking up, I froze. A woman strolled down the dock in the company of a robed man who carried an account book. Two bodyguards shadowed them, men with studded leather armor and swords.
“Gods damn me.” I jerked Pa’s pistol out of its holster.
“Who’s that?”
I seized Markos’s sleeve. “Listen. The Bollards got their fingers in every pie. Goods, money, rumors. Everything. I can’t let them find out who you are. Get down in the cabin and hide. Smuggling compartment on the starboard side. Go!”
“Bollards? Why—”
There was no time to explain. They hadn’t seen us yet, but it was a matter of moments. I stuffed the letter of marque in my pocket and shoved him belowdecks. “Go.”
The woman on the dock wore a gold doublet with puffed slashed sleeves. Above her shrewd brown-skinned face was a red silk turban dotted in a gold pattern. A fine engraved watch and a set of matched brass keys hung from a chatelaine at her waist. The etching on the device depicted a wine cask crowned with three stars.
Most people knew her as Tamaré Bollard, negotiator for the Bollard merchant family. Unfortunately, I knew her by a different name.
I lowered my pistol. “Hello, Ma.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“Caro? Why’ve you painted out Cormorant’s name?” was the first thing she wanted to know. “Your pa in trouble for smuggling again?”
Pa always says the closer a lie is to the truth, the better, so I seized on the opportunity she’d handed me.
“Ayah,” I said. “When is he not? He reckoned he’d lay low for a spell. It’s just me and Fee. I’m bound for Valonikos to pick him up.”
I realized she was staring at my hand, where I still clutched the pistol. I slid it casually into my belt. “There were a man hanging round before,” I said by way of explanation, my neck prickling with chilly nerves. “I didn’t like the looks of him.”
“You come down from Hespera’s Watch?” Ma leaned against a dock post. “We’ve been hearing strange rumors. Of trouble in Akhaia and … other things. Don’t know what to make of them.”
I admired the row of earrings running all the way up her lobe. She also wore a sparkling stud in the left side of her nose. I didn’t doubt they were real gold.
“No,” I said, cool as a trout’s belly. “I mean, we were in Hespera’s Watch. But that was days ago. I heard pirates burned them out. The man at the toll boat at Gallos Bridge said so, but I thought he was pulling my leg.”
Ma looked troubled. “I don’t think he was.”
“Is something the matter?” I was glad I’d hidden the letter of marque. There was no easy way of explaining that to my mother.
“Couldn’t rightly say.” She shook off her worries. “But of course you’ll come up to the house for dinner.”
“I … uh … I need to catch the tide up to Doukas,” I lied. I wasn’t going north toward Doukas but south, through Nemertes Water.
“Avoiding your ma, now, are you?”
I tried not to squirm like a bug being prodded with a stick. “It’s my first run without Pa. I wanted to be fast.”
“You can catch the morning tide and be there by noon, Caro. As you well know.” She jumped down onto Cormorant’s deck, waving a hand to dismiss her attendants. “Now cast off and go to the third dock. We’ve a berth open. You shan’t have to pay the docking fee.”
Just like that, I was trapped.
As we guided the wherry to the Bollard dock, Ma crossed her legs, reclining on the cockpit seat. Fee glanced apprehensively across at me but said nothing. Myself, I tried to avoid looking at the cabin hatch. I hoped Markos had the good sense to heed my instructions and hide, but with Ma’s eagle eye on me, I dared not check. After we finished stowing everything, I joined my mother on the dock, leaving Fee to stand watch.
Ma stuck tight by my side as we strode up the busy street. I knew there was no dodging her. She was sharper than a knife—and right now, just as dangerous.
The Bollards commanded a vast trading empire, that much was true. But like I’d told Markos, they had their fingers in many pies. Officially the family preferred to remain neutral when it came to politics, but I knew we traded in secrets as well as cargo. Markos’s identity was a particularly priceless morsel of information.
“I don’t like the idea of Nick letting you go off on your own,” Ma said, ducking around a wagon full of barrels.
“Ma, I’m seventeen. Someday it’ll be my wherry.”
She pursed her lips to show what she thought of that. “Yes, well. Nothing’s decided. You’re still young. What was the trouble?”
I hesitated. “It don’t seem like the kind of thing he would want you knowing about.” That was the truth. Sort of. “No offense, of course,” I added, realizing how fortunate it was that she didn’t know Pa had been smuggling muskets to Lord Peregrine’s rebels. She would’ve pitched a fit.
She snorted. “Of course.”
But she seemed more annoyed at Pa than me, which suited my purposes just fine. “How is business?” I asked as a diversionary tactic.