Katie crept into the darkened workshop and shut the door behind her. Striking a match from the box in her pocket, she spotted a lamp on a nearby workbench and lit it. The glow was thin and sickly, but enough to see by. Casting over the workbench, she found a small wedge of wood and jammed it under the door. If Jenna—or worse, Row—came back unexpectedly, she could break the back window and make a run for it.
She hadn’t been in here since that night five years before, but a quick glance showed that very little had changed. The workbench and tables were still crammed with work in progress. Jenna would make jewelry from scratch, but she also did a healthy business repairing pieces that had come over in the Crossing. Katie held the lamp high as she moved down the long table that was Row’s workbench. She saw several waste pieces of silver, but no sapphire. The drawer where Tear’s sapphire had been, so long ago, was now empty but for a small scraper.
I should have had him watched years ago, Katie thought angrily. How much did he get away with in the dark? How much, while we sat around playing with knives?
But another voice asked her if that was the town she wanted to live in: a community that kept its citizenry under constant surveillance in the name of safety. Tear had said something about that once, hadn’t he? Yes, he had, long ago, when Lear had asked a question about the duty of government to keep its citizens safe. Katie closed her eyes and was suddenly back there: in the Tears’ living room, fifteen or sixteen, with the fire burning and Lear’s question hanging in the air.
“In such cases, Lear, safety is an illusion,” Tear told them. “A discontented population will erode even the most secure state. But even if safety were somehow achievable by force, Lear, ask yourself this: how important is safety? Is it worth steadily undermining every principle on which a free nation was founded? What sort of nation will you have then?”
Katie’s breath halted. She had been running her hand over the surface of Row’s worktable, almost halfheartedly, already aware that whatever was here, she had failed to find it. But her fingertips had just encountered a subtle set of bumps, not rough but sanded down, too symmetrical to be splinters. She brought the lamp closer and stared at what was there: an edge of some kind. She tried to get her fingernails under it, then dug at it with her knife, but nothing doing; the edge was too fine. Katie thought for a moment, then placed her fingers on the raised bumps and pushed down. With a soft, metallic ping, a section of the table popped up, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside was a brightly polished box of deep red wood.
Cherry, Katie thought. There were no cherry trees in town, but Martin Karczmar had found at least a few in his explorations across the river; the cherries he brought back were highly prized in the Town, and even the twigs were highly valued by woodworkers. But to get this much solid wood, one would have had to chop down an entire tree. Who would go to that much trouble?
She lifted the box from the hidden compartment. It had been polished so hard that the surface was almost as smooth as iron. The box had a latch, but thankfully, no lock. Katie thumbed the latch and opened the lid, then gasped.
Nestled inside the box was a crown. It appeared to be solid silver, set here and there with bright blue stones that looked remarkably similar to William Tear’s sapphire. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship; Katie held it up to the light, admiring the thing, but her mind was also working, running far outside Jenna’s shop. Why would Row make this thing, and in secret? What would he need a crown for?
Don’t be daft, her mind whispered. There’s only one answer to that question.
The door latch rattled. Katie nearly dropped the box, then hugged it to her chest. The knob turned, but the wedge she had stuck beneath the door held easily.
Someone knocked.
Silently, Katie set the box on the worktable and tiptoed toward the door, pulling her knife from its sheath. There was a chance that light would leak around the doorframe, but that was all right; Jenna could have left a lamp burning while she went home to dinner. Katie leaned against the door, putting her ear to the wood. She could hear nothing, but she sensed that the person had not gone away.
Is it you? she asked silently. Row always seemed to know every other damned thing; did he know that someone was in here, playing with his new toy?
Taking a good grip on her knife, she bent down and began to silently wiggle the wedge from beneath the door. Her heart was hammering, blurring her vision, and her palm oozed sweat around her knife.