Luck in the Shadows (60 page)

“Yes, but
Wheel Street
!” insisted Alec, wanting to hear the end of the tale before dark. Once Seregil made up his mind to explain something, he tended not to leave out any details.

“Sidetracked again, am I? Well, as time went on the young nobles I’d rooked around with settled down and had young nobles of their own. Aurënfaie or not, I was expected to do the same. To maintain the confidence of those I depended on, I had to give some outward sign that I was of their ilk. I began by investing in shipping concerns and managed to do fairly well. Small wonder, really, considering the sort of information I was privy to. Aside from the money, my supposed business concerns give me ample excuse to be away for the better part of the year.

“Unfortunately, the charade has grown rather cumbersome. If I didn’t love Rhíminee so much, I might just kill off Lord Seregil and start over again somewhere else. What it all boils down to for you, though, is that Sir Alec of Ivywell has a lot of educating ahead of him.”

“I’ll be an old man with a beard to my knees before I’ve learned half what you expect me to know!”

Seregil gazed out over the sea a quizzed look on his face. “Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that very much indeed.”

They spent that night at the Pony, a respectable wayfarers’ inn, then set out again at dawn under a clear sky. By late morning they reached the southern end of the isthmus that linked the Skalan peninsula to the mainland to the north.

Jutting up from the sea like a blanched backbone, the land bridge was scarcely five miles wide at any point. The road ran along the crest of it and Alec could see water on either side: the Osiat steely dark, the shallow Inner Sea a paler blue.

Just after midday they came to the small outpost guarding a fork in the highway. From here the roads diverged to the two bridges, east and west, which led down to the opposing Canal ports of Cirna and Talos. Taking the right fork, they soon came within sight of the east bridge, arching smoothly across the black
chasm of the Canal. It was a broad, sturdy structure, wide enough for the heaviest drays to pass without crowding.

“It’s an amazing sight from up here, don’t you think?” said Seregil, reining in. At the moment several wagons were coming across from the far side, followed by a turma of cavalry.

Alec felt cold sweat break out down his spine as he looked at the precipice beneath it. He’d been at the bottom of that chasm, seen its depth. To him, the great bridge looked as tenuous as a spider’s web by comparison.

“Illior’s Fingers, you’ve gone white!” Seregil observed, looking over at him. “Maybe you’d better walk your horse. Lots of people are a bit nervous their first time across.”

Alec gave a quick, tense shake of his head. “No. No, I’m fine, I—I’ve just never crossed anything that deep.”

Embarrassed by his sudden weakness, he gripped the reins resolutely and nudged Patch into a walk. Keeping to the center of the road as much as traffic allowed, he fixed his attention on a string of donkeys plodding along ahead of him and did his best not to think about what lay below.

“See, it’s perfectly safe,” Seregil assured him, riding close beside him. “Solid as the highroad itself.”

Alec managed another tight nod. From far below came the faint creak of oars and ropes; sailor’s voices rose like the whispering of ghosts.

“There’s a good view of the west bridge from here,” Seregil said, directing Alec’s attention out over the left side of the bridge.

Alec looked and felt his belly lurch. From here, the western bridge looked like a child’s construction of dry branches across a ditch, a fragile toy poised over the dizzying gorge. Closing his eyes, he fought off a sudden mental image of the stonework beneath him giving way.

“How did they build these?” he gasped.

“Those ancient wizards and engineers understood the value of forethought. They built the bridges first, then dug the Canal out beneath them.”

At the far end of the bridge, Alec unclenched his aching fingers and drew a breath of relief.

A switchback road led down the cliffs to the harbor town below. Cirna was a confusing city of square, closely packed buildings lining a maze of narrow streets so sharply inclined in places that it was difficult for riders going down not to pitch forward
over their horses’ necks. The local inhabitants apparently favored foot traffic, for many parts of the town were accessible only by narrow stairways.

Clinging to the back of his saddle, Alec looked across the bay and located the shining columns of Astellus and Sakor, his first landmarks in Skala. There were far fewer vessels anchored in the harbor now. Seasonal storms were already whipping all but the most hardy coasters into port for the winter.

By the time they’d wended their way down to the customs house by the harbor, both of them were grateful to set foot on level ground again. Entering the whitewashed building, they found a ruddy woman in salt-stained boots at work over a table cluttered with documents.

“Good day to you,” she greeted them, as she finished with a wax seal. “I’m Katya, the harbor mistress. You gentlemen need some assistance?”

“Good day to you,” Seregil replied. “I’m Myrus, merchant of Rhíminee and this is my brother Alsander. We’ve come to track down a shipment that went astray some three years back.”

The woman shook her head with a dubious frown. “You’ve got a job ahead of you, then. Do you know how many ships go through here in a season?”

“We have the name of the ship, and the month she came through, if that’s any help,” Alec offered. “It was the
White Hart
, a square-rigged trader of the Tyremian Line, Cirna registry. She’d have docked here sometime in early Erasin.”

“Ah, well that’s a start, anyway.” Opening a side door, she led them into a room filled from floor to ceiling with ranks of scroll racks.

“If we’ve still got the manifest it’ll be in the back there somewhere. They’d generally have been chucked out by now, but the old harbor master died in the middle of the job and I’ve never gotten around to finishing it.”

At the back of the room she scanned the racks, then extracted a document at random. The movement disturbed a thick layer of dust that set both her and Seregil sneezing.

“Push open that window just beside you, young sir, before we all suffocate,” gasped Katya, brushing at her nose.

Alec threw back the shutters. Shaking the scroll out again, she held it up to the light.

“You see how it’s laid out, sirs. Here’s the ship’s name and the
captain’s at the top, followed by the date she put in and a detailed listing of cargoes delivered and taken on. These seals at the bottom belong to the captain of the vessel and the various merchants involved. This big one here in the lower right corner is the harbor master’s. I’ll leave you to it. Mind you close the shutters when you leave and tuck things back where you found them.”

There was no system to the storage of documents except a rough chronological layering. Pulling scrolls and checking dates, they narrowed their search down to a few likely shelves. Powdery clouds of dust roiled about them as they sorted and sneezed their way through pile after pile of musty, yellow parchments.

The writing, done aboard ships rolling at anchor, was a challenge to decipher—especially for Alec, whose skill at reading was still far from accomplished. Gnawing absently at his lip, he puzzled his way through a confusing succession of scrawled names:
The Dog, Wyvern’s Wing, Two Brothers, Lady Rygel, Silver Plume, Coriola, Sea Mist, The Wren—

Engrossed as he was in mastering the differing hands, he nearly lay aside one with the smudged entry:
White Hart
.

“Here, I found it!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

Seregil sneezed again and wiped his nose inelegantly on his sleeve. “I’ve got one, too. The
Hart
was a short hauler, working the northern coasts on either side of the Canal. That means there are likely to be a number of manifests around that date. Keep looking until we’re well past the time she was lost. We don’t want to miss any.”

They found eight in all, and spread them out side by side according to date.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” muttered Seregil, reading them over. “For the most part the
Hart
had a series of regular runs. Let’s see—miscellaneous provisions to these three little towns to the west, with trade cargo back—leather goods, horn, some silver work. The eastern runs seem to have been mostly to mines on the north coast of the Inner Sea: tools and supplies, oil, cloth, medicines. Same here, and here.”

“What about odd runs?” asked Alec, hunkered down beside him.

“Good point. There are a few. Poultry to Myl, wine to Nakros, silk, and a load of scented wax. Three large tapestries to a Lady Vera at Areus, one hundred bales of woolen yarn—”

“It would be hard to mistake any of that for a couple hundred weight of gold baps.”

“Quite right, and I suspect our Leran friends were wise enough to stick their gold in where something heavy wouldn’t attract any attention. Here are iron goods, tools, lumber—”

“That’s not much help,” said Alec. “After three years, how can we guess which one it was? It’s impossible!”

“Probably.” Walking to the window, Seregil gazed out over the darkening harbor, then sneezed again. “Bilairy’s Balls! No wonder we can’t think straight! Pocket those papers, Alec. It’s fresh air we need. We’ll take a walk to clear our heads, then rinse our dusty gullets with a good deep mug of Cirna ale!”

Night fell quickly in the shadow of the cliffs, but a three-quarter moon lit their way as they meandered through the streets behind the docks. Lost in thought, Seregil was for once disinclined to talk, so they wandered on for nearly an hour in silence. At last they found themselves in an open square with a fine view of the harbor below.

The great signal fires atop the Canal pillars were blazing, and their reflections mixed glints of ruddy light with the pure sparkle of the moonlight like a giant’s handful of silver and red gold cast across the dark face of the sea.

“That’s the place we want,” Seregil announced, steering Alec into a nearby alehouse.

The place was comfortably dim and crowded. Working their way across the smoky room, they settled in a corner with their mugs. Seregil read through the manifests again, then sat back with a frustrated sigh.

“This one has me flummoxed, Alec.” Taking a long sip from his mug, he rolled it pensively between his palms. “Of course, we didn’t really expect to turn up anything. But to have the damn things right in our hands and not be able to wring the truth out of them— It’s worse than finding nothing at all!”

Alec leaned over the sheets. “You really think there’s a clue in here, don’t you?”

“I hate the thought of missing something if it is there.” Seregil took another disgruntled gulp, then sat staring into the mug’s depleted depths as if waiting for some oracular answer to float to
the surface. “Let’s have one more look. No, better yet—you read them out to me.”

“That’ll take forever,” Alec protested. “You know I’m terrible at it.”

“That’s all right, I think differently when I listen and it’s better if you go slowly. Just read the ‘Outgoing’ columns.”

Tilting the parchments to catch the scant light of the nearby hearth, Alec bent dubiously to his task.

Seregil leaned back against the wall, eyes half closed. Aside from helping with a few troublesome words, he showed little sign of interest until Alec was in the midst of the fourth manifest.

“ ‘Three cases parchment, ten crates tallow candles,’ ” he read, ticking off each entry with a finger. “ ‘Sixty-five sacks barely, forty casks cider, thirty coils two-inch rope, fifty iron chisels, two hundred wedges, three score mallets, two crates statuary marble, twenty rolls of leather—”

Seregil’s eyes flickered open. “That can’t be right. You’ve wandered into the ‘Goods Received’ column.”

“No I haven’t.” Alec pushed the manifest across to him. “Says right here, ‘Goods Out of Port’ and below it ‘parchment, candles, barley—’ ”

Seregil sat forward, squinting where he pointed. “ ‘Two-inch rope, chisels—’ You’re right, it does say marble. But this shipment is docketed for a mine on the Osiat coast.” His voice sank to a low whisper. “No, a quarry! It’s listed here as bound for the Ilendri pits.”

“So?”

Laying a hand heavily on the boy’s shoulder, Seregil raised a meaningful eyebrow. “So why would anyone pay to ship two heavy blocks of fine carving stone
to
a stone quarry?”

“Bilairy’s Codpiece! That’s it!”

“Perhaps, unless it really was marble in those crates, shipped back for some reason we have no way of determining. Still, it is suspicious.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“At the moment?” Grinning, Seregil gathered up the manifests and rose to leave. “It leaves us in a cheap alehouse with six-to-a-bed accommodations upstairs. I believe we’ve earned a tidier hostel and a good supper. Tomorrow we’ll see what we can turn up at the docks.”

“What about the quarry, that Ilendri pit? Shouldn’t we go there?”

“As a last recourse, maybe, but it’s a week’s journey there and back, and it’s certain they won’t have the gold there now. I doubt they ever knew they had it. No, I suspect we can find our answers a good deal closer to home.”

T
hey spent the next few days on the windswept quays, tracking down ships running the
White Hart
’s old routes. Though they located several vessels, none of their inquiries resulted in much useful information. On their fourth day there, however, a stout little coaster with the unlikely name of
Dragonfly
wallowed into port with a load of stone.

Alec and Seregil lounged against a stack of crates as they watched the dockhands hoisting blocks of various sorts onto the quayside. Rough slabs of building stone were encased in heavy rope nets to prevent them from grinding against one another during the voyage. Finer, more fragile blocks were protected by wood and canvas framing.

“She must have stopped at several quarries on her run,” murmured Seregil.