sleeping rough under the stars. They might have lived out their days in the waterfront district, never earning enough to get outthe plight of most of the denizens that shared the refuse-slick streets with them.
But the day Harp showed up at the dingy tradeshop with his latest payment on the ship, the owner of the Crane met him at the door. The man must have been the last honest person at the port, because he refused Harp’s coin and gave him the writ of sale, saying a mysterious benefactor had paid the debt. He wouldn’t say who had done them such a favor, not even when Boult, suspicious of the good deed, returned to the shop and offered him a reward for the information.
They sailed away from the port on the Crane that very day, with Boult, who had never been on a ship before, heaving into a bucket. Harp leaned on the railing beside Kitto, who was actually smiling at the sight of the wretched city disappearing in the distance. The scars on Harp’s arms had split that morning, and there he stood, leaking blood onto the boards. As long as he never saw the inside of another prison or had anything remind him of a copper-haired elf named Liel, maybe everything would be all right.
But it hadn’t been, of course. Boult and Kitto had hauled him out of more than one cell where’d he’d been tossed after a night in the wrong pub or the wrong bed or the wrong whatever he couldn’t remember. And Liel was the first thing he thought of when he woke up in the morning and, unless he was drunk enough, she was the thing he couldn’t put out of his head at night.
Some days, he burned with anger at Liel for letting Kitto set out on the road by himself, although there was little she could have done to stop the boy if he had his mind set on it. But she had promised to take care of Kitto even after she married Declan Cardew. Hatred didn’t come naturally to Harp. He’d give a man more chances than he deserved. But the power-hungry, ambitious Cardew had been a thorn in Harp’s foot for years. No, that was too gentle a comparison for the role he’d played in Harp’s life. Cardew was poison in an already mortal wound.
“What a dump!” Boult’s voice came from behind him.
“Nine Hells!” Harp swore. Engrossed in thought, Harp had wandered down to the lower deck, moving aimlessly between crates and barrels as if answers would be waiting for him in plain sight. He was so distracted that he hadn’t heard Boult come down the ladder into the hold. “Who knew dwarves could sneak like cats?” Harp said.
“I could’ve cut your throat, and you wouldn’t have seen me coming,” Boult said. “Lingering in the past like a pig rolling in slop. You get that look in your eye, you’re thinking about a certain ambitious, underhanded elf named Liel. When are you going to start using your head?”
“I’ve made it forty-two years so far,” Harp replied. “No use starting now.”
“Did you find anything?” Boult asked, lifting the lid of one of the crates and closing it quickly when the smell of rotting meat drifted into the air. “Bitch Queen, spare us. They must have been waiting here a long time.”
Grates in the low ceiling allowed light into the stuffy space, and they could hear rodents scurrying in the dark spaces along the edge of the hull. Harp brushed aside a coil of thick rope hanging from the ceiling. There was a door at the far end of the hold. Covered in gilt-leaf, the door was surprisingly ornate compared to the rest of the ship and glowed faintly in the dusty light. “That must be the captain’s quarters,” Harp said.
“My, the captain must have been a man of fine taste,” Boult said, jabbing his finger at the gaudy decoration.
“Nothing says high class like shiny foil,” Harp agreed as he gingerly pushed the door open. Glass lanterns hung from the ceiling, and their low flames cast swaying shadows in the dingy, sour-smelling room. There was a cot bolted into the floor, a large chest against one side of the room, and a table with papers and brass navigational scopes. It looked very much like Harp’s quarters back on the Crane. Only bigger.
“Laws of pillage say she’s ours now,” Harp said as he moved into the room to check the maps tacked to the wall.
“We sail her to Nyanzaru and sell her, chances are we make more coin than doing the job we came to do,” Boult said.
Harp looked over his shoulder at Boult. “We can finish the job and still sell her at the port. I committed to Avalor.”
“And what exactly did you commit to?”
“You’re not going to let it go, are you?” Harp asked. “It might not even matter.”
“We’re here because of Liel, and that doesn’t fill me with joy and hope,” Boult said.
“You’re wrong about Liel,” Harp told him, pulling the maps off the wall. He rolled them up neatly and laid them on the cot. In his early days of pirating, Harp learned that if you could only take one thing from an enemy vessel, you should take the maps. “And it’s not like you to even think about reneging on a job.”
“And it’s not like you to lie,” Boult said. “Especially not to me.”
“Since when?” Harp asked. “Our friendship would be so much less interesting if we only told the truth. I’m pretty sure you lie to me all the time.”
“Have to do something to keep you conscious.”
Harp knelt down in front of the heavy wooden chest and stared at its brass lock. It didn’t look too complicatedor trappedbut Kitto was the true lock expert. Harp sat back on his heels and thought about fetching Kitto, who could open the chest much quicker than he could. But Harp wanted to get off the Marigold and onto shore as quickly as possible.
“The captain was Alon Merritt,” Boult said, reading from the log on the table. He ran his finger down the page.
“Sure,” Harp replied, his full attention on the chest.
“Not much in the way of personal information about Captain Merritt, just weather records and land sightings,” Boult continued. When Harp didn’t respond, he glowered down at Harp who was prone on the floor with his eye looking under the chest for springs or other traps.
“Did you hear me?” Boult said.
Harp grunted as he pulled his picks out of his pocket and peered into the keyhole for a better look at the locking mechanism. But the hole was too small to see the components, so he just stuck two hook picks inside and hoped for the best.
“I bet a mage could open that,” Boult said grumpily. “We need a spellcaster. I’ve told you that a hundred times.” “We had a spellcaster. Remember Andia?”
“Of course I remember her. And the one before that. What was her name?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Harp told him.
“Etienne. You chased her away too.”
“She left of her own accord,” Harp protested.
“In tears,” Boult pointed out.
“Well, love hurts.”
“Only when you love a bastard.”
Harp twisted the picks harder than he would have thought necessary. Kitto coaxed a lock open with feather touches while Harp always relied on brute strength. However, he heard a satisfying pop, and the box sprang open. Inside the chest was a bundle of papers sealed with red wax.
“What’s on that seal?” Harp held the papers up to the light to try and decipher the waxy imprint. It was a circular mark with something lean curled around a hexagon shape that might have been a cut gemstone. But heat had smeared the wax and left it too damaged to decipher. Harp showed the seal to Boult.
“An otter?” Boult suggested. “Or a serpent?”
“Whoever Bootman got his orders from, they used the stamp to verify them.” Harp broke the seal and opened the bundle, but the pages were blank.
“Enchanted,” Boult said smugly, as if he had known they would be all along. “Promise me that you’ll keep your hands off the next spellcaster we run across.”
“I promise no such thing,” Harp said automatically.
Harp ran his fingertips along the bottom of the chest, pushing gently on the seams of the planks until he felt one bend under the pressure. Using his dagger, he pried up the wood, revealing a tiny piece of rolled parchment tied with a ribbon.
“Laghessi Cove. Second Ride, Summertide. D. Cardew.”
As Harp registered the name Cardew, the blood flowed to his head in a rush of anger. Of course it was Cardew who had sent the mercenaries after them. As Harp stood up and brushed off his knees, his anger turned to
