“The thieves included two kegs of ale, heavily laced with arsenic, with their payment. The captain and eight of her sisters are dead. Six more are not expected to live.”
Ren jolted at the name of the poison. “Did any survive to talk?”
“None that interacted with the thieves directly,” Raven said. “Those who did survive told us the captain was hired in Heron Landing to pick up ten heavy crates downriver, and give passage to the gentry family riding herd on the cargo.”
“What made them think the women were gentry?”
“Cut of the clothes they wore, the way they talked. There were eight to ten of them in their late teens and twenties, fair of coloring, average height and weight.”
So the cannons were here nearly ten days ago. Most of the witnesses were dead. Dozens of ships had come and gone during that time.
“So our haystack grows again.”
“They only had a few hours to hide the cannons before my orders to check all incoming and outgoing cargo arrived in Mayfair. There’s hope we can run them to ground. We also have a lead.”
Raven reached into her vest pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was a leaf of common foolscap, cheap in quality, the fool grinning at her in the watermark. With a light hand, someone had covered one side of the paper with pencil shading, revealing a series of crude pictures marching across the paper like letters.
“What’s this?”
“A trick I picked up. If someone has written on the top sheet of a pile of papers, the next sheet down retains an impression of the writing. You can capture the impression by shading the page with a graphite pencil.” Raven grinned smugly. “The drawings are written thieves’ cant. Apparently the thieves wanted the cannons elsewhere. During the trip, they tried to talk the captain into changing the scheduled stops and couldn’t. They also tried to hire the ship out once they arrived at May-fair, but didn’t want to wait for the two-day layover that the Onward had planned. They borrowed paper to write out this note and sent it by runner. A short time later a woman showed up with some roustabouts and wagons to unload the cannons. Lucky for us, the gentry returned the unused paper.”
Ren gazed at the crude drawings. “Can you read it?”
Raven’s mouth gathered into a chagrined smile. “No.
I’m trying to track down someone who can read it and yet would be unlikely to be involved in this case.
I don’t want to tip off our thieves.“
Ren stripped out of her sleeping shirt and started to dress in the clothes laid out for her. The idea of waiting chafed. The longer they waited, the less chance they had of finding these murderers. She was buttoning her slacks when an idea came to her. “I wonder-do you think the Whistlers still know their thieves’ cant?”
Raven shrugged. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
Eldest Whistler nodded through their explanation as she wordlessly studied the paper. When it was clear that they had no more to say, she shook her head. “It isn’t cant. It looks like cant, but it isn’t.”
“Are you sure?” Raven tapped a square with two wheel-like circles at the bottom of it. “This is wagon.
Everyone knows that much cant.”
“Yes, that’s wagon.” Eldest went on to name a few other words that even Ren could make out just by the pictures. “There’s lots of commonly known cant in it, but the rest-it’s like someone made up pictures for the words they didn’t know.”
“Are you sure the cant hasn’t changed since your grandmothers knew it?” Ren asked, since it had been over fifty years since the Whistlers were part of the Sisters of the Night.
Eldest shook her head. “The Sisterhood assumes that anyone can learn enough cant to fake a message, so cant has a second level which acts like a security check. There are things like the number of pictures per line, and a certain set of words that have to appear at least once in the message. Sometimes there’s a series of items listed- like five gil, two pistols, and seven quinces-where the items aren’t important, only that all but the last number add up to the last number. Five and two are seven. Written cant started out as a way to communicate with illiterate members of the Sisterhood, but it evolved into a means to do business without having to worry about the authenticity of the message.”
“So someone is throwing suspicion on the Sisters of the Night.”
“Or just stealing a good idea,” Eldest said. “Part of this is a set of directions on where to take the cargo.
Mill on Dunning Street. I can’t read the rest, though this part might be a woman’s cant name: Black Hat.”
Eldest Whistler and Corelle volunteered to join Ren in the pursuit of the cannons, reclaiming their weapons with great enthusiasm. As they rode down off the palace’s high bluff, listening to Raven outline her plan to storm the mill, however, their eagerness faded into distaste.
“If it’s not to your satisfaction, Whistler,” Raven finally said in her blunt way, “what would you suggest?”
Eldest shot the captain a cold look, and then shrugged. “You’re doing the best with what you have.
Troops, though, are best for fighting big noisy wars on battlefields. Hours before you manage to push those troops through city traffic, the thieves are going to know you’re coming. Not only could this get very messy, but there’s a chance they could slip the cannons out in the confusion.”
“And?” Raven said with the air of not hearing anything she didn’t know.
Eldest shrugged again. “If you had a smaller force of women, doing what my grandmothers did under Wells- bury, they could move through the West End without notice, scout the mill, and take out the thieves with much less fuss.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have such a force,” Raven said. “Your grandmothers were singular in their training.”
“Not quite. They trained us.”
Ren saw where this was going and started to shake her head. “No, I’m not going to put you at risk!
These women have killed everyone who has crossed their path.” Jerin would hate me if I got you two killed.
“And there’s only two of you,” Raven added. “The reports put twenty roustabouts in the employ of ten gentry. You would need a miracle to eliminate that many by yourselves.”
Eldest shook her head. “I wasn’t talking about taking them out. We could scout the mill, find out what your troops will be marching into, and make sure the Prophets aren’t slipped out.”
“Your Highness?” Raven turned to Ren with a clear look of “They will be your sisters-in-law.”
“Whistler honor.” Eldest held up her hand in pledge. “We won’t run unnecessary risks. We’ll be fine.”
How could Ren keep them safe and yet keep them as equals? In truth, she couldn’t do both. And equals they had to be in her eyes or there would be no hope of the Whistlers being considered peers by the nobility. She would release a noblewoman on her word of honor, and so she must let the Whistlers take their risks.
“I seal you to your word-no unnecessary risks.”
Ren worried as they rode to the barracks, gathered the troops, and marched them into the city with the rattle of drums and the incessant call of “Make way! Make way!” The narrow city streets required the column to be four abreast, twenty-five rows stringing out to create a scarlet centipede stamping its way through West End. A narcissistic young lieutenant by the name of Cowley rode at the head of the column on a showy white mare. Raven kept shadow-close to Ren and her guard in the rear.
Many of West End’s streets were meandering tracks, following what once were footpaths through a wood of live oaks. Dunning Street, however, turned out to be a long straightaway, narrowing slowly in degrees, ending at the doors of the mill.
Ren scanned the crowds of onlookers as they made their way down the street, looking for the Whistlers.
What had happened to them?
Cowley called for a halt, and the drums rattled and dropped silent. Over the heads of the infantry women, Ren could see Cowley dismount to try the tall, wide mill doors. The lieutenant obviously found them locked as she moved off to one side and motioned the first rank in position to force them open.
Suddenly gunshots, muffled by the walls of the mill and distance, echoed up the street. A single shot, then a score, sounding like a string of firecrackers.
The women in the front line ducked out of habit, but didn’t move to return fire-obviously the shots weren’t aimed at them.
