“What kind of gift are we talking about?” Scriv asks.
“The gift is irrelevant. What we need is the package.”
Scriv raises an eyebrow.
I grip Soren by the jacket and tug him a few steps away. At a whisper, I ask, “Can we trust him?”
“No. But we need to get into Raven’s Landing and obviously, he has a way if he got out here. And there’s the issue of the giant wooden raven. He deals in the strange and forbidden.”
“Fish?” I ask, not convinced they’re strange or forbidden.
“Poison fish,” I say. “If you want a fish from Scriv, it’s not the kind you want to take home, cook, and serve to your guests. Well, unless you’re having the king—” He stops, catching himself before continuing, “Him over for dinner.”
“Are you sure Scriv is okay?” I ask with a wary eye in his direction. He reminds me of a toad.
“He’s the kind of person who looks and sounds like he has great skill and charm. He gives people the sense of confidence, friendship, and trust, but then he turns around and scams them, stabs them in the back—”
“I don’t stab,” Scriv says. “I slice.”
“And choke,” I mutter. “This isn’t convincing me.”
He closes the space between us. He’s not quite as tall as Soren, but twice as wide—obviously, having found a store of food the rest of Raven’s Landing has yet to discover. “Listen, I know my reputation. I’ve made an effort to keep it that way, but I’ve also wanted to bring the silver king some stiddlies for quite a long time. Whatever it is you need my help with sounds equally appetizing.” He leers.
Soren leans in and whispers that he needs black paint and a lot of it. “As dark as a raven’s wing,” he adds.
“Don’t you have enough of that?” Scriv asks. His laughter rolls over the water as he indicates the tattoos on Soren’s skin. Nonetheless, he straightens and holds out his hand, waiting for payment.
Soren drops several dukhs into his palm.
“I can’t get you ink. What else do you need?”
The ribbon of my patience runs thin and I square off in front of him. “But you just took his money.”
“You have much to learn in the skill of trade and bartering.” Scriv pockets the money.
“Lying and stealing.” Soren corrects and exhales with irritation.
“Same thing. Look, I deal in the living and breathing, well, formerly living and breathing and last I checked, ink isn’t alive,” Scriv says.
“Well, in that case, we need wood. Trees were alive.”
“Okay. Close enough. That I can do. A little? A lot?”
“Enough to hold ten men and women.”
“Ten plus ten or just ten. As you know, much of it was burned on Hallowtide.”
“As much as you can manage.”
Scriv nods and then starts walking along the coast toward Battersea.
“Wait,” Soren hisses after him. “We’re hoping you can lead us in.”
Scriv shakes his head and chortles. “The two of you? You’re lucky she,” he juts his chin in my direction, “knows how to fight, otherwise, I would be a wealthy man right now.”
“So we can’t trust you,” I say. A statement, not a question.
“I’ll do this job, see to it that you get your wood, but I’m not taking you into Raven’s Landing.”
“Why?” Soren asks.
“There’s a price on your heads, and it’s too tempting.” His laughter fades into the fog as he ogles me.
I formulate a plan of attack, feeling rage like I have never before at the sight of his hungry look, not with desire like Krebs, but with greed. Fists lifted, two steps, jab. Left arm cross, punch, pivot, and kick. I certainly do know how to defend myself, but never expecting I’d be in this forsaken place and have to use it. Then I realize that, like with the sword practice, if I combine my magic with my fighting skills, I’m doubly dangerous.
Soren sharpens his expression in Scriv’s direction as though dismissing him before he also takes his fist to flesh. “See you there at dawn with the wood.”
Scriv disappears into the bleak mist.
“Sketchy dealings,” I mutter.
“Let’s hope for the best because hope is the one thing we’re wagering the people in Raven’s Landing haven’t burned, buried, or otherwise destroyed.”
When we get to the base of the breakwater, Soren keeps his finger to his lips. The sand squelches under our feet, suctioning to our boots, but we remain undetected as we sneak along the lane in front of the tall houses on the edge of Battersea.
He pauses in front of one house, holds his hand over the door as if to knock, but doesn’t as though he thinks better of it. He takes me by the hand and around the back of the remaining row of thin, tile-like houses all lined up and hiding the burned remnants of the past.
“I should tell you that before we met I’d become quite adept at finding my way in and out of structures such as this,” he says with a guilty grin as he lifts the window of a dark house.
For years, I was so consumed with landing a position on the Police Force, I didn’t pay attention to guys and probably scared a lot of them away. But Soren excites something in me when he talks like that, making me warm and fluttery all over. My goodness, he’s hot.
He lands silently inside the house and extends a hand to help me through.
“Does someone live here?” My voice is rough when I speak.
He nods. “My aunt.”
“Oh. Well, great,” I say, relieved she won’t be sounding an alarm on us. Hot
