THIRTY-FIVE
Aly swung round as the bell rang over the shop door. Cameron stepped in, his brow creasing when he saw Aly.
“Aly works for me now, that’s all you need to know,” Yvaani said, emerging from the back room.
Cameron lowered his voice anyway as he said, “We’ve had word.”
“Is the weather good tonight?” Yvaani asked.
“Aye, and it’s a full moon,” Cameron said. “But Stewart has taken ill, and he’s our eyes.”
“Aly has good eyesight, don’t you?” Yvaani turned to Aly.
“It’s not bad,” Aly said. She wasn’t sure why her eyesight was relevant; surely Yvaani wasn’t going to trust her with a crucial role in whatever it was Cameron was up to.
“Not bad.” Yvaani repeated, shaking her head. She turned to Cameron. “She can tell a gem from paste better than I can, even with just a rushlight.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Cameron said.
“Aly, go with Cameron. We’ve had a shipment come in that needs collecting.” She waved them towards the back door. “Cameron will explain further.”
Aly followed Cameron out into the dark alley. The cold air snaked down her collar and set her teeth on edge.
“So you work for Yvaani now, do you?” Cameron asked as they set off.
“Aye.” Cameron was decent enough, as folk in the crime guilds went, but she wasn’t keen to offer further information.
“Has this got anything to do with why you were asking around about that dead burgess?”
Aly shot him a look. His face was shadowed in the dark close. “Something like that,” she said. “You know I’ve never been comfortable with the Wulver’s methods.”
“Or personality, or existence . . .”
Aly snorted. “Aye, quite.”
“Did you ever learn who killed that burgess?”
Aly’s shoulders tightened.
“You thought it was a new salchmonger, didn’t you?” Cameron went on.
“Aye, I did,” Aly said softly.
“I don’t think so,” Cameron said. “I don’t think there even is a new salchmonger.”
Aly stopped walking, her heart hammering behind her sternum. “What do you mean?”
“Have you actually seen anything to suggest there’s a new salchmonger, aside from salchs disappearing?”
Aly frowned, shaking her head slowly. “Now you mention it, no.” There’d been no whispered conversations in the corners of Grant’s market, hastily aborted when she or Rory came within earshot, no whingeing from Grant about a rival.
“I asked around at the Caoineag’s market,” Cameron continued. “Nobody’s heard any rumours of a new market, and most of the regulars there know me well enough to be honest about that. I spoke to Leslie, too, and they’ve not had any salchs come in other than from the usual markets.”
“Which surely they would have if this salchmonger is as careless as they seem,” Aly finished for him. “So what do you think is happening to them? They’re not just disappearing into thin air.”
“Me? I think they’re being kidnapped,” Cameron said. “By someone who wants to take their power, I assume.”
His words punched the air from Aly’s lungs. It was the same as what Calum had assumed, the same as she’d shut down weeks ago. But if they were being kidnapped, they could still be alive. Flora could still be alive.
“And if I’m right, you need to be careful, lass. They’re after folk like you.”
Aly suppressed a shudder at that thought, following Cameron in silence until they reached the waterfront.
A narrow stone staircase with no railing or barrier descended towards the sea, where Aly could just make out a rickety wooden boat waiting on the waves.
Four people already sat in the boat, their faces cloaked in shadow.
The steps were so slick with seawater that Aly slipped on an edge worn too smooth, stumbling before righting herself.
White horses danced on the waves, the wind whipping Aly’s plait about her face. She stuffed it down the back of her coat, flipping her collar up over her neck. Cameron reached the boat and began to climb in.
“We’re getting in that,” Aly said. “In this weather.”
Cameron’s teeth flashed white in the moonlight as he grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re feartie.” He held out a hand to help Aly into the boat, but she ignored it, stepping over the gunwales and splashing into the water in the bottom of the hull.
Cameron directed her to the bow of the boat. “You’re looking out for wee clusters of feathers on inflated bladders. Point them out to us, and we’ll haul the goods into the boat.”
Aly stared at the roiling waves, wondering how on earth she was supposed to spot feathers in their midst. She knelt on the hard, wet wooden seat at the front of the boat as it pushed away from shore, bobbing in the surf.
It was clear that the crew had some experience, either with gondolas or in the merchant navy, because the boat swayed far less than would be expected in the weather, but there was only so much magic could do against the waves.
It was hopeless, trying to catch sight of feathers on the black waves, with seawater misting her face and obscuring her vision.
The moonlight was bright, and twice she thought she saw a spray of feathers only to realise it was the moon’s reflection.
Finally, when she was shivering from the salt-crusted water that coated her hair and coat, she spotted one buoy, then another.
The boat pulled up alongside each buoy as she indicated it, hauling barrels and oilskin-wrapped packages aboard, even some parcels covered in pitch.
Cameron counted the cargo in the hull of the boat. “I think we’ve got one more to find.”
Aly scanned the waves before her, squinting in the darkness. Her arm lurched as she reached to point at the final bundle of feathers, and she jerked it back. Just another trick of the light. She was leaning forwards, peering into the dimness, when she heard a voice in her ear.
“The Wulver sends his regards.”
There was a hand on her back, a shove, and then she was spiralling into darkness.
Her lungs seized as the cold hit her, thousands of tiny pinpricks of pain on her skin.
She flailed, trying to find the surface, but there was nothing but dark water around her, so oppressive and complete she could barely even see her pale hands before her in the gloom.
She drew an instinctive breath, saltwater flooding in and stinging her throat.
Then she was flying to the surface, a hand hauling her up by the collar of her jacket. She gasped for air, sucking in deep breaths of cold, salt-kissed air as Cameron and another man dragged her over the gunwale and into the boat.
“You all right?” Cameron asked, when she’d stopped coughing.
Aly nodded, looking around at the five people on the boat with her. She recognised none of them as an employee of the Wulver. Who had pushed her? And how had Grant known she’d be there?
Cameron nodded at a dark-haired woman at the stern of the boat. “Riithne works on the docks with me. She has a spell to get the salt and some of the water out of your clothes.”
Aly eyed the other woman warily. There was a one in four chance she’d been the one to push Aly in—it wasn’t Cameron, that much Aly knew—but Riithne didn’t move towards her. Instead, she waved her hands in a complicated gesture and a gout of water poured off of Aly and into the sea.
Riithne grinned at Aly when she’d finished, her teeth flashing bright in the moonlight. “Old sailors’ trick.”
“Thank you,” Aly said, with a small smile, as she moved to the bow of the boat again and peered out, looking for the last buoy.
Her clothes, still wet but no longer sodden, clung to her skin, chilling her to the bone.
Grant was behind Stewart’s illness. It was the only explanation.
He’d known—either from Stewart or from whoever had pushed Aly—that Yvaani had a shipment coming in, and that if Stewart was out of commission Aly would have to step in.
She gave an involuntary shudder. After what felt like an eternity, she spotted the feathers bobbing on the surface, and the crew rowed up alongside the marker and hauled the barrel into the boat.
Aly’s teeth were chattering by the time the boat returned to shore, pulling up next to a low wooden door in the side of the levy. The door was open, showing a dark tunnel. Cameron tied the boat to an iron ring, and the crew began unloading their haul into the tunnel.
The stone was slick with seaweed, and between the weight of the barrel she carried throwing off her balance and the trembling that still wracked her body, Aly slipped, pain jarring through her newly healed knee. She rounded a corner, and the welcoming glow of the lantern light enveloped her.
Yvaani stood at the end of the tunnel, her ledger open and balanced on a crate.
“What happened to you?” she asked, as Aly approached.
Aly set her barrel down, wrapping her arms around herself as she stood. “Fell in.”
Yvaani raised her eyebrows. “I see that. Stay here,” she said, as Aly turned to fetch another parcel. “The lanterns will help dry you out. I can’t have you catching cold.”
Aly huddled beneath a lantern as she fumbled with the ropes on one of the oilskins.
Her fingers were cold and clumsy, and the knots were tight and sodden.
She gave up and cut the rope, peeling away the oilskin as a pile of tweed tumbled out.
More barrels and oilskin-wrapped parcels came in, and Yvaani shifted her ledger so it caught the light of Aly’s lantern.
It was upside down, but Aly made out one phrase that drove the cold from her mind in seconds.
Fae ointment. It was what Calum had said he needed to track Flora.
And, according to the ledger, it was in one of these parcels.
“So, you’ve been feeding information to a copper, have you?” Yvaani’s voice was easy, casual, but it broke the silence like a knife. “Is that why one of the Wulver’s crew tried to drown you?”
Aly jumped, her heart leaping to her throat. Her head snapped up to find Yvaani looking at her, an expression Aly couldn’t make out on her face. “How did you know?”
Yvaani gave an indelicate snort. “You’re not clumsy enough to fall in, not even in this weather. Someone pushed you.”
“Aye, but I don’t know who. They said they were from the Wulver, though.” Not that she’d needed it; it was obvious who would send someone to give her a seemingly accidental death.
“It seems I may need to have a word with the Wulver as to what being ‘under my protection’ entails.”
Aly’s gut squirmed. If Grant was willing to bend the rules of the crime lords by killing Aly ‘accidentally’, there was no guarantee of Yvaani’s safety if she went to speak with him. “You don’t need to—”
Yvaani silenced her with a glare. “I’m not going for you.
It’s a challenge to my authority and he needs to know that’s unacceptable.
” She turned back to her ledger and was silent for so long Aly thought the conversation was over.
Then she said, “Besides, you were brave enough to clipe on him to a copper.” Aly lifted her head to look at her.
“Why would you do that?” Yvaani’s eyes were a warm brown in the torchlight, and there was a softness at their edges Aly hadn’t seen on Yvaani’s face in a long time.
Aly took a breath, her shoulders shaking with cold. “Because he’s dangerous. He needs to be stopped.”
“Of course he is, and he does. We all know that. But what on earth makes you think the police are the right choice? A knife in the back and a good shove into a canal would work just as well. Better, even. It’s far less dangerous for you.”
Aly shook her head, the tension in her shoulders pulling her spine straight. “No. I can’t—I wouldn’t.”
“Why not?” Yvaani leant towards Aly, close enough that Aly could see the flecks of green in her eyes. “Because you still care for him? You still love him?” Her lips curled into a snarl.
“I never loved him.”
Yvaani leant back, her expression calm once more. “Then why not kill him?”
Aly dropped her gaze, examining her bent finger and scarred knuckles in the firelight. “Because that would make me as bad as him.”
Yvaani reached for her ledger, scribbling something else in it before replying. Aly half-expected her to say Aly was already as bad as Grant, and she didn’t know what she would say or do in response. But all Yvaani said was, “You’ve killed before, haven’t you?”
The squelching sound of a knife driving into flesh echoed in Aly’s ears. “That’s different. I had no choice.” Refusal would have meant Grant did the same and worse to her, and the targets were always abhorrent enough she saw little loss to society. “Killing Grant would be vengeance.”
“And you think prison is the solution?” Yvaani tilted her head. “What makes you think he won’t charm his way out?”
The hair rose on Aly’s arms. “He won’t. He—”
“Is only one of the city’s most well-known and reputable business owners.” Yvaani dug a crowbar under the lid of one of the crates. The iron flashed in the dim light.
Aly clutched a barrel for balance, gripping the edge until splinters dug into her fingertips. “He won’t be when he’s exposed as the Wulver. How many of his peers in the Guild of Brewsters will give him the time of day when they learn he’s been salchmongering?”
Yvaani looked up, her crowbar freezing. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You don’t want to stop him. You want to destroy him.”
Aly’s insides twisted at Yvaani’s words. “It’s not like that.” It wasn’t petty or vindictive, not like he was. “I just want to stop him hurting people. That’s all.”
Yvaani’s gaze bored into Aly’s. “Is it? You don’t even want just a tiny bit of revenge for what he did to you?”
Aly broke eye contact with her, staring instead at her scarred hand.
She did want vengeance. She wanted to see him fall, to see the look on his face when he realised she had been his undoing.
She wanted him to live with the knowledge that he would never again have the power over others he so craved.
Killing him wouldn’t give her that satisfaction.
Besides, she’d done violent and cruel things on Grant’s behalf.
She couldn’t do them to him, no matter how much she wanted to.
“We all have darkness inside us, Aly,” Yvaani said. “You more than many others.” And with that pronouncement, she returned to her ledger, leaving Aly to puzzle out what she meant.