Chapter 14
KAEDRIN
Isee him on the outskirts of the market, moving between the cloth stalls with an unhurried gait.
He's changed his coat. Different color, different cut, but the build is the same and the way he moves his hands when he checks a stall display is the same.
People develop habits they don't know about.
This one touches things without picking them up — brushes his fingers across surfaces, scans rather than looks. Not browsing. Watching.
I give him two stalls and then I move.
He clears the market's edge and turns into the lane behind the cooperage, heading toward the older part of town.
I close the distance quickly and take him from behind before he reaches the first corner, one arm across his chest, the other at his collar, walking him forward into the gap between two buildings before he can get a sound out.
He tries to drop and twist the way he did in the forest. I'm already accounting for it.
"Not this time," I say.
He goes still.
I move him through the back lanes, keeping him close, one hand gripping his collar while he walks. He doesn't fight it. Smart enough to know that fighting in a narrow lane in daylight has worse odds than waiting for a better moment. I watch for that moment and don't give it to him.
The abandoned building I found before is undisturbed. I get him inside, put him against the far wall with his hands behind him, and crouch in front of him where he can see my face clearly.
"What’s your name?" I demand.
He sniffs and shakes his head. "Cole."
"Cole what?"
A pause. "Dareth."
I let that settle. "The artifacts in the stash, Cole. Tell me about them."
"Rare goods." His voice is steady, considering the circumstances. "Legally sourced. Private collection sales."
"Drain stones. Compulsion fragments. Binding artifacts." I watch his face. "Tell me which private collection those came from."
"I don't handle the sourcing."
"But you handle the moving."
"I transport goods." His eyes don't shift. "That's not illegal."
"The goods are." I lean forward slightly. "Which means you are. The only question is how much you want to help yourself before this ends."
He says nothing. I reach out and press two fingers against his collarbone with measured pressure. He exhales sharply and turns his head to the side.
"The operation," I say. "How many people above you?"
"I don't know the structure."
More pressure. His jaw tightens and a sound escapes through his nose.
"One name," I say. "Above you."
"I take direction," he says, strained. "I don't ask from who."
I release the pressure. He breathes. I wait.
"Fenwood," I say. "He runs it."
Cole doesn't answer.
"You don't have to confirm it. Just don't correct me."
His eyes move to the floor.
"The rumors of he cursed child. The dead livestock being blamed on a baker's daughter." I watch him. "That's Fenwood's work."
Cole's eyes come back to my face. He shifts his weight — not quite discomfort, but close.
"That one I'll confirm," he says, and his voice carries something flat and tired. "The rumors aren't mine. I move cargo. What he does with the town's attention isn't my business."
"But you know he's doing it."
"I know it's convenient." He looks away again. "That's all I'll say."
It's enough. Not a direct link to the artifacts, not a confession on the operation's structure, but Fenwood's name attached to deliberate rumor-spreading about Maris and Elin. One thread, at least, that I can pull.
I stand and pull a length of cord from my belt kit. Cole watches me uncoil it without expression.
"You're going to tie me up," he says.
"And gag you." I move behind him. "Try not to make it worse."
He doesn't fight it, which tells me he's done the calculation and decided cooperation costs him less right now than resistance.
I secure his wrists, then his ankles, and prop him against the wall in a position he can hold without immediate injury.
The gag is tight enough to be effective without causing damage.
He peers over the cloth at me with an expression that is mostly resignation and partly assessment.
"You'll keep," I tell him. "When I have what I need to bring Fenwood down, you become very useful. Until then, stay quiet."
He holds my gaze, then looks at the ceiling.
I check the cord twice, leave the door secured from the outside, and step back into the lane.
The market looks different when I come back through it.
Not obviously. The remaining stalls are still open, still transacting, the square still moving with the ordinary midday business of a market town.
But Fenwood's caravan has pulled back. Three stalls that were running this morning are covered and dark.
Two of the wagons I noted earlier have been repositioned closer to the eastern lane.
I stop at the grain merchant's corner and count what's missing.
Seven independent stalls gone. Not local merchants — traveling vendors, the kind who come with a larger caravan and break away to set up their own displays. The kind who move when the caravan moves. Four of those seven I've seen near Fenwood's wagons at some point over the past week.
I watch the eastern lane. The road out of town sits quiet and open.
Fenwood knows Cole is missing. Either he noticed Cole's absence directly or someone in the operation flagged it. Either way, he's reading the situation and making decisions, and the decisions look like preparation to move.
A merchant who is simply breaking camp after a successful market run doesn't pull his associated vendors in the middle of the day. He packs the next morning and leaves in the light. Pulling now, with half a market day remaining, means something changed and he's responding to it.
He can move the caravan. He can scatter the network, abandon the remaining cargo, and be over the valley road before nightfall.
With Cole in custody and the stash likely relocated after the forest encounter, there's nothing I can physically stop him from leaving with.
What he leaves behind is a town still angry about dead livestock, a council case still open against Maris and Elin, and no explanation for any of it.
That's the problem.
If Fenwood leaves while the accusations stand, the town's fear doesn't dissolve with his absence.
It looks for resolution where it already has a target.
The council case delays, doesn't close. The rumors don't stop circulating.
Maris and Elin remain the story because there's no other story to replace it.
But if Fenwood intends to close things behind him more thoroughly — a clean exit, no loose ends, the curse narrative confirmed rather than exposed — then Maris and Elin aren't just a convenient scapegoat.
They're a liability. The animal deaths stop when the caravan leaves.
That only holds as a story if they stop, and if the person supposedly responsible for them is gone or no longer available to contradict it.
I walk faster.
It's not a certainty. It's a calculation a careful man might make, and Fenwood is careful.
He's been careful this whole investigation.
The rumor campaign wasn't reactive — it was proactive, built before anyone asked questions about his cargo.
A man who plans that far ahead plans his exits the same way.
The bakery comes into view. Front door closed, the sign turned to open, a single customer visible through the window examining the display shelf. Maris behind the counter, moving.
I cross the square at a pace that doesn't read as urgency from a distance and take up my position across the lane. From here I can see both the front window and the alley to the left. The right approach is visible from the corner of my eye.
The customer inside makes a purchase and leaves. Maris watches her go, then starts restacking something on the shelf. Through the glass she looks contained and focused, the way she always looks when she's working, and it gives nothing away about what she's actually thinking.
Elin appears at the lower window. Bright scarf, curly hair, nose against the glass.
I exhale slowly.
The market behind me is still closing down in pieces.
I don't look back at it. Fenwood's timeline is his own and I can't control it.
What I can control is this lane, this door, these two people inside this building while I figure out how to bring what I know into a form that anyone in this town will believe.
Cole is secured. He confirmed the rumors came from Fenwood. That's testimony, not proof, and testimony from a man I captured and tied to a wall has limited weight in front of a village council.
The artifacts are my best evidence, and they may already be gone.
I watch the lane and keep thinking and don't move from my post.