Chapter 8 #2
I appraised him for a moment, wondering if he was being serious or not.
Eventually, I decided he was. Lochlan was foolish for giving up profit, but I supposed it was for the best. The world could use more kindness in it, and it gave us a vantage point that no one would question.
Realizing what I was doing, I hastily looked away again.
He thought I was a boy, and he could not catch me staring at him the way I had been.
“Excuse me, do you happen to have any alpaca wool?” A man with strawberry-blond hair and squinting eyes had sidled up to the table. He was examining one of the blankets that actually looked good and spoke out of the corner of his mouth without looking at me or Lochlan.
“Of course, sir, I have some, and I’m expecting a new shipment soon. One moment, please. Gil, would you go find Auntie Mable?” Lochlan snatched up a pair of mittens at random and shoved them at me. “Tell her that she dropped these as she was leaving.”
“You bet,” I said eagerly, well aware that he was looking for a reason to be rid of me while he conducted his transaction. I bounded away but then paused to look back.
Lochlan and the man had their heads inclined as they spoke in hushed, low voices. The customer shook his head and held up two fingers, then Lochlan nodded, picked up the hidden basket of alpaca wool, and dug right to the bottom to hand over a skein of yarn.
A sudden thought struck me as the man dug a finger into the yarn.
Lochlan must have hidden something in the skeins of yarn.
Drugs? Illegal weapons? I couldn’t imagine it was pixie dust, not after how awestruck Lochlan had seemed when I brought it.
Roderick was known to have dabbled in trading illegal substances.
It was clever, really, I thought to myself, that Roderick had innocent-looking Lochlan be the front man and conduct the trade in broad daylight.
Lochlan was right—no one would ever suspect a man who knitted and sold socks.
I continued to watch Lochlan from afar, long after his customer had collected his yarn and left.
I mentally ran through all the bounty posters that were listed last time I was at the Syndicate.
None described a man like Lochlan, and any bounties related to smuggling illegal substances were usually in Ebora, not Berkway.
Was he simply a middle man who always went unnoticed? He certainly knew what he was doing.
After a few more minutes, I shook my head and went to find Auntie Mable, but she must have disappeared among the crowd while I’d been watching Lochlan, so I returned.
“Sorry, I couldn’t find her,” I said apologetically, handing the mittens back to Lochlan.
“That’s all right,” he said pleasantly. “Sometimes her daughter comes to take her home. She can’t walk for long without needing to rest. We should get back, anyway.”
“Aren’t we staying all day?” I asked, feigning curiosity as Lochlan began packing up. “We didn’t sell very much.”
“No matter,” he answered casually.
Just as we were mostly packed up, we spotted the pixie and her pirate husband walking through the crowd once more.
I slowly sank out of sight until I was crouched next to the cart wheel.
The last thing I needed was for that pirate to come after me again.
Though if they came this way, I might be able to use some of the yarn to trip the pirate. If I was lucky, he’d land on his hook.
“Don’t,” Lochlan warned me softly.
“I’m not doing anything!”
Lochlan eyed me with an all-knowing expression. “You were about to. Come on, let’s get something to eat before we go back.”
“Aww,” I said, scuffing the toe of my boot into the dirt as I followed him, pulling my cap down low so the pirate wouldn’t recognize me.
Lochlan bought roasted mutton and vegetable skewers from a vendor with the meager earnings he’d taken in that day and handed me one.
“Look, you seem like a nice kid. I’d hate to see you get mixed up in the sort of goings-on that we do here.
I promise you’re better off somewhere else, Gil. Me and the others aren’t good people.”
“I won’t get mixed up in anything. I just want a job.
” I swung my arms back and forth and shifted my weight from side to side as I tore into the skewer.
“My pap left my mam last year and I told her, I told her I’d be the man of the house for her, so I’m looking for some profitable employment, but her boyfriend doesn’t want me around. ”
Lochlan’s mouth twitched to the side and he finished his own skewer without comment. Was he being protective of me or simply defensive because he didn’t want to split profits?
“I’m not scared of hard work, neither. You can ask Peter. I was Captain Tyrone’s cabin boy and I did the toting and lifting, and you don’t have to tell me nothing important. I’m good at running errands and cleaning up and I can even make some food. I’ll help out. Roderick said I could.”
“Shhh,” he hushed me as he threw out the narrow wooden skewers. “Don’t shout names here.”
“Sorry.”
Other than the racket that the birds were making, the walk back to the cottage was fairly quiet.
“Have you worked with Roderick very long?” I asked once we were alone on the forest path.
“I suppose you could say that.”
It was still too early to ask about their exact plans, but I couldn’t help probing just a little. “How long? Do you do everything together?”
“You’re a nosy kid, you know that?”
“Yeah, my mam says that all the time. So how long have you known Roderick?”
Lochlan didn’t answer. All the waiting to get information about Nora was going to kill me if I didn’t get some answers soon.
Patience was always the most difficult part of being undercover.
At least when I worked for Captain Renshaw, I was able to clean his office and memorize loads of information that I could then sell each time we came into port.
But the old cottage didn’t have so much as a knitting pattern to read, and Roderick kept all the plans he and Peter were working on tucked into his jacket at all times.
“That was quick,” Peter told Lochlan when we got back. “It isn’t even long past noon.”
“Thank goodness, too,” Lochlan said, carrying in one of the baskets of yarn. “Shipment passes through tomorrow.” He dug into one of the skeins of wool and withdrew a scrap of parchment. “Four wagons, a dozen guards, and the first shipment of”—he glanced once at me before finishing—“porridge.”
All three of them snickered at whatever inside joke they shared.
Roderick cleared his throat. “Peter and I will handle the porridge. Lochlan, you know what to do.” He turned his attention to me. “Gil, you’re about to have a dreadful stomachache.”
“I am? Why?”
“Because I say so.”
“I don’t like the idea,” Lochlan said. He was back seated in his rocking chair and was arranging his yarn.
“Stop nagging,” Roderick said, irritated. “You really are a mother hen with your fretting and knitting and worries. The boy wants to prove he can handle a man’s job, and I say we give him the chance. We took Peter on.”
“Peter single-handedly broke out of a high-security prison and already has a reputation. We know what he’s capable of.”
“Exactly,” Roderick said, smiling smugly. “No one will know Gil. He’ll be easy to underestimate, and if he can stop his chattering, he’ll be perfect to send. We can try him out, and if he doesn’t perform well, we kill him. Easy as that.”