Chapter 27
Cole
The guard opened the door, and Cole stepped inside. The stench hit him first—unwashed bodies, urine, and damp stone. The small cell contained a wooden table with two benches.
Sitting across from him was Crispen West.
Cole had been a child last time he saw his uncle, but there was no mistaking him.
Uncle Crispen’s once-blond hair hung in greasy brown tangles.
His pale, freckled skin stretched over sharp cheekbones, and a stringy beard draped off his chin like witch’s-hair lichen.
His clothes swallowed an emaciated frame, and those green eyes were a window to the past.
“Who are you?” Uncle Crispen rasped.
His weak, broken voice made Cole’s throat tighten. “It’s me. Cole.”
Crispen stared, unblinking, then his face lit with recognition. “Coley, m-m-my son? Is it…is it r-really?” He gasped in a shaky breath. “You…you look g-good. Well-fed.”
Cole stiffened at the word son. Had the years in prison scrambled the man’s mind? “You don’t look good at all.”
Crispen chuckled and fell into a hacking cough. “I-I suppose…not. How did you…find out I was here?”
“Drustan told me,” Cole lied, his stomach twisting as the words left his mouth. “He said you killed someone.”
“Yes, yes.” Uncle Crispen dismissed this with a frail wave.
A strange reaction. “Who did you kill?”
“Does it m-m-matter?”
“Of course.” Cole hesitated, then added, “A guard said you’re innocent.”
Uncle Crispen let out a bitter laugh. “Innocent? Wh-what’s that even m-m-mean here?”
“They said someone wanted to silence you.” Cole leaned in. “Is it true?”
Uncle Crispen’s expression remained blank. “Wh-what would it m-m-matter?”
“Who wanted to silence you, Uncle?”
Uncle Crispen blinked slowly. “Uncle?”
Mistel paced by the door, slowing to peek inside. Uncle Crispen saw her, and his lips curled up.
“Wh-who’s that?”
“That’s Mistel,” Cole said. “She sings with me in our band. I play the lute. Um…Who tried to silence you?”
Uncle Crispen’s smile grew. “That’s your g-girl, is it? She’s a…a pretty one.”
“We’re a good band,” Cole said, seeking a way back on topic. “We’ve played several taverns in town, including the Black Boar. Drustan Fawst runs it for Nash Erlichman.”
“Wish I could hear you…hear you play.”
Cole had left his lute out with Kurtz, and he didn’t see how playing anything would help him get information from his uncle. “We also performed at the Ice House.”
Uncle Crispen sobered. “No. Stay away from…Thusk. The Ice House too. You’ll only find…trouble.”
So his uncle knew Thusk. “Did you find trouble there? Were you working for him?”
Uncle Crispen’s gaze flicked to the open doorway. “You keep…keep that g-girl of yours…keep her away from Thusk. You hear m-m-me?”
A chill ran down Cole’s spine. “I heard some prisoners disappeared. Does that have anything to do with Thusk?”
Uncle Crispen shook his head. “Don’t know about…about the m-m-missing.”
“Served their time?” Cole asked.
“No.”
“Bought their way out?”
“Oh, a…a handful, sure,” Uncle Crispen said. “That’s different. Too m-m-many nobodies have vanished. People with no m-m-money and no…no hope. Ain’t no one paying their debts.”
Outside, Mistel passed the door again.
Uncle Crispen’s gaze followed her. “You going to m-m-marry that g-girl?”
Cole flushed, caught off guard. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t play g-games with her, son. Life’s too…too short.”
There it was again—son. Cole’s jaw tightened. Maybe Crispen meant it kindly, but it sat wrong. “I saw crates here with Thusk’s name. Maybe he’s sneaking people out. Selling them as slaves. Maybe if I check out his warehouse, I’ll see exactly what he’s shipping.”
Uncle Crispen stood and reached for Cole. “Don’t, son. Stay…out of it.”
This time, the word hit like a stone. “Why do you keep calling me that? I’m not your son.”
Uncle Crispen’s frown deepened. “Of course you’re m-m-my son. Are you saying that because I…because I left?”
The room tilted, the air stuck in Cole’s throat. “You’re my uncle. That’s what Nonda said.”
Uncle Crispen muttered a curse under his breath.
Cole barely heard it. His gaze snagged on the man’s thick freckles, the same scatter that covered his own nose and cheeks. It couldn’t be. His heart thudded like a tabor drum in his ears. “You left me,” he said, trembling.
“I-I had to.”
The excuse burned. Everything burned. “Why didn’t you take me with you? Why would you leave me with the Fawsts?”
“Didn’t know wh-what else to do.”
“That’s a lie.” The words tore out sharp, raw. “You left me because I was too small.”
Uncle Crispen flinched. “I-I left you because you always did the right thing.”
“I was a child.”
“You were a talker. Always spoke up. I knew if I…if I brought you with m-m-me, you’d g-get hurt.”
Talker? Cole searched the shadows of his memory but found nothing, only the sting of Nonda’s cane, Drustan’s and Fen’s fists. If he’d ever been a talker, the Fawsts had beaten it out of him.
He barely whispered, “She said my father didn’t want a runt like me.”
“That woman!” Crispen’s hands balled into fists. “I should have…should have taken you with m-m-me. I thought I…I’d be back soon, but I…I loved you too m-m-much to risk it.”
Cole’s chest squeezed so tight it hurt to breathe. His voice cracked. “You loved me?”
“I’m your father. I never thought…you believed otherwise. I’m sorry for Nonda, m-m-my boy. So sorry.”
Sorry for Nonda? As if that fixed years of abuse, neglect, silence from the one man who should have been there. Cole’s mind spun. Father. The word didn’t fit. Didn’t belong to this man.
“I-I never should’ve…taken that job,” Crispen said.
The word “job” cut through Cole’s haze like a blade, and his head snapped up. “What job?”
“Working for Frederick Yarden.”
Sir Fenris’s father. Cole chased the crumb. “What did he ask you to do?”
“Look the other way. I was in…the Tsaftown army. He stationed m-m-me near the…the docks so I wouldn’t r-report anything…suspicious.”
At last, a glimmer of progress. “But you saw something? And they framed you?”
Crispen chuckled. “I-I saw plenty…but that job…it has no connection to wh-why I’m here. If I tell you about that…I’m dead.”
The words rubbed against each other and didn’t fit. “So you’re innocent?”
Crispen stared for so long, Cole thought he might not answer. But then he nodded once. A confession.
The air left Cole’s lungs. Innocent. All these years, Cole had been so sure his father was a deserter, a coward, the kind of man who ran off without looking back. But this—this was something else. A man rotting in chains for someone else’s crime.
“Then I’ll figure it out,” Cole said, his voice raw. “And I’ll get you out. You’ve got a lot of years to make up for.”
“Coley, m-m-my boy. It’s too dangerous.”
Dangerous? Cole almost laughed. What did danger matter when his father’s whole life had been stolen? “I need to know about the missing,” Cole said, fighting to steady his voice. “And Thusk.”
“And I-I need you to…stay alive.”
Cole bit down on the swell in his throat. Stay alive. The kind of thing a father said. Meaningless coming from Crispen, yet the words sank deep. “Arman will keep me alive. Help me, or I’ll figure it out myself. That means taking Mistel to Thusk’s warehouse so we can—”
“All r-right.” Crispen bounced one knee, rattling the chains around his ankles.
“Years ago…the Thusk brothers befriended a-a Barthian noble…He had them spy on…Lord Livna, Lord Orson, Lord G-Gershom, Duke Amal, Lord Yarden. Passed information south. It’s how they g-got into…
smuggling. Wh-when they tried to…break free… he threatened to-to go to the king.”
Cole’s stomach turned. So this was what had stolen his father away and put him in chains all these years. “Who’s the Barthian?” he asked.
“Name’s Falkson…Dovev Falkson. Son of the Duke of Barth. Far as I know…he’s still…pulling their strings today.”
“I knew Falkson was dirty, I did,” Kurtz said. “He should be on Ice Island with Duke Hamartano, eh? He tried to sacrifice Achan to Barthos, yet he’s still free, in charge, and on the Council of Six.”
“How?” Cole asked.
The four sat at a corner table in the Ivory Spit, bellies full after their harrowing concert on Ice Island and Cole’s life-changing conversation with his…father. He shoved the thought away and scribbled Falkson’s name on a piece of parchment.
“Same tricks he’s using on the Thusk brothers,” Kurtz said. “Blackmail.”
“He’s blackmailing the king?” Cole couldn’t believe it. “Achan would never allow that.”
“Oh, the king’s furious, he is.” Kurtz absentmindedly swirled the ale in his mug.
“Put a warrant out for Falkson, but when he sent Inko to arrest him and take over, the Barthians captured Inko and refused to give up the duke. With assassination attempts and Jaelport to handle, the king made a deal. Falkson stays as lord, but Inko serves as a land warden.”
“He got his man inside,” Zanna said. “It’s a start.”
Kurtz hummed. “That’s how he sees it, but Falkson’s his enemy. And I know he was involved in King Axel’s murder. I just can’t prove it.”
Cole steered the conversation back. “So, what did we learn? We already knew Thusk was dirty.”
“But now we can link him to Falkson,” Kurtz said, “which gives us reason to investigate.”
Cole drew a line on the parchment from Falkson’s name and wrote Thusk. “But we still don’t know their motives. Or why people are disappearing from Ice Island.”
“Their goal is money,” Kurtz said. “Smuggling and getting rich without paying taxes.”
“Agreed,” Zanna said. “And they must be sneaking prisoners out through that tunnel.”
“Should we monitor the cave?” Mistel asked.
“It’s too cold to sit out there day and night,” Kurtz said.
“I saw Thusk Shipping Exchange crates all over Ice Island,” Mistel said.
“Me too,” Cole said. “We need to search his warehouse.”
“I don’t see how,” Zanna said. “It’s always busy.”