CHAPTER 15
I leaned on the wall of Spotter’s Rampart.
Behind me lay the city, shrouded in darkness.
In front of me most of the harbor was dark, too, except for this stretch of the Combs.
Large barrels dotted the wharf and the Yolentas’ pier, blazing with orange flames.
Each barrel came with a polished metal circle affixed to the rim.
It jutted straight up, like a wheel on a cart, reflecting the light from the fires and illuminating a chunk of the pier like a streetlamp.
A huge ship floated at the end of the pier, its carved hull wide, almost bloated compared to the graceful, leaner waverunner moored at the next dock. The waverunners were built for speed, while the Yolentas’ trade vessels were meant to carry as much cargo as safely possible.
At the end of the pier, a small harbor crane swung back and forth. On board the ship, dim shapes loaded barrels onto the crane platform. Once full, the crane swung to the pier, and a couple of burly workers heaved the barrels onto handcarts.
A line of dockworkers moved along the pier, carting barrels to the warehouse and returning to the ship with the empty carts, like worker ants marching from the anthill to a picnic and back again.
One of these workers was Will, but from this distance I couldn’t tell where he was.
They were all large men, pushing identical handcarts, and the orange glow reduced them to dark silhouettes.
Next to me, Shana peered at the line of dockworkers. We waited side by side, wrapped in our cloaks.
A gust of wind swirled around me, flinging cold marine air in my face. I shivered.
“I need to make you a shawl,” Shana murmured.
“It’s almost summer.”
“Yes, and if I start now, it will be done by the fall.”
“We’ll have to live that long.”
“That’s your job. Keep us breathing.”
The human conveyor belt below kept moving.
The person behind this scheme was very careful.
The first and last batches of barrels, twenty-five each, would contain only pink salt.
We needed to target the barrels in the middle batch, roughly a hundred of them, marked with a small triangle burned into the lid.
The burn mark was so small, only someone looking for it would notice it.
There wasn’t a lot of light on that pier. The easiest way to find it was by feel.
Nothing would happen until Will put one of those barrels into his cart.
I pulled Everard’s den out of my sleeve pocket, rubbed it between my fingers for luck, and put it back. Please let it go well . . .
“It will be fine,” Shana murmured next to me. “My boys have done far worse. The stories I could tell.”
“I’m worried about the kids.”
“Clover and Kaiden can handle themselves. They know their parts. They’ve practiced.”
Reynald was a big believer in “practice makes better.” Kaiden had spent the last two days sprinting through our courtyard and chucking various objects into empty baskets and barrels, while Reynald and Gort took turns supervising.
Those two would have made excellent high school football coaches. Gort especially.
I had spent the last two days stressing out and making a large batch of soap.
Yesterday we had strapped a tray to Lute and sent him, some sample bars, and his winning smile toward the market.
He came back in half an hour without the soap but a noma and a half richer.
I didn’t dare to sell more until we registered our shop, but it was a good sign, and Clover stopped sweating bullets over our production costs.
The kids were down on the wharf, waiting.
Reynald was down there somewhere, too, hiding in the alley to our right, ready to step in if things went badly.
Gort was farther east, waiting in one of the plazas with Honey and a leased horse cart.
If everything went well in the next few minutes, we’d be loading one of the marked barrels into it.
I needed things to go well. So much was riding on it. I needed a win in the worst way. If this went to plan, I would have Reynald’s confidence, and eighty people wouldn’t have to die.
A dockworker passed by the farthest barrel, right by the ship’s gangplank, and stumbled.
“That’s my boy,” Shana murmured.
The signal. Will had found a mark on his barrel.
I picked up the lantern resting by my feet. Shana grabbed a long pole, and we hung the lantern on its end. We waited. We had to time it just right.
Below Will disappeared into the warehouse.
Breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe . . .
Will emerged from the warehouse with an empty cart and pushed it back to the ship, keeping his place in line.
“There he is,” Shana whispered.
We watched him as he reached the trade vessel. The two powerlifters deposited another marked barrel into his cart. Will made a careful U-turn and headed back to the warehouse.
Three . . .
Will reached the second fire barrel. Thirty yards to the warehouse.
Two . . .
We had to time it just right, so he would be between the barrels, in the dark.
One. Now!
I raised the lantern pole and bobbed it up and down.
A loud scream came from the right, a woman yelling at the top of her lungs. “Stop! Stop! Thief!”
A beggar boy in rags sprinted along the wharf toward the line of dockworkers, cradling a large clay jug to his chest. Clover chased him, screaming, a stick in her hand.
“Thief! Help!”
The dockworkers, overwhelmingly male and young, saw a pretty girl yelling for help and did exactly what Reynald expected them to do.
They stopped and moved to the right, trying to block the thief from escaping.
Will let go of his cart and stepped in front of it, almost as if he were protecting the cargo.
A lone dockworker pushing a cart covered by a tarp came out of the street to our left. Lute with his replacement barrel.
Kaiden saw a wall of bodies closing together in front of him, whirled toward Clover, saw her stick, spun back around, and hurled the jug he was carrying into the nearest fire barrel.
Flames exploded, sending chunks of burning logs all over the wharf.
The dockworkers shielded their eyes against the flash.
Kaiden darted past them into the alley to the right.
Lute pulled up next to Will’s cart, picked up the tarp, tossed it over Will’s barrel, grabbed Will’s cart, and smoothly wheeled it away back the way he came.
Clover shrieked in outrage and alarm. “That’s a noma’s worth of gorefish oil, you little shit!”
The burning logs sputtered on the wharf. There were few things more alarming than a fire at the harbor. The sailors on the Yolenta ship collectively lost their shit. Someone roared, “Don’t just stand there, you assholes! Put that fucking fire out!”
The crowd by the pier fractured. Half of the workers ran for the water barrels to put out the fire, three went to check on Clover, and a few who still had cargo in their carts wheeled them into the warehouse. Will was one of them.
One of the warehouse workers sprinted after Kaiden into the alley and stumbled back out, hands up. If I had run into Reynald on a dark street, I would have done exactly the same.
Nobody noticed Lute and his cart.
We’d pulled it off.
I let out a breath and slumped onto the stone rail.
“I’m going to make my rudberry sambocade,” Shana said. “I think they deserve it, don’t you?”
“. . . and like I told you, fire always works,” Gort pontificated. “You could steal the whole pier if you had a big enough fire.”
I sat at the head of the table and tried not to fidget.
The entire day was a blur. We got home and went to bed. Except I couldn’t sleep. I kept turning over and over until I finally gave up. Nothing could happen until Will returned, safe and sound, from the wharf. All I could do was wait.
Just after lunch I sent Kaiden, in his clean clothes and with his hair brushed, to check on Will, and he came back and reported that everything seemed to be normal. The barrel swap had gone unnoticed.
It was almost dinnertime now. Will would be back any minute. One by one, everybody trickled into the kitchen, until all of us were packed in there, eyeing the stolen barrel sitting on a tarp on the floor.
Come on. How long . . .
As if on cue, Reynald loomed in the doorway and stepped into the kitchen. Behind him Will staggered in and tossed some coins on the table.
“What took you so long?” Lute demanded.
“I had to settle up,” Will growled. “I told them I’d had enough excitement and dawn-to-dusk days. Honest work takes a lot out of a person. You should try it.”
Lute looked at the coins. “Doesn’t pay that much though, does it? I’ll stick with soldiering, thanks.”
“Oh, when do you plan to start?” Will dropped into a chair and turned to Gort. “Next time, it’s his turn.”
I looked at Gort, too. “We’ll need something to bust the barrel open.”
Gort stood up. “I have just the thing.”
Shana slid a big plate of food and a tankard of ale in front of Will and put a platter of triangular pastries on the table, perfectly golden brown and smelling of delicious fruit and freshly baked bread. Clover distributed cups and tea.
“Don’t we get ale?” Lute asked.
Shana stopped and looked at him.
Lute raised his hands. “Fine, fine.”
Gort returned to the kitchen carrying a large war maul. It looked like an oversized hammer.
“Now?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
Gort leaned the maul against the wall next to the barrel and sat down. Everyone was here, finally.
I was so nervous, my hands trembled. This was it.
Either I was Maggie the Undying who could predict the future, or I was a delusional woman who had no idea what she was doing.
Everything was riding on this, and I’d run across enough inconsistencies to realize that nothing the books talked about was guaranteed.
I could’ve hedged my bets and opened the barrel privately, but I needed the full power of that reveal.
I needed to shock them. Go big or go home.
If only.