Chapter 26 - Sinth
She wants to end the swindling operations going on in this part of the island, and I couldn’t agree more. The other Kings are onboard, and now all we need is a solid plan.
The men who grabbed her are dead. We all made certain of that the night we found her in that alley.
But she was clear about one thing: those men weren’t working alone. A ring like that needs suppliers, buyers, someone higher up coordinating where the women go once they’re taken. Three dead swindlers barely scratch the surface of something that large.
So we start digging. All three of us, separately, using whatever contacts each territory offers.
Chris works through Snowpeak’s network first, quiet inquiries among merchants who move goods along the coast, the kind of men who notice when cargo doesn’t match what’s declared.
Wayne leans on Forestguard’s rougher connections, tavern owners and dockhands who hear things nobody “official” ever does.
I take Trident’s fishermen, men who spend enough hours on the water to notice ships that don’t behave the way honest traders do.
It takes six days before the pieces start lining up.
“There’s a location,” Chris says, dropping a folded map onto the table in front of us. “South end of the docks. Officially registered as a grain store. Nobody’s seen actual grain go in or out of it in months.”
“My contact says a ship docks there every ten days, always at night, always unloaded fast.” Wayne taps a spot near the water. “Never the same crew twice.”
I add what I’ve learned. “Fishermen say the same ship changes its name every few trips. Same hull, though. Same damage along the port side.”
We lay it all out for Charlize that evening, every scrap we’ve gathered.
She studies it longer than any of us expect, quiet and careful.
“We can’t just storm it,” she says finally. “If there’s a network above these men, hitting the grainhouse alone might only catch the lowest rung. Whoever’s really running this slips away and starts again somewhere else.”
“She’s right,” I say, completely agreeing with her. They could go to another region and start again. We should also warn the other Kings of such things possibly happening in their regions.
Chris strokes his jaw. “What do you suggest?”
“Watch it first,” Charlize says, heading over to a table.
We follow.
She spreads the map across the surface. “Confirm the pattern before we move—when the ship comes, who unloads it, whether anyone from outside the grainhouse comes to collect anything.”
She traces a finger along the map. “Then, when we do move, we take it during a delivery. Ship and grainhouse both, at once. That way nothing slips out the back while we’re busy with the front.”
Wayne grins, impressed despite himself. “That’s better than anything the three of us came up with on our own.”
Her lips curl into a smile.
“However, I couldn’t help noticing you kept saying ‘we’,” he adds. “You’re not implying what I think you’re implying, are you?” His eyes are locked on her.
“Depends,” she says, refusing to look away from him. “What do you think I’m implying?”
“I think you’re implying that you’re part of the team that’ll take down those swindlers.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “Am I not?”
“No, you are absolutely not!”
“What?” She frowns. “This whole thing is my idea, and you’re just gonna kick me off the operation?”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” he says. “Nobody’s kicking you off anything—we just think it’ll be best for you to sit this one out, that’s all.”
“We?” Her brows arch, her gaze shifting across our faces. “Wait, you all decided that I won’t be coming along?”
Silence.
I break it. “Wayne is right, Charlize. It’s too dangerous.”
She lets out a dismissive scoff, her scowl deepening. “What’s the use of all that training if I can’t be in the middle of the action?” Her voice rises a bit higher than normal.
“This is not a game, Charlize,” Chris says. “These people are dangerous—equipped with weapons, and you are…”
“I am what?” she growls, deep creases forming on her forehead. “Weak? You think I’m weak, don’t you?”
“I was going to say pregnant,” he clarifies.
Instantly, that shimmering rage settles beneath the surface. “Oh…” She scratches the back of her head. “Listen, I know you all mean well, but I need this. I need to be out there. Please.” Her hand drops to her lower belly, a mischievous grin tugging at her lips. “It’s what the baby wants.”
Wayne’s face is a mask of confusion. “Did she just blackmail us with our unborn child?” he asks me and Chris.
I shrug.
Chris smirks. “I think so.”
It’s settled; she’ll tag along.
We watch the grainhouse for four nights, exactly as she suggested, and the pattern holds precisely as her plan predicted. On the fifth night, the ship arrives.
Charlize stays back at a safe distance with a small guard, insistent on being close enough to see it through even though none of us will let her anywhere near the actual grainhouse.
Chris leads the assault on the building itself, Wayne intercepts the ship before it can push back off the dock, and I take a handful of soldiers to seal the surrounding streets so nobody slips away in the chaos.
It goes almost exactly the way she planned it.
The moment we breach the doors, chaos erupts. Shouts ring out from inside, men scrambling for weapons that never quite reach their hands before our soldiers close the distance.
It’s over faster than I expect—a dozen men disarmed and bound in chains before the fighting even has time to properly begin.
One of them breaks free from the scuffle, sprinting toward a side alley before anyone can stop him.
I catch him first, my hand closing hard around his collar, and slam him back against the wall until the fight drains out of him completely. Behind a locked door at the back of the grainhouse, we find them.
The women.
Charlize is there within minutes of the signal reaching her, pushing past the guards trying to keep her back, dropping to her knees in front of the nearest woman without a moment’s hesitation.
“You’re safe now,” she says, voice breaking slightly. “I promise you. You’re safe.”
As the soldiers take the women to safety and arrest the swindlers, she rises to her feet and faces us.
“Thank you.”
“No, we should be thanking you,” I say. “This was all possible because you thought about the women and came up with the plan.”
“He’s right,” Wayne adds, smiling. “You outdid yourself on this one, cutie.”
“And we’re proud of you.” Chris flashes that small grin of his.
Things move fast after that. I send word to King Jobediah, one region away. His pack is also closer to the ocean in his region, so I warn him of the possibility of such criminals.
Jobediah responds, sending word that he and the other two representatives will spread the word and search their territory.
This gives me some peace that if there are more of those rats, they’d be fished out.
We house the freed women at the palace over the following weeks, in rooms near Charlize’s own, and she visits every single day without fail.
She sits with them while they eat. She listens when they want to talk and stays quiet when they don’t.
She arranges healers, proper clothes, whatever small comforts might help stitch something back together after what they survived.
“You didn’t have to do all this yourself,” I tell her one evening, finding her in the garden after another long visit.
“I did, though.” She looks tired, but steady. “Nobody did this for me when it happened. I don’t want that for them.”
“We have servants who are specialized in that area, you know.”
“I know—I just don’t want it handled at a distance, Sinth. I want them to know someone who actually understands, sat with them through it.” Her voice softens. “That mattered more to me than anything else, back when I needed it. I want to give that to them.”
I don’t argue further. I understand, watching her, that this isn’t a task to delegate. It’s something she needs to do herself, and something the women clearly need from her too.
By the time the last of them is ready to return home, escorted safely and quietly by soldiers, Charlize has changed something in this palace that none of the old elders would recognize.
Chris watches her say goodbye to the final woman with something unguarded on his face, an expression I’ve come to recognize easily now—quiet awe, mixed with something that looks a great deal like gratitude.
“She’s remarkable,” he says, more to himself than to me.
“She’s more than that.” I watch her too, warmth spreading through my chest at the sight of her small, fierce figure standing at the gate, waving until the departing carriage disappears from view.
“She saw what none of us could find on our own, and turned it into a plan that actually worked. We just didn’t know, the day she arrived, how much she’d end up teaching us.”
Wayne joins us, quiet for once, watching the same scene with none of his usual jokes ready.
“Feels good,” he says eventually. “Fixing something instead of just surviving it.”
None of us disagrees.
Charlize turns back toward us once the carriage disappears, tired but lighter somehow, some old weight finally set down after weeks of carrying it.
She crosses the distance between us without a word, and the three of us fold around her easily, a single unit now instead of three separate men learning slowly how to share one heart.