Chapter Eighteen Port Talluah
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PORT TALLUAH
Reya could smell the cesspool that was Port Talluah from a league away. She and the three Alethians had halted atop a hillcrest overlooking the lantern-lit port city along the hooked curve of Briony Bay.
“I’ve always hated this town,” Omira grumbled.
The sun was setting over the turquoise water. Countless ships were anchored in the harbor: large and small and bearing flags of every island and country across the Five Seas. They’d made it.
“So, Reya, how can we help?” Thance asked carefully.
Reya’s response was clipped. “You can stay out of my way.”
“Thief, if you think—” Omira began, but Caelan cut her off.
“Do as she says.” His words were rough, tired. Like each one was a battle. Ciz shifted restlessly next to Ash. “This is what I hired her to do.”
This was what he’d blackmailed her to do, but semantics.
Caelan met Reya’s stare, and she ripped hers away, as she had every time he’d tried to catch her eye in the last two days.
They hadn’t spoken since the waterfall, and she was glad for the space.
The longer she went on not talking to him, the longer she could avoid facing the tempest of her emotions.
Reya clicked her tongue, nudging Ash into a canter down the path to the city gates. All four of them kept their hoods up and their heads down, yet only Reya looked like she belonged. The Alethians were too large and too imperious, but thankfully, the entire town seemed too drunk to notice.
“Watch your coin purses,” Reya murmured when they turned down the main drag, which was known across the world as the Red Row.
Impossibly, the scent of fish, mold, and waste had grown more pungent in the years since she’d been here last. Fiddles and hornpipes poured melodies out of every building, creating a riot of sound challenged only by the crowds.
Courtesans lounged on windowsills overhead, catcalling down to anyone and everyone who meandered in and out of the packed taverns where spirits flowed like water, and traders, pirates, and thieves danced and drank and dealt.
Reya’s nostrils flared around the metallic scent of blood as a knife fight broke out in a nearby alleyway, but no one paid it any mind.
The Rhiterran troops stationed in Port Talluah did little to keep the king’s peace save inspecting cargo holds and preventing the magic-born from seeking passage off the continent, and even that could be circumvented for the right price, making the city a thriving hub for the black market.
Most of the soldiers spent their nights getting drunk on the Row with everyone else.
And where economy thrived, all manner of people flocked to it.
The Sea Breeze Inn was the last building on Dockside, the narrow road that ran along the harbor. Reya would have preferred Caelan and his friends find other accommodations, and might have suggested it while they were boarding their horses, but sadly, the innkeeper had plenty of space.
While the Alethians went straight to their beds to rest, Reya headed for the docks.
It took her no time at all to find the harbormaster and inquire about a particular ship, though the pompous dock keeper had charged her for the information.
When she informed him with a saccharine smile that she could just as easily search the docks herself, he gestured animatedly to the hundreds of ships anchored behind him and drawled, “By all means.” So she handed over a palmful of silver coins on the condition he answer a few additional questions and one gold coin never to speak of it.
With bulging eyes, the man practically tripped over himself to provide the information.
St. Lucius and his entourage had arrived four days ago, and were docked in slip 109.
She hadn’t missed her window. They’d stayed in port to resupply.
Apparently, they’d also inquired with the harbormaster about hiring more deckhands, a loss that had put them behind.
Their berth had been paid for six days, and they were scheduled to depart in two at the first high tide.
In the unlikely event that coin wasn’t enough to keep the man from selling a tip to other parties that someone had been asking questions, Reya made sure he got a good look at her steel before she headed back toward the inn, starving and eager to wash off two weeks of travel.
The small dining room off the lobby was already filling with patrons.
Reya slid into a booth by the window overlooking the bay.
The innkeeper explained with no small amount of sarcasm that her options were limited to fish or fish.
Reya’s grilled trout arrived next to a steaming baked potato and a cold pint of ale, and she gobbled up every bite, grateful to be dining on anything that wasn’t dried, fungi, or small game.
When she was finished, she ordered a second plate and traded the innkeeper a copper for a spare piece of parchment and a quill.
While she dined, she outlined every detail and task she’d mentally penned over the last two weeks.
Something about writing it all down made everything simpler.
Satisfied, she crumpled the sheet she’d already committed to memory and tossed it into the dining room hearth to burn before heading upstairs.
Time to raise some hell.
She was night. She was shadow. She was the crown of the Rhiterran underworld. And… she was being followed.
“I don’t recall asking you to come along,” Reya said the moment she caught the smoke-tinged scent on the wind.
“Now I see why you chose an inn near the docks,” Caelan said, his handsome face taking shape in the shadows of the warehouse. She’d deliberately put out the lanterns on this landing, cloaking the dry dock warehouse door, whose lock she was currently picking, in relative darkness.
“Congratulations. You’re a scholar.”
The tune of a familiar sea shanty came closer and closer.
She glanced to her left and saw several pirates stumbling in their direction.
They looked drunk, but pirates, in her experience, could usually function just as well intoxicated as they could sober, and it would not stop them from drawing swords if they thought turning in a thief to the Port Authority might turn a quick coin.
“Shit.” She worked faster. When the lock clicked open, she slipped inside, grabbing Caelan by the collar and pulling him in behind her. He allowed the assault. She pressed her ear to the door, not moving until the men passed.
“What happened to letting me do my job?” she asked.
Caelan placed both hands on the door beside hers, so close he was pressing against her from behind. His head fell forward, and he inhaled, scenting her like a dare. “That was for them. I told you, thief. You’re mine to protect.”
Chest heaving against her armor, Reya closed her eyes, trying not to think about the position they were in, how easy it would be to let her head fall back against his chest, bare her neck for his mouth. He’d said he had nothing for her, so what was he doing? And why was she allowing it?
Reya turned slowly inside the cage of his arms, unable to stop herself from tugging down her mask.
“See something you like, fire fingers?” she asked, throwing back the question he’d asked her weeks ago.
This is how it was between them. Teasing and almost-touches.
An almost angry sort of hunger. He didn’t want to want her, and though she didn’t love the way it made her feel, she loved the power that gave her.
Those golden eyes dropped to her mouth, as if in warning. “Time has not made me gentler, thief.”
Was that supposed to be a threat? Honeysuckle filled the room, so heavy and sweet even a human could probably scent her, and Caelan’s hands turned to fists on either side of her.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.
What did that mean? The familiar sensation of standing in a riptide washed over her.
And you just had to smell like home.
Reya could have sworn he spoke the words aloud, but his mouth hadn’t moved. Had she imagined it or read his mind? He noted the rising color in her cheeks and smirked.
“See, you can read minds.” She shoved him, and he caught her wrists, sliding his thumbs over her pulse and watching her face like it spoke a foreign language he was trying to learn.
The heat of him didn’t swallow her the way it usually did; in fact, his skin was cooler to the touch. “You’re getting stronger.”
She didn’t want to be in his head. Didn’t want to read his thoughts. Not while he was looking at her like she was something to be savored rather than devoured. Caelan was proving to be just as good at reading her as she was at reading everyone, and she was tired of feeling so exposed.
“I’m working,” she said to break the spell, needing to cut this off before their situation got any more compromising.
When she blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and he picked it up and tucked it behind her ear, his own scent changed, and it became difficult to hold his gaze.
Then he let go, following her lead like always.
A ship was mounted on the ramp that cut through the center of the warehouse.
Long timber braces and thick sea ropes held the vessel upright.
Some pieces of the hull were missing, others were rotted and covered in barnacles and peeling tar, and some were brand new.
Two more ramps ran along either side for additional boats.
This warehouse belonged to the best shipwane in Port Talluah, and at some point, the Balfour was bound to have come through.
“What are we doing here, Reyanwyn?”
She ignored Caelan, opening the door on the other end of the warehouse and making her way up the rickety wooden steps that led to the shipwane’s office.
It was small and cluttered, exactly the sort of office she expected a carpenter to keep. An unfinished cup of tea had left ring stains on the papers that were scattered across the desk, behind which stood wall-to-wall shelves of leather-bound tomes, boxes of miscellaneous papers, and scrolls.