Chapter Fifteen After #2
“By the Sea and the Song,” Ana murmured, her songbird voice half muffled by the hug. “It is good to see you, Kitten.”
“I hate that nickname.”
“I know, Kitten.”
For a brief second, Cat shut her eyes and tried to forget, as if the last few years had never happened at all. She clutched at Ana like another weary traveler seeking sanctuary or absolution.
In truth, Cat knew she would find neither in this place.
* * *
“I THOUGHT I was finished climbing.” Cat’s breathing came hard and harsh as she did her best to keep up with Ana’s relentless pace.
Above her, the woman did not break stride, her breathing offensively quiet as they ascended the spiral of stairs. Cat expected Ana to have lost some strength, but her years at the church, climbing the bell tower and the steep jungle path, seemed to have made her fitter than ever.
Frowning, Cat clutched at the handrail, using it to leverage herself up. “Can you slow down a little?”
“No,” Ana replied with a grin.
Another breath heaved through Cat’s teeth. “I’m surprised you’re still here. I didn’t know you were capable of staying in one place this long.”
Or serving in an Esperese church.
Ana did not answer and Cat studied the walls instead, tracing the carvings that spiraled with them.
They were more visible inside the tower, better protected from the elements.
The old stone was cool under her fingers, cooler than it should have been, soothing as a wet cloth on a fevered brow.
Her memory of the grander tower in Nera was shaky, but the patterns seemed to match, albeit in smaller form.
She did not know the notes each braiding curve represented, but imagined a song priest singing them, a hand on the carving, reading the stones as he loosed the melody of them.
Ana knows, Cat thought, watching the Arcayan woman run a finger along the curves, tracing them as someone would a page in a book.
That quieted her questions a little.
This place is holy to her too.
Cat reached the belfry sweating and panting, the humid air making her more uncomfortable. She all but ran for one of the open archways and braced herself, leaning out into the breeze coming off the sea. Below, the southern coast of Prospera splayed out, vibrant green against brilliant blue.
From this height, the boats in the harbor looked like toys, perfect miniatures.
Far less intimidating than the real thing, and yet still a sight to behold.
She squinted, trying to spot the Fledge.
She knew better than to hope Fell might abandon her on the island, but she scanned the breakwater for his vessel anyway.
Her eyes snagged on the newer song tower, the white stone like a finger bone sticking up from the waves. Again, she puzzled over it and the presence of an Arcayan priest here in a foreign city.
“I’ve seen many strange things, but few stranger than a song tower in an Esperese harbor,” Cat murmured, still fixated on the port. “I assume you had something to do with that.”
Across the belfry, Ana smirked. She leaned against the iron bell occupying most of the space, half of it covered in rust. Cat doubted it could even ring anymore.
“Hardly. I am but a sister of the Church, low in my station,” she answered. Something twinkled in her eyes, betraying a secret she would not bare. “I know little of the dealings of great men, the Esperese or my kin.”
You know far more than you let on, Cat wanted to scoff. Instead, she shrugged around at the chamber, eyeing the carvings with a sharp look.
“Strange, to build a song tower below when one already exists here.”
Ana only shrugged, hip balanced against the bell. “The Church does not relinquish its grasp easily. Even on ruins.”
That was true enough. The Churches of the Continent were just as voracious as the Crowns, if given the chance.
“It’s good to see you too,” Cat offered, wiping the sweat away from her brow. “It’s good to see you alive.”
The implications and words unsaid hung heavy in the air, almost close enough to touch.
It is good to see you alive when so many are not.
“We’ll drink to them,” Ana said softly, edging around the bell to reach a small cabinet in the corner. She produced a dusty bottle of thick red wine and tucked it into her elbow, then plucked two glasses, one of them cracked at the lip.
Cat watched in silence as the other woman navigated without issue. When Ana offered a glass, Cat took it gladly. Silently, they drank to all the dead they shared.
The wine had a sour edge, too dry for Cat’s liking, but she drained the glass. Ana did the same, quick to pour another for both of them.
It sloshed into the glasses, dark as old blood.
“Do you spend all your time drinking and watching the horizon?” Cat said, gesturing towards the harbor.
“Not all of it. I prune the path and dust the altar from time to time,” Ana replied, finishing the second glass with ease.
Cat was not so quick to drink. She needed her wits and knew better than to try to match Ana glass for glass. The Seawolf was not just renowned for her teeth but her belly too. Instead, Cat held the wine close and paced, taking a turn around the tower.
Navigating along the bell, she came to a little table against the wall, positioned with a clear view of the harbor and horizon.
There was a pile of notes on the wooden top, held down with a well-maintained spyglass, and a pot of ink alongside a sheaf of quill pens.
But it was the block of wax that caught Cat’s eye. Thick, red like the wine.
The kind of wax used to seal letters.
In her boots, her toes curled.
Cat did not bend to inspect the papers. It would be too suspicious. Nor could she read them if she tried. A glimpse was enough to know the letters were not written in Meridian or Esperese but Arcayan, its script whorled and dotted, wholly different from northern languages.
Satisfied, Cat casually turned back to face Ana.
“I see you’re still reporting on the Esperese fleet,” Cat mused.
“And whoever else sails into port,” Ana answered, an edge to her words. “I keep a weather eye for some friends. That is all.”
Cat studied her wineglass. “The same friends?” Her tone was light. And calculated.
“Come to think of it, most of them are dead,” Ana said, sighing. She tossed her braid and looked out to sea, her eyes lost in thought for a long moment.
“I expected you to go home,” Cat said, still trying to get a measure of Ana, to balance the woman in front of her with the woman she had known. “To be dancing in Nera, not shut up in a tower, serving gods you don’t believe in.”
“You are certainly one to speak of gods and belief, Widow Rose,” Ana replied, her smile sharper now. “You saw them kill Harry, didn’t you?”
Cat startled at the name. Worse still was the wet sheen in Ana’s eyes. The sorrow took Cat by surprise, and she realized she could not recall ever seeing Anamina weep. Not even when she stumbled into port half dead and missing her arm.
“Yes.” It was all she could say.
Ana drew a breath, her voice tight. “And the way he died? I heard rumors . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.
The gruesome memory flashed in Cat’s mind and she could not help but flinch. She would have liked to spare Ana the pain of such things, but that was not the world they lived in.
“The reality was worse,” Cat murmured, dropping her gaze to look at the floor. She traced patterns in the wood beneath her, hoping for a distraction.
Instead, she saw Harry Morovant’s corpse back in Archenport, his broken body in the middle of Hargrove Square.
Tied down and ripped apart. Sewed back together. Nailed to a post. Left to rot on my doorstep. Too cursed for even the crows.
Ana snatched the still-full wineglass out of Cat’s grasp and drained it dry.
“To Harry. To Captain Morovant, dead and gone,” she muttered, slapping the empty glass down on the table, her head shaking back and forth.
“You know, a small part of me believed he might find a way out of it. Or that it was a ruse, a trick. He was always good at that sort of thing. Slippery, sharp. And quick with a bribe.”
Cat did not doubt he tried, from the prison cells of Fort Morden all the way up to his execution.
“Governor Osprin is not the type to be bought off,” she answered. Her skin crawled at the thought of him, a reaper behind his ornate desk. “Unfortunately.”
A black eyebrow arched high on Ana’s face, her look changing.
“You speak as if you know him,” she said slowly.
Dread pooled in Cat’s stomach and the floor seemed to sway beneath her, as if it might drop out at any moment.
“All of Archenport knows him,” Cat answered, disdainful. It was not even a deception, her feelings about Osprin decidedly negative. “It’s hard to miss the man standing next to the executioner every single day.”
Then her voice dropped, and she reached out, taking Ana by the wrist. Her fingers closed, forceful while she met the woman’s eyes.
“He is a monster the likes of which the Lyrian has never seen before,” Cat warned.
For once, I am not lying.
Ana stared at her. “And the Lyrian certainly has her share of monsters.”
Nodding, Cat sighed and released her grasp. She glanced back to the sea, the picture of a wistful woman waiting on a man who might never return. Or at least she hoped she looked that way.
“We are lucky another monster still lives,” Cat tested, her words filled with meaning.
“So, Valerian did escape the noose,” Ana breathed, looking torn between hope and concern.
Both were false.
The Seawolf was good at many things. Acting was not one of them. She was subtle as a shark cutting through open water.
Lady Rose was the opposite.
She did not turn, though she could feel the letters on the desk behind her, their presence burning a hole in the back of her mind.
Now she was certain. Ana still wrote to Valerian, reporting on the comings and goings of Alvaris.
Once she tracked treasure fleets and Esperese navy for her old captain. But now what?