Chapter 6 The Missing Packet #4
Bertran had caught him by the coat and driven his own hand onto an exposed nail in the process. Filippo had helped pull them both back. Beneath the false floor lay a shallow drainage channel leading under the shed toward a loading trench.
And in that channel they found paper ash.
“Burned?” Lucetta asked.
Naldo shook his head. “Wet first, then burned badly. Whoever did it wanted the sheets unreadable but had no patience. Some pieces remain.”
He opened his hand.
Three damp fragments lay against his palm.
Lucetta forgot Bertran's injury for one breath.
One fragment bore half of her own mark: the descending stroke of the V.
The missing packet.
Adelasia whispered something that was either a prayer or a curse.
Ser Matteo said, “So the thief took the papers there and destroyed them.”
Lucetta lifted the second fragment carefully.
Two words survived near the edge.
...wife keeps...
She looked at Adelasia.
Beans near the old gate.
The third fragment contained part of a name.
...Marelli...
Not Manelli. Not Marnelli.
Marelli.
Lucetta sat down because her knees had become unreliable.
“Piero Marelli,” she said. “Porter captain. His wife kept a food stall near an old gate. If he lived long enough after the deposition, he may have had sons, apprentices, a guild connection, someone who remembers which boats he hired.”
Bertran said, “Then whoever burned this failed.”
“No.” Lucetta looked at the fragments. “He destroyed the document. We have three scraps and memory. That is not proof.”
“It is direction.”
“Yes.”
Adelasia came around the table. “Direction is what we need today. Proof can be recovered later.”
Ser Matteo was still staring at the broken fragment with Lucetta's mark. “This was stolen from my warehouse.”
“From my chest,” Lucetta said.
“Under my seal.”
The distinction mattered to him.
Good, she thought. Let pride become useful.
The customs officer ordered the warehouse boy protected until his account could be formally taken, and sent men to search for the stranger with the scar.
He also had the loosened staple removed and retained as evidence after Orsino marked the fresh tool impressions.
Orsino protested at first because the metal was interesting.
Then he realized an official inquiry might preserve the evidence better than their baggage and surrendered it with solemn reluctance.
Bertran finally allowed Odelin to clean his hand.
The nail had torn the flesh below the thumb rather than piercing the palm. It was ugly but not disabling. Odelin washed it with wine while Bertran looked as though insulted by the entire concept of pain.
Lucetta stood nearby.
“You said splinter.”
“It was shorter than a spear.”
“That is not the standard by which injuries are named.”
“It has served me.”
Odelin said, “Hold still.”
Bertran obeyed.
Lucetta wanted to be angry because anger had edges and fear did not. She folded the surviving fragments into clean linen instead.
Naldo leaned against the wall. “The shed tells us one more thing.”
Everyone looked at him.
“The drainage channel.”
Lucetta waited.
“It runs toward the old loading trench. The trench connects to a narrow watercourse, or did before half of it silted. A small boat could once come behind the sheds without using the main quay.”
Adelasia said, “The deposition mentioned a boat fee.”
“Yes.”
Lucetta felt the old evidence reassemble with new shape.
The casket had not merely been stored beneath the red fish sign. It had been transferred through that place from cart to water.
“Where would the watercourse lead?” she asked.
Naldo rubbed salt dust from his sleeve. “South first. Then into channels serving the pans. Some connect back toward open water. Others die in mud. I need someone older than me who worked them before they changed.”
Adelasia said, “Piero Marelli.”
“Or his widow. Or a son. Or any porter who hated him enough to remember where he sent cargo.”
Lucetta looked at the burned scraps.
The thief had chosen the right packet. He had removed it without breaking the customs seal.
He had drawn a warehouse boy away with a lie tailored to his family.
He had known the red fish shed. He had prepared a weakened floor that might have injured anyone who searched too quickly.
Then he had tried to destroy the evidence.
This was no random theft.
Yet it was not omnipotence either. He had left ash. He had left tool marks. He had left a living boy who remembered a scar. He had failed to understand that Adelasia remembered an old complaint about a porter's wife selling beans.
Lucetta thought of Odelin's words: fear improves an enemy's reputation.
Perhaps memory diminished it.
Ziani arrived near midday furious that nobody had returned to the ship and more furious when he learned why. He listened to the account in silence, then announced that Stella Maris would not sail that afternoon after all.
Adelasia raised her brows. “The wind has become negotiable?”
“The wind has turned.”
“Conveniently.”
“I would prefer it had not. If I remain here another day, the wax owner will complain that his cargo softens in heat and a cloth merchant will accuse me of conspiring with weather.”
Lucetta asked, “How long?”
“Tomorrow, perhaps the morning after. No promise.”
Naldo said, “Enough time to find Marelli.”
Ziani looked at him. “Who is Marelli?”
“A dead man, probably.”
“Then he will not sail with us.”