The place smelled like a barn. Sunlight filtered through high slats near the ceiling and cast long, pale stripes across rows of wooden crates.
Mistel crept forward and peered inside one of the crates.
Snort! The cage shook, and she yelped.
Boars.
She widened her gaze. Dozens of boars—some brown, some black, and some with bristling white coats and gleaming tusks—in cages of varying size, snorting and rooting in the hay.
She glanced at Kurtz, a few rows over. “Thusk’s main trade is in flesh,” she said, “just not the kind we feared.”
“Don’t go acquitting him yet, eh?” Kurtz said. “There’s a lot of warehouse left to search.”
Mistel followed Cole deeper into the building, past the rows of animals, to an area where shelves stretched up to the rafters. Stacks of goods filled the space—dried fish, furs, barrels of salt, and bags of grain.
They searched every aisle, checked every crate. But there were no hidden compartments. No secret shipments. No signs of trafficked prisoners.
Kurtz exhaled through his nose. “She’s right. Thusk is clean.”
“He can’t be,” Cole said.
Mistel bit her lip. If Thusk wasn’t shipping the prisoners, then who was? And if they were wrong about Thusk…what else had they missed?
“Let’s head over to the Dale,” Kurtz said.
“Do you mind if we make a stop first?” Cole asked.
“Where?” Kurtz said.
“Tom Raven’s house,” Cole said. “Merrygog McLennan told me where he lives. I think he knows something about what’s going on at the prison.”
Mistel grinned. Now there was the investigator who’d so intrigued her back in Armonguard.
Kurtz scratched his chin. “All right. Let’s go talk to him, though he might be at the duel too.”
They set off on their horses again and had just turned down one of the wider, main roads when a woman on horseback entered the road up ahead. She sat side saddle and wore a long, hooded cloak, which hid her face from view until she glanced down a side street, giving them a good look at her profile.
“That’s Lady Viola,” Kurtz said.
“Why wouldn’t she be watching the duel?” Mistel asked.
“I’ll get the truth of it.” Kurtz nudged his horse on ahead.
“You want us to come or wait here?” Cole asked.
Kurtz glanced back. “You two head over to Raven’s house. I’ll meet you there.”
Cole turned Cherix up the next street and motioned Mistel to follow.
Mistel steered Bart after Cole, hoping Kurtz would take care with Lord Livna’s wife.
Chapter 29
Mistel
In Mistel’s opinion, Tom Raven’s house looked like it had given up on standing yet didn’t know how to fall. The squat, weathered structure of salt-stained wood and crumbling plaster reeked of the fish-scented air of the harbor.
Cole knocked on the door, and a thin, middle-aged woman with brown hair tucked beneath a faded scarf answered.
