There was something bigger going on here, and she needed to find Ana to deliver this information.We find Anastacya, and we do it together.
Linn looked at Kaïs. He sat in his disheveled uniform, hair loose and slick as black ink, looking further and further from the image of the terrifying Whitecloak she’d conjured in her mind for so long. His expression was troubled, his gaze dark, and for several moments he resembled a boy who was just as lost as she was.
They should have been enemies—and they oncewere—but he’d helped her. He’d broken her out of that prison and saved her life. He’d used strategy and militaristic logic to steer her in the right direction just now.
Linn found that her head was telling her one thing and her heart another. Perhaps…perhaps there was something redeemable within him, after all.
Linn pushed herself to her feet. The compass he’d given her spun in her palms as she turned. “We go.”
Ramson was on a boat sipping wine, and all seemed right with life again.
He leaned back, watching the last dredges of night fade into the dirty, washed-out color of dawn. The infamous Black Barge, a ship converted into a floating pub at the unsavory end of Goldwater Port, had cleared of customers from earlier in the night. Ramson had sat watching as transactions took place beneath the tables of rotting wood. The excited babble and roar of drunkards had subdued into a handful of murmured conversations, and now the Barge was almost empty.
He’d arrived two nights ago, and immediately started checking in on his old haunts, careful to keep his face hidden. He’d been to the underground markets, the shadiest of inns, eavesdropping and striking up conversations with strangers. There were no bounds to a man’s tongue once you offered him a goblet of whiskey or five.
The most reputable crooks, it seemed,hadcaught wind of a trade ongoing between Cyrilia and Bregon. None could name what, exactly, was being traded but claimed to have seen midnight ships leaving docks on silent waters. And word was, they sailed for Bregon.
The contact Olyusha had given him, it seemed, frequented the Black Barge. Apparently, she only showed herself at dawn.
Daya,he thought, turning the name over in his head, and annoyed that Olyusha hadn’t been able to give him anything more. The name could belong to anyone, from any demographic—Northern or Southern Cyrilian.
“Can I bring you anything else?” the bartender offered, catching sight of his near-empty cup. “We’re closing soon.”
Ramson swirled what was left of his drink in the brass cup and set it down. “Not today,” he said, tapping his fingers on the chipped wooden surface of the bar top before turning away.
His contact would have to show soon, if the bar was closing.
The morning breeze was just beginning to pull in from the ocean, carrying with it a cool, briny tang that almost transported him back to another time, another place. Here, in the south of Cyrilia, the air was warmer, the days stretched longer, and Ramson leaned back in his seat as the sun seemed to break through the surface of the ocean, gilding it with glittering shards of gold.
His gaze swept past the mast, where posters had been pinned. Swept past, then back again.
And stopped.
Ramson stood abruptly, nearly knocking over his chair. In three strides he was at the mast.
Flapping gently in the breeze, nailed amid a number of other solicitations and signs, was a poster with an image of a girl. Her crimson cloak swept in an impressive arc behind her, and her hands were raised in a striking pose that he knew all too well.
Ramson peeled back the other notices to look at the full poster.Red Tigress Rising,gold letters declared.The Crown Princess lives. The rebellion begins.
It couldn’t be.
He’d spent entire days stalking the streets of Goldwater Port, hitting up all the shady inns where coin was exchanged for information on missing persons, but he’d found no sign of her.
Seeing a poster of her now, the scarlet of her cape curving just like it had in Shamaïra’s painting, felt nothing short of a miracle.
Ramson sensed someone brush up behind him a moment before the knife sank into the wood of the post with athud,right between two of his fingers.
“I don’t believe you’ve paid yet.”
It was the bartender, her lips curled in a grin. Delicately, Ramson extricated his fingers from near the blade. He turned and easily swiped back the three cop’stones she’d stolen from his pocket. He recognized a good thief when he met one, and this one had almost gotten past him. Though he supposed not having paid for his drink yet madehimthe thief. “Lesson number one, love,” he crooned. “Wise men never keep all their coins in one place.” With a flick of his hand, the cop’stones vanished. “Is this how you get your tips?”
The girl laughed. “Only for those who come a-lookin’,” she said, and something clicked in Ramson’s head.
“You’re Daya,” he said.
She flashed him a grin of acknowledgment and tapped two fingers to her forehead in a mock salute. Ramson chanced a glance at the ocean, the sky streaked with brilliant tints of corals and reds, the sun warming his face. Dawn at the Black Barge.
Of course. He should’ve caught it.
