“He came to see me earlier. I bluffed; he fell for it, and let it slip.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s very likely that the Bregonian government won’t want to tell us more about this artifact for defensive purposes, but I have the feeling my father is hiding far more than that. I asked him about the Bregonian Affinite trafficking scheme, and he wouldn’t give me a direct answer, either.” Ramson narrowed his eyes. “I keep thinking there’s a bigger picture we’re not seeing.”
“Affinite trafficking—as in, Alaric Kerlan’s scheme?” She frowned. “Why would your father make a deal with him?”
Ramson shook his head. “I don’t know,” he replied quietly. “I don’t think he would, either—but the Sea Court controls the ports, which means no ships enter without their knowledge. Unless someone else is approving Kerlan’s entry.” He met her gaze. “I’m going to get to the bottom of all this.”
“You’re leaving?” Ana suddenly felt cold. “In the midst of all this?”
“Ana, listen to me carefully.” His voice was low, his words coming fast, urgent. “The Admiral is going to make you an offer: an alliance, in exchange for the chance to study your Affinity.”
An alliance. Her heart leapt. Yet…“To study my Affinity?” she repeated. “Why?” She’d expected the Admiral would be interested in her and her Affinity—perhaps as a valuable addition to their forces, certainly, to fight with…but to bestudied.That invoked memories of her childhood, of dungeons and Sadov’s pale white fingers prodding at her in the dark. Ana suppressed a shudder.
“I know as much about it as you do,” Ramson said. “But in the event that he does…” He blew through his mouth. “I just don’t feel good about it, Ana.”
“An alliance, though,” she said quietly. It was all so tantalizingly close, just within her grasp. Everything she had been working toward—an army, a rebellion, challenging Morganya—suddenly seemed possible…if she just gave a bit of herself away in exchange. “I know we don’t trust your father, but if I work with the Bregonian government—the King, the Queen Regent, and the Three Courts—then it should be fine.”
Ramson sighed and combed his fingers through his hair again—a sign, she had learned, that meant he was stressed. “Look, I don’t want to let my personal biases get in the way. It’s your decision.”
“Are you leaving tonight?” she asked instead.
He averted his gaze and gave a nod. For some reason, disappointment surged through her. She’d expected this, she’d known that he wasn’t in Bregon purely to help her, and in their original plans, he’d never meant to end up at the Blue Fort. But with everything they had just learned, she’d thought he would change his mind.
She’d come to rely on him too much. This time, she had plans of her own. It started with gathering all the information she could…and tracking down a certain scholar again. For if Admiral Farrald was aware of the artifact Morganya was after, then Tarschon had most certainly lied about it.
She also had the Admiral’s offer to consider.
Ana stood. The air had grown cold, the crash of waves on the cliffs below rising to a roar. Ramson still stood in the pool, but the seadust had dimmed, and only a faint glow remained in the waters around him. She thought of the levity to their conversation earlier, the way his fingers had sparked heat on her skin. It had seemed too good to be true, and now she realized that it had been. Their paths had always led to different destinations.
“Good luck, Ramson,” she said, and left him standing there, still as a statue in the pool that tumbled over the edge into the ocean below, the seadust shimmering faint around him like remnants of a dying dream.
By the time Ramson went back to his chambers and put on a fresh change of clothing, the clock on his mantelpiece showed that it was past midnight. He made sure to be noisy, banging around the cabinets and splashing water in his bathroom. He extinguished his candle, waited several minutes, and then snuck out through his veranda. The guards stationed outside his chambers didn’t suspect a thing.
The Bregonian court outfit he’d changed into was a deep royal blue, almost black. It wasn’t difficult to blend into the shadows, to slip through the courtyards into the section of buildings that made up the Naval Academy.
Here, the buildings were older and made of solid stone, with none of the new searock and ironore enhancements Ramson had seen in the Naval Headquarters. Ramson passed by a training hall and looked inside. A feeling, both tender and painful, rose in his throat as he took in the empty stone hall, inevitably filled with memories of Jonah Fisher.
It wasn’t long after that he began to make out the faint torchlight of the keep at the Crown’s Cut, which inspected supply wagons coming in and out of the Blue Fort, usually leading to connecting towns. When he’d left Bregon as a boy, he’d learned that the inspection was much more stringent on incoming wagons than outgoing ones. This was the only way out of the Blue Fort without boarding one of those gondolas at Helmesgatten and attracting his father’s attention.
At this hour, the courtyard was relatively empty, but there were several supply wagons still parked in line, waiting to leave. Ramson drew a breath and, with a prayer to the gods, he darted forward and leapt onto the back of a wagon. A flick of his wrist, and a pin appeared; within seconds, the wagon door was open, and Ramson slipped in, latching the door behind him.
He had a sense of déjà vu as he crouched in the back of the wagon, watching as the lights of the Blue Fort winked smaller and smaller until the night swallowed them.
Sapphire Port was deserted when the wagon pulled up at the stables. Ramson hopped out and ducked into the shadows of the streets. He retraced his steps to the docks. The Black Barge was a silhouette against the night.
He whistled and a head appeared over the railing. “Finally,” said a familiar voice, and the next moment, a rope was thrown over the side of the ship. With enviable agility, Daya swung herself overboard and slid down the length of the rope. “Where in the name of Amara have you been?”
Ramson tapped two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. “Sorry. Ran into a slight delay.”
Daya rolled her eyes. “Well, the party’s over now.”
His senses perked; his hand tightened on the hilt of his misericord sheathed at his hip. “What do you mean? You found something?”
He had asked Daya—for no small price—to keep an eye on the port for him while he escorted Ana, Linn, and Kaïs to the Blue Fort. He’d reasoned the investment was one worth making, since she was familiar with the way Kerlan did his business in this kingdom.
And, Ramson thought with grim pleasure, it seemed he’d been right.
Daya stuck her tongue out. “Duh. Told you that you were paying for some high-qualityreconnaissance.”
“Show me.”
