“Why?” he finally said. “Why are you trying to help the Sentinels now?”
“I told you, Ollas mentioned that the Sentinels?—”
“Feeling guilty?”
She scoffed. “This is business, ranger. I’m always looking to expand Helm Naval’s partnerships, so when this opportunity arose, I took it.”
Nocren crossed his arms. “Simple as that, eh? Because we’re likely to do so much business together.”
Calya’s gaze fell away as she fussed with the hood on her cloak. “I don’t regret my actions the other day, seeing as we averted a disaster involving my friends at the school. But I wasn’t aware, you know, of your particular involvement with the Coalition at the time. So that is… unfortunate.”
Nocren stared at her, amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Are you— Is this your attempt at an apology?”
Another scoff, this one more pronounced, accompanied by Calya flipping her cloak’s hood up to cover her face. “Hardly. I’m expressing… empathy, or some shit.”
“Word of advice,” Nocren drawled, “the next time you’re trying to fake empathy, don’t follow it with ‘or some shit’ in the same breath.”
“You’re a fount of wisdom, Mr. Lowe.” Calya squared her shoulders. “I prefer actions over words in all things, and penitence is no exception.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Until next time, then,” she said, tilting her face toward him.
Schooling his expression to neutral, Nocren made himself nod stiffly in response. The wind made her cloak billow out as she moved into the street. Nocren’s magic sang beneath his skin, a tremor running through his fingers as it begged to be called upon. He ignored it, stuffing his hands into his pockets. But he stayed outside, watching until Calya’s back disappeared from view.
I’ll never.
The words, ones she hadn’t spoken thus far, echoed in his head long after she was gone.
Chapter Two
As she passed by the Mighty Leaf’s front windows, Calya Helm paused beneath the eaves to reorient herself before going inside. The sounds of merriment from the café’s grand reopening spilled out into the street, words and laughter blurring together.
Under the guise of removing her cloak’s hood, she snuck a glance at her reflection in the teashop’s window. No sign of a pink tinge in her cheeks. Good. Not that the ranger had made her blush. It wasn’t him but the briefly uncomfortable circumstances she’d found herself in, feeling pangs of… conscience, where he was concerned.
Lowe had seemed taken aback by her actions.
Calya’s lips tensed with the tiniest of smiles. People underestimated her to their detriment. At only twenty-seven years of age and having grown up in her elder sister Anadae’s seemingly perfect shadow, Calya was used to surprising people. Rudely. She delighted in it. Usually, her victims were fellow businesspeople or merchants in the maritime logistics trade. It wasn’t often—or ever—that she had dealings with a Sentinel of the Valley.
Not that Lowe was a victim, or even a true adversary. More of a tool, and she’d used him accordingly, but that didn’t mean Calya took pleasure in the ranger’s own work being so negatively affected. She wasn’t altogether heartless. Working on it, but not there yet. So, she felt a smidgen of guilt for causing him hardship. She’d have done it again, of course. But perhaps if she’d convinced Lowe to look into the Coalition’s storage shed quicker, things would be different. They might’ve discovered the stolen plants with enough time for him to do whatever he’d planned to stop the Coalition while managing to keep himself on their good side. Still, the Coalition of Trade tended to know when someone was trying to exploit them—an activity the organization enjoyed so long as it was them doing the exploiting—so Calya didn’t think much of Lowe’s chances.
It was all moot now anyway. She’d come to Renstown to ensure that the Coalition didn’t sail to the aid of their colleague, Bioon Song, as she’d tried to ruin a project at Sylveren University, and in that Calya had succeeded. With her help, Eunny Song had foiled her mother and defended their rare plant. In doing so, they’d secured the first remedy capable of healing someone sickened by the poison ravaging the small kingdom of Rhell.
It was a triumph for all. Of that, there was no doubt.
Peering through the window, Calya looked for any sign of Anadae, but her elder sister didn’t appear to be part of the crowd inside the Mighty Leaf. Perhaps she’d gone next door to Eunny’s repair café, Song’s Scrap.
Calya thought about going in search of her, but weariness made up her mind. Even on a windrunner-class ship, it would take an hour to get back to the Helm Naval office in Renstown. She’d already crossed once today, at the crack of dawn, to help with the last finishing touches before Song’s Scrap opened, and bed and HNE’s latest trade logs called to her more than revelries.
With a final, mournful glance as a server walked past the window with a tray of winter-themed spiced teacakes, Calya made her way to the town of Sylvan’s small harbor. She caught the last ship of the evening and settled in for the trip across the lake to Renstown.
Making herself as comfortable as a person prone to seasickness could be, Calya reached for her belt purse and the ginger candies she relied on to make the trip bearable.
Her fingers scraped the bottom, no organza bag of sugar and herbs to be found. All she managed to scrounge up was a single empty paper wrapper.
“Shit,” Calya hissed. She’d been planning to spend the trip catching up on correspondence from her father’s trustee, Wembly. Despite his dour manner, he was admittedly an efficient man, but their business relationship was tepid at best. Sometimes, Calya wondered if her father had instructed him not to oversee and advise her in the running of Helm Naval Engineering but to oppose and question every decision she made. Given that Andrin Helm had named Wembly to act in his stead rather than officially relinquish control of the company to her, whenever she found herself diametrically opposed to the trustee, she lost.
Wembly would want at least a brief discussion as setup for a longer meeting once she arrived at Helm Naval’s office in Renstown. It would be unwise to go into any meeting without having reviewed the letters he’d couriered to her while she visited Anadae and friends in Sylvan.
