Their footsteps retreat, but they don’t shut the door behind them.
“Quick,” says Soren, pulling me to my feet. “Before they return.”
We rush over to the crate. It’s large and unmarked, roughly the size it would need to be to hold an adult woman. But there are no air holes.
I’m terrified to see what’s inside. Soren looks around for something to open it while I peek through a hole in the wood.
“It’s not the girls,” I say. “It’s…bricks of something.”
Soren pries the crate open with a crowbar and then removes one of the bricks from its paper packaging, smelling it cautiously. “Joy plant,” he says, dropping it back into the crate in disgust. “Dried and purified.”
A powerful alchemical ingredient. I’ve seen Hermes use it to ease the passing of the horses. “For the Guild?” I suggest. Perhaps they’re only intending to sell it to the alchemists. There has to be a trade in it, and it’s likely a lucrative one.
He shakes his head. “Only the Guild can import it. Come on, before they come back.”
We slip through the open door and onto the deck. There are barrels and columns of wood here that offer cover, so we crouch behind them to get a better view of the dock.
“It’s Marcella,” says Soren.
“In the crate?” In front of a small sailboat at anchor sits a single large crate, identical to the one we saw brought into the warehouse earlier.
And in front of it are all the guards. I scan their faces and bodies as quickly as I can, grateful not to see Felix among them. Whatever is in that crate, it must be so valuable that everything else in the warehouse pales in comparison.
Soren shakes his head. “I thought I recognized her voice earlier, but I didn’t want to believe it. It’s her. The one in charge.”
The woman who was giving the orders. It’s one of the missing girls.
Marcella stands tall and commanding at the end of the dock, conversing with the captain of the sailboat. Her dark hair is in braids as Soren described, and she’s wearing tight leather pants and a leather chest piece over a dark red tunic. If I hadn’t already heard her voice, I might have guessed she was Nithyrian.
She’s certainly ready for a fight.
“What do we do?” Could Vesper be here too? Is it possible that they’re working together doing whatever this is?
Or maybe Marcella could have kidnapped Vesper and is holding her against her will.
Or maybe Vesper isn’t here at all, and we’ve stumbled upon a dangerous smuggling operation manned by people willing to risk everything for a bit of coin.
“We get out of here,” says Soren. “Vesper isn’t in that crate. We can figure the rest out later.”
Around the corner, there are two more guards positioned at the end of the deck to block access to the dock from the street.“Not that way.” The only way back is through the still-open warehouse door behind us.
I lower the shadow to lead us through it.
“Soren,” calls Marcella from below just before we reach it. Ice runs through my veins at the sound. “Did you come to make me an offer?”
Of course. She’s shadow-born.She can see us through my shadows.
Down at the dock, the captain and crew of the sailboat hurry to launch. The warehouse guards rush over to Marcella, but she stops them before they climb the stairs.
Soren steps forward. “I came to rescue you. Though it appears I’m a little too late.”
Marcella’s laugh is melodic and dark. “Poor naïve Soren. A man who thinks he’s his own master, and yet he’s nothing more than the God-King’s slave. Or did you think I didn’t know who you were working for all these years?”
“What do you want, Marcella?”
“The same as you. I’m just doing business. I’ll give credit to Ronan for one thing: the man knows how to create a black market. I would have cut you in only—well, you would’ve just run right back to your master, wouldn’t you?”
She doesn’t know who she’s talking to. She sees the connection, but it doesn’t occur to her that she’s talking to Ronan himself.
