“You’re supposed to have an escort,” Droza says.
“You’re my escort.”
He looks at me then. His expression shifts, briefly, before settling back into its usual controlled stillness.
“You’re mourning them. You’ve been staring at the sea every night since you woke up.” I keep my voice even. “I’m not trying to pick at it. I see it.”
The silence stretches long enough that I think he’s going to close down entirely, but then he exhales and says, “There was a family. In the cove settlement south of here. A woman and her three sons. The youngest used to leave dried fish at the statue. As an offering.”
I don’t say anything.
“He would have been an old man before I went into the stone.” His voice carries nothing. That’s somehow worse than if it carried something. “Whatever he became after that, I will never know.”
The wind moves between us. The sea does what the sea always does, which is continue.
“I’m sorry,” I say finally. My apologies won’t fix anything, but that’s not why I say it. I want him to know I understand.
He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t move away either. After a moment he sits, which is its own kind of answer, and we stay there until the harbor goes fully dark below us.
Vaedrin makes his move on the market the following morning.
I hear about it from Brinna, who hears about it from three separate people before the hour is out, because Brinna has built an information network that would embarrass most professionals. Vaedrin walked through the harbor square in broad daylight, she says. Stopped at stalls, spoke pleasantly, spent money he didn’t need to spend. And then, at some point in each conversation, he mentioned a woman: human, dark curly hair, green eyes, and traveling alone.
The gold he left behind was enough to make the asking feel like an opportunity rather than a threat.
“How many talked?” I ask.
“None that I know of yet.” Brinna’s expression is precise. “But he’ll be back tomorrow with more gold and less patience.”
She means he’ll start with threats next. I know it without her having to say it.
That evening, I’m moving through the lower corridor toward the cellar stairs when I hear voices near the back entrance. Two of Corvin’s dock runners, talking in the loose, easy way of men who think they’re alone. One of them says my name. The other laughs and says something I can’t fully make out, but I catch the shape of it well enough.
Then I hear Droza.
I can’t see around the corner but I don’t need to. His voice drops to the register he uses when he means to be understood clearly by everyone in a room, and he says, with unhurried calm, “If I hear your name and hers in the same sentence again, I will personally ensure that you have fewer fingers than you do now.”
Brief silence.
The sound of two men finding somewhere else to be.
I lean against the wall and stare at the ceiling for a moment.
The thing I cannot explain, and refuse to examine too closely, is that my first reaction is not irritation. It should be. I’ve told him twice that I can manage my own situation, and I meant it both times.
But there’s something about standing in the dim corridor, hearing him deliver a quiet threat on my behalf with the complete confidence of a man who never once doubted his right to do it.
I press the back of my hand briefly to my mouth.
It is not funny,I tell myself.
The warmth in my chest disagrees.
6
DROZA
The tether does not sleep. That is the thing no one warned me about.
