“Ahh.”
One of the soldiers headed for the stairs down to the cove.Oh no, the library boat!It was Alyssium-made. Any sailor would recognize it. He’d know it wasn’t old and abandoned. Worse, the captain would know she’d lied. She’d said she’d never left Caltrey, plus that she’d sold Radane her parents’ boat. There would be more questions, and she didn’t know how to answer them. She clasped her hands behind her back so the captain wouldn’t notice how badly she was shaking.
In a soft voice, Captain Varrik said, “She did always want her own life.”
Before she could decide how to respond, she heard one of the soldiers swear and then call out, “Careful of the thorns!”
“You might want to call them back,” Kiela said, “if you don’t want them scratched up. The thorns are vicious, especially the deeper in you go.”
She saw the captain’s forehead crease as if he were thinking.
“Also, there’s poison ivy. You’re going to end up with a ship full of itching sailors.”
He raised his voice and called to his soldiers, “Steer clear of any poison ivy. Don’t touch shiny leaves if you don’t want to itch.”
I should have grown a lot of poison ivy.And poison oak. And maybe installed a beehive or two. Or a family of raccoons. “It’s not always shiny. Best to avoid any leaves of three.”
He relayed this to his soldiers.
“Give me a giant squid over this anytime,” one of them complained.
Kiela knotted her hands behind her back and tried to concentrate on looking amused instead of terrified. “How can this ‘heir’ be a threat to the government if all she wanted to do was leave? That doesn’t sound like someone they really need to be concerned about.”
The captain nodded. “Politics.”
“If she just wants to live out a quiet, ordinary life, isn’t that best for everyone?”
He studied her for a moment and then raised his voice again, “If you see any red berries, you should retreat immediately.”Red berries?she wondered. Of course there were red berries in a raspberry bramble—
“There are loads of red berries, sir,” a soldier called, “but they appear to be raspberries.”
“Not on Caltrey,” the captain called. “Get out of there. That’s an order—Caltrey is home to a red berry that resembles raspberries but is highly poisonous.” He leveled a look at Kiela. “Our local can confirm that.”
She met his eyes and hoped that she was understanding him correctly. “Absolutely,” Kiela said loudly. “Even inhaling its odor can cause lasting damage to the lungs and kidneys and . . . spleen. It’s terrible for your spleen.”
He nodded. “You heard the local. I don’t want you lot coming down sick when we’re out in the ocean. You see those red berries, you come out.”
At this command, the soldiers exited the brambles, as quickly as they could. They assembled in front of them. A few looked somewhat panicked and kept glancing at the raspberries that covered the cottage.
“It’s why I had to abandon the cottage,” Kiela explained. “The poison berries took root.”
For a moment, she thought she was in the clear. The search was halted. The captain had, for whatever reason, helped her end it.Now they’ll leave, we’ll be safe, and—
She saw movement from the cove stairs, and she tried not to react as the sailor returned. Yes, the soldiers had stopped searching around the cottage, but if he’d seen the boat, Captain Varrik wouldn’t be able to ignore the evidence. It was one thing to obstruct a search subtly; it was another to ignore direct evidence publicly. He’d said himself that he had to report back. There had to be a limit to how far he was willing to push against his orders—cutting short a search through thorny brambles was one thing, but publicly ignoring a lie was another.
Captain Varrik was watching her again. He’d seen her flinch.
He knows I lied.
“No boats in the cove,” the sailor reported. He was holding a bit of rope. “Line is new, so there was a ship docked there not long ago, if I had to guess, but it’s gone now.”
Kiela wanted to cry with relief. They should have found it. They should’ve had questions. They should’ve poked holes in her story and reconsidered the accusations from Fenerer . . . but the library boat was gone.
Larran.
She suppressed a smile.
He must have realized as soon as she told the lie about selling Radane the boat that her boat was the weak spot in their plan. He’d taken a merhorse to the cove and moved the boat while Kiela and the soldiers climbed the cliff stairs and trekked through the forest. She made a mental note to kiss him extra for that. “I told you: I sold my parents’ boat to Radane.”
