Page 137
“I need a name,” Edward says.
“I don’t—”
I remove my boot from his hand and catch his smallest finger. Haskell stops breathing.
“Let us not waste each other’s time,” I say. “I am feeling sentimental, and that makes me impatient.”
“Saint Cordelia!” he blurts.
Lazarus goes still. Edward’s head snaps toward him. “You know it?”
“A merchant vessel,” Lazarus says. “Old. Fast if the winds favor her. Runs under different flags depending on which country is least interested in asking questions.”
“Destination?” I ask.
Haskell sobs. “I don’t know.”
I bend the finger slightly.
“Spain!” he cries. “Or Madeira first. I heard Madeira. Then Spain. Or the Caribbean. I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know.”
Lazarus rises at once. Edward looks at him. “Madeira?”
“Resupply port,” Lazarus says. “If they are moving her quietly out of England, they would stop before continuing south.”
My pulse quickens, not Alcott’s. Mine. A trail, a real one.
Haskell whimpers beneath me. “That is all I know.”
“No,” I say softly. “It is not.”
His eyes widen. I smile. “You know who signed the papers. You know who paid you. You know which guards delivered her. You know how many men boarded with the Collector.”
“I’ll be dead.”
“Yes,” I say. “But perhaps not tonight.”
He cries then, pathetically. For the next eleven minutes, he gives us names. Bracken, two dock guards, a solicitor tied to three false companies. A coal merchant whose ships move things better left unlisted, then a woman at the telegraph office who sends messages under church donation codes. With each name, Lazarus writes and the shape of the road to Olive becomes less impossible to traverse. When Haskell has emptied himself of everything useful, he curls on the floor, clutching his ruined hand.
“What now?” Edward asks.
I look down at the man. The answer is easy, clean and obvious. Haskell hears it in the silence and begins shaking his head.
“No. Please. I told you. I told you.”
Lazarus steps closer. “He did.”
His face is hard, but not empty.
“He sells papers for ships that carry people in crates,” I say.
“I know,” Laz remarks.
“He has purchased children.”
“I know.”
“He will run to the Collector the moment we leave.”
