Ch. 49: Difficult Goods and Ch. 50 Physical Routes

Chapter 49: Difficult Goods

The hamper was large enough for a person.

Marielle disliked knowing that before anyone explained why it had been brought downstairs.

Tairn put it beside the table. It was wicker with two carrying handles and a fitted lid. There was folded linen inside.

Vaelis returned from arranging the carriage and set a small bottle beside the linen.

Marielle stopped looking at the hamper. “What is that?”

“Something to make the journey easier.”

“For whom?”

Vaelis smiled. “There’s the engineer.”

The Commander folded another map into his satchel. He had already thrown the pages he didn’t need into the hearth, their edges blackening.

Edrin’s remaining materials had been packed separately. He was not there to prepare a circle.

They needed her inside a carriage to move her. They needed her quiet, and they needed to reach the next house before the Watch reached this one.

Marielle understood every part of the arrangement. “I do not need that.”

“You need to stop making yourself noticeable,” Vaelis said.

“I can be quiet.”

The woman looked at her.

Marielle hated how much there was to contradict her.

“For the journey,” she added.

“How accommodating.” Vaelis unfolded a cloth and uncapped the bottle.

Marielle watched the liquid darken the fabric. A sharp smell reached her, and her stomach tightened.

She had spent the last two days counting things; doors, voices, steps, the hands holding her. The small mistakes people made when they thought she could do nothing with them.

Even when she could not move, she could notice.

“My arm is already reacting badly,” she said. “You do not know how that will affect it.”

The Commander didn’t acknowledge her. Instead he turned to Vaelis. “Enough to keep her quiet.”

“I know.”

The answer came too easily.

“No.” Marielle hated how small her voice sounded.

Tairn crouched beside her. She drew back against the post.

“I can be quiet,” she said.

Vaelis heard the change in her voice, of course, and her smile faded into something more attentive.

“There,” she said. “That is more appropriate.”

Marielle wanted to give Vaelis an answer that would remove the satisfaction from her face. She wanted the cloth kept away from her more.

“Please don’t,” she said to Tairn.

He paused. The Commander looked toward him and Tairn caught her bound hands and held them down.

Marielle turned her face away.

Vaelis stepped closer, putting one hand behind her head while the other pressed the cloth over her nose and mouth.

Marielle jerked against it.

The post was behind her. Tairn held her hands. When Marielle twisted her head, Vaelis followed, keeping the fabric tight against her face.

She held her breath. She could think, she could count, if she waited until Vaelis shifted her grip then maybe…

Marielle lost the count when panic began setting in. Her chest contracted. She tried to turn again, and the cloth rubbed against the cut on her lip.

Her first breath brought the smell with it, too close and too much. She tried to cry out, but the cloth muffled it into a whimper. Vaelis’s hand stayed firm behind her head and Tairn’s grip tightened.

She could not seem to draw enough air through the cloth. With every breath the smell filled her nose and caught in her throat.

She looked toward the Commander and tried to say enough. The word was lost in the cloth. The Commander watched, face impassive.

The lamp behind him began to stretch until it was only a blurred streak. She blinked, and it took longer than it should have.

Vaelis’ face was still too close to her own. Marielle tried to turn away from it. She began the movement but her head seemed to move far too slowly.

She realized her shoulders had stopped straining against the post. That frightened her enough to pull at her wrists again. Tairn easily adjusted his hold.

Her eyelids lowered and she forced them back open.

The Commander was still there, but she could no longer see his face clearly.

“Enough,” he said.

The cloth remained against her face.

“Vaelis.”

Only then did she remove it.

Marielle dragged in a breath. The room tilted and she pressed her head back into the beam.

She could still smell it.

Tairn still held her hands. He said something.

She looked at him, trying to understand why his hands were still around hers.

“Let go.” Her words sounded thick. She tried to say them more clearly, but he had already released her.

Vaelis folded the fabric. Marielle watched her put it down beside the bottle. If Lia could get a sample of it, she would know…

Her eyes closed. It got harder to open them every time she blinked. She needed to stay awake.

When she opened them again, the bottle was gone and Vaelis was fastening a satchel. Marielle was already missing things.

Tairn loosened the tether.

She needed to count something. Three captors. One driver. No transportation circle.

She repeated it to herself as he worked on her bindings.

Three captors, one driver, three captors, one…The lamp seemed to move, and then the table.

Marielle knew that they had not and found she needed to tell herself again. She forgot what she was supposed to be counting.

“Stand,” Tairn said.

She tried to get her feet beneath her. She looked down to find them, and the movement sent the floor sliding sideways.

Tairn caught her before she understood she was falling.

“Slowly.”

She wanted to tell him she was already moving slowly. Everything was.

Her head dropped against his shoulder. She lifted it, blinking until she could distinguish the table from the wall. The hamper still stood open beside the table. She had forgotten it.

She managed a soft “no,” but Tairn lowered her into it anyway.

Linen pressed beneath her hip. Her knees bent. Pain flared in her arm, and it was briefly sharp enough to make the room clear.

Marielle tried to sit up.

The movement took longer than she expected. By the time her body had begun it, Vaelis’s hand was already on her shoulder.

“Stay down.”

Marielle wanted to strike the hand away. Her right hand caught in a fold in the linen.

Someone shifted her injured arm, and she cried out.

“Not underneath her,” Tairn said.

The lid began to descend. Marielle watched as the opening grew narrower. She should put her hand against it to keep it open, but darkness settled before she worked out how to raise her arm.

Thin light remained between the woven strips.

Marielle fixed on one bright gap.

Count something, stay awake, keep looking.

The hamper lifted.

She counted the jolts. One. Two.

Her eyes closed, and when she opened them again, cool air was reaching through the wicker.

They were outside. She had missed the stairs.

The lid rose, and a man looked down at her. It was not one of the agents, he was Sun Fae, middle-aged. “This was not the arrangement.”

“The arrangement changed.”

The man looked at her again.

Help. She had to say it while he was looking.

Her lips moved and a faint sound escaped, but it had no word in it. She swallowed and tried again.

“I was told goods.”

Vaelis leaned over the opening. “She is difficult goods.”

The lid closed.

Marielle pushed against it with her right hand.

Or tried to.

Her fingers found linen instead. The hamper tilted.

Marielle slid against the linen before she understood she needed to brace herself. Something hard struck beneath her hip.

There were voices outside. She could no longer easily distinguish them.

“Watch at the southern crossing. They are stopping carts.”

“Use the service lane.”

“If they close that end—”

She tried to keep the words. Southern crossing. Service…

A door shut. The hamper shifted and her injured arm pressed against her side.

A matter of source: this chapter was copied from the page where its author publishes it, without permission to reproduce it here.

She made a sound.

“Quiet.” Vaelis said.

Marielle tried to open her eyes, then realized they were open. There was just very little to see.

The carriage moved.

Marielle knew how to do this; count the turns, notice the surface beneath the wheels, listen for water, people, bells.

Right. Straight. Left.

The wheels caught on something and her teeth knocked together. She tried to move her arm somewhere that did not hurt. There was no room.

Had they turned again?

She waited for the next one.

Her eyes closed. When she opened them, the carriage was still moving, but the sound had changed. Smoother.

She could not remember hearing it change.

Marielle pushed her fingers against the wicker. They felt distant, though she could see her fingers through the dimness.

There were things she had to do; hold a sequence, notice a change, keep information until it became useful. Stay awake.

She could not make herself do them.

Voices passed outside. One close enough that she tried to call out.

She drew a breath to shout, but what came out was small and broken.

A hand pressed against the lid, “I said quiet.”

Marielle tried again. Her tongue would not shape the word. The voices receded.

A jolt woke her.

Pain ran from her arm into her shoulder. She tried to straighten and struck her forehead against the lid.

“Careful,” Tairn said above her.

She hated him. That thought was clear enough that she could hold it for a moment.

Then she could not remember whether he had spoken just now, or before she fell asleep.

She had fallen asleep.

A strip of light lay across the linen near her hand. She watched it move as the carriage turned.

Left. She could begin again.

Left, and then…

The next thing she heard was the driver saying, “No, the rear court.”

They stopped.

She had lost the route.

The lid lifted, and Marielle closed her eyes against the light.

“Look at me,” Tairn said.

She tried, but his face moved in and out of focus.

Tairn reached in. “We are taking you out.”

She wanted to say she could stand if he waited. Her legs were folded beneath her, and she could not work out which to move first.

“Wait,” she said.

The word came slowly, but he heard it.

He moved the linen from her arm, then his hands were beneath her and he lifted her anyway.

She caught at his coat with her right hand, frightened of falling, and hated herself for it.

Marielle saw the house in pieces.

White stone.

Blue-painted shutters above the rear court.

A covered service entrance.

She needed to look at the entrance.

Her eyelids lowered, and she opened them again.

The driver stood beside the open carriage. “This is where I leave you.”

“Yes,” the Commander said.

Tairn stopped for a moment.

“I need the rest,” the driver said.

“You were paid.”

“Half.”

They were discussing money. She tried to turn toward the driver, but Tairn was walking again.

A door opened ahead.

The driver swore. “I am not going farther.”

The Commander answered. Marielle missed the words, but something felt wrong about them.

“Tairn.”

He looked down at her.

“The man.”

His face blurred. She blinked until it became clear again, but he was no longer looking at her.

They passed through the doorway.

Blue-painted wall. Polished floor. Expensive plaster.

She tried to count the doors.

Someone spoke behind them. She turned her head too late to see.

Tairn was lowering her.

For a moment, Marielle thought they were putting her back in the hamper. She pushed against his chest.

“Floor,” he said. “You are on the floor.”

Her hip met something firm. A wall supported her back.

He crouched in front of her with rope, and Marielle watched his fingers pass it through another fixed ring. She should try to remember the knot.

Her head dropped. She jerked it upright and pain spread through her neck.

“Stay still.”

Vaelis crossed the room. A latch clicked.

The door opened. Marielle had not meant to fall asleep again, but apparently she had.

The Commander entered in a different coat.

No driver followed him.

Marielle looked past him anyway.

He shut the door.

“The carriage?” Vaelis asked from the passage.

“Finished with.”

Tairn looked down.

Marielle pressed her right fingers against each other.

Somewhere in Myrae, there might now be a carriage and a man who would never give an account of the journey.

Not in words.

There would still be things to find.

She tried to list them.

Could not keep the list.

Fear tightened her throat again.

Tairn brought water.

Marielle looked at the cup and turned her face away.

He stopped. “Only water.”

He had held her hands while the cloth covered her face.

Speaking gently now did not make him safe. She kept her mouth closed, and after a moment, he put the cup to the side.

The room softened at the edges. She pressed her shoulder against the wall, trying to find a position uncomfortable enough to keep her awake.

Blue paint, white stone outside, a window.

Three things.

She would keep three things until she could keep more.

Chapter 50: Physical Routes

The report found Daravan while Lia was fastening the dressing over his side.

He reached for it.

She caught his wrist. “I have almost finished.”

“Then we agree.”

“We do not.”

The messenger waited.

Lia secured the final edge, inspected it, and let go. “No opening it again because someone irritates you.”

Daravan took the report.

One of the cellar inquiries had produced more than an address.

A lodging house listed as vacant. Recent deliveries. A caretaker who said the lower rooms were unused, then admitted another man held their key.

A neighbor had seen a carriage collecting a large covered hamper shortly after dawn.

The Watch had found the lower door unlocked.

Daravan looked toward Lia.

“Go,” she said. “Send me what you find. Do not decide what it means medically before I see it.”

He put on his coat carefully enough to avoid an argument.

Harrek waited at the lodging house.

“The caretaker is giving a statement,” he said. “He claims the rooms were let for storage.”

“By whom?”

“A name he cannot yet attach to a person.

Harrek had put considerable weight on the word yet.

Daravan descended.

Old stone, no windows, one reinforced door.

A drainage grate too narrow for a person and a sound timber post with a ring set into it.

Rope fibers remained caught against the metal.

Daravan stopped beside it.

Someone had been tethered there.

The recording had contained metal under strain against wood.

Not proof by itself.

“Blood?” he asked.

“Small amount on the floor. Stained linen by the bucket. Collection has started.”

Daravan looked at the table. Its surface had been wiped. The hearth held burned paper. A satchel-sized patch remained clean in the dust beneath a shelf.

Stripped quickly, but not carelessly.

Almost nothing remained that had belonged to the people using the room.

An officer indicated a folded cloth on the floor beside the table. “There is a smell from that, Captain.”

Daravan crouched without touching it.

Plain fabric. Damp in places. A dark mark along one edge.

He could smell something sharp even at that distance.

Harrek came beside him.

“Keep it separate,” Daravan said. “Covered. Mistress Lia examines it.”

The officer nodded and called the collector over.

Daravan looked back at the ring.

A prisoner tied to a post.

A cloth with an unfamiliar smell.

A hamper large enough to hide someone.

His mind joined them too readily.

He made himself leave the conclusion unwritten.

“Send the samples now,” he said.

Harrek watched him stand. “Rear yard.”

A wheel had struck the edge of the yard’s drain, scraping through old dirt.

The mark was recent. Daravan could tell that much.

The officer with the witness statements could tell him more.

“Black carriage. No crest. Two horses. Driver remained outside while the others fetched the hamper.”

“Others?” Harrek asked.

“Three people. One neighbor saw two carry it. Another saw a woman get into the carriage afterward.”

“Description?”

The officer gave what the witnesses had noticed.

A limp. An arm held close. Dark coats.

Daravan looked toward Harrek.

Consistent with the two they had fought and another operative remaining behind.

Still not identification.

“The driver?”

“Sun Fae. One witness thinks brown hair. The other did not see beneath his hat.”

“Direction?”

“Along the service lane. We have an officer checking where it joins the wider road.”

Harrek gave the next orders: livery yards, drivers who had accepted early household work, people at the service crossings before the closure reached them.

“Do not ask whether they saw Lyehirans,” Daravan added.

Harrek nodded. “Ask whether they saw a carriage.”

The officer wrote.

The carriage had passed someone who thought they saw nothing worth reporting.

Daravan looked back through the cellar entrance.

If this was the second holding site, they had found it after its usefulness ended.

But the people leaving it had needed wheels and a driver.

Those were things Harrek could find.

A patrol found the carriage behind a shuttered cooperage later that morning. They found the horses first, then the body. Harrek reached the yard before Daravan and kept the officers outside until the collector arrived.

The driver lay across a bench inside.

He was Sun Fae, middle aged, and wore a dark coat. His boots were better made than the rest of his clothing suggested he could afford.

A wound beneath the ribs had soaked the cloth at his waist.

His purse remained attached.

Daravan examined the interior from the doorway. A hamper occupied most of the floor. Folded linen lay inside it, pushed aside into an uneven hollow.

No Marielle.

Harrek looked at the body. “Robbery seems unlikely.”

“Yes.”

“Killed after the transfer?”

“Possibly. We establish the route.”

He wanted the answer to be simpler than that.

The same carriage had carried the agents from the cellar. The driver had delivered them somewhere. Then someone had made sure he could not describe it.

A useful reconstruction, but not yet an account they could prove.

Daravan stepped down and walked around the vehicle.

Pale grit clung to the rear wheels amid the street mud.

Harrek crouched beside him. “Shell.”

“Looks like it.”

“Private courts use it on the western terraces. A few livery yards too.”

“Then compare both.”

The step had been wiped. A dark streak remained where the upright met it.

Blood, perhaps.

The collector marked it for examination.

An officer by the horses turned over a harness strap. “There’s a maker’s mark here.”

Harrek came to look. “Livery mark. The yard off Tanner’s Lane.” He turned to the officer. “Ask who took the booking and when. Get the driver’s name before you tell them where we found him.”

The officer left.

“You know the yard?” Daravan asked.

“I know the deliveries they get hired for. A man who can’t explain where he got a crate generally doesn’t want to hire a driver who’ll ask.”

Daravan looked at the hamper again. There was a shallow dent near one handle. A few strands had bent inward along the lid.

Someone might have pushed against it.

He could imagine her counting turns in the dark.

Could imagine her finding a loose fastening and testing it because there was still something to do.

He did not let himself decide she had done either.

“Send the carriage intact,” he said. “Driver separately.”

Harrek nodded.

“And keep asking about the journey before this yard,” Daravan added. “This is where someone abandoned the vehicle, not necessarily near where they took her.”

Lia had the cloth when Daravan returned to the palace.

She kept it beneath a cover in her workroom.

Serali sat at the other end of the table, her forearm supported while an apprentice finished re-wrapping it.

Serali looked up. Daravan gave her the account without making her ask.

“Have you found anything with the cord?” he asked when he finished.

“It still answers,” Serali said. “Lia and I are comparing the pull with what I felt from the blood alone. I can feel it more distinctly, but I can’t tell you which way to go.”

“We’ll try again when the apprentice finishes,” Lia said. “In the meantime, I’ve examined the cloth. The residue is consistent with an inhaled sedative.”

“Used on Lady Marielle?”

“The circumstances suggest it. The cloth alone doesn’t tell me who inhaled it or how much.”

“Could she still be unconscious?”

“Possibly. Or awake and confused. I cannot give you her present condition from what remains here.”

“Would they use it again?” Daravan asked.

“If they know what they’re doing, they’ll wait.” Lia looked down at the cover. “She could be awake and talking while there’s still enough of it in her to make another dose dangerous.”

“How dangerous?” Serali asked.

“She might stop breathing.”

Serali’s fingers tightened against the table. The apprentice paused with the end of the bandage in her hand.

“If it was used on her, she may have trouble keeping herself upright or protecting the injured arm,” Lia continued. “We prepare for that when you find her.”

When. Daravan held on to the word without asking it to become a promise.

“What do you need from us?”

“Anything more recovered from the carriage. An account of what she can answer when you reach her. And no one deciding to make her walk because she opens her eyes.”

“Understood.”

Lia looked at him a moment longer, then nodded to the apprentice to finish. Serali drew the notes closer with her good hand.

Then turned back to the covered cloth.

Working. There was more they could do with it than imagine what had happened.

He went to council.

Allandra looked up as Daravan entered the council room. Her gaze went past his shoulder and stayed on the doorway until he closed it. Only then did she look at him. The pen in her hand had stopped halfway back to the ink.

“Lady Serali is still with Mistress Lia, Your Majesty,” he said. “They’re continuing their examination.”

“Thank you, Captain.” She dipped the pen. A drop landed on the edge of her notes.

The map had acquired more marks while he was away. Yvander was comparing the carriage findings with deliveries already under inquiry. Merrow had identified several properties with private rear courts and owners unlikely to be present.

Harrek handed Daravan a statement. “The stablekeeper identified the driver. He took a deposit yesterday evening for a collection shortly after dawn. Linen, according to the booking.”

“Did he believe that?”

“He charges extra to believe it.”

“The destination?”

“To be given to the driver at pickup. The keeper says he never heard it.”

Before the tide-stair fight, then. They had arranged a way to move her even while they still had their mage.

Verya drew the delivery accounts nearer. “Does he remember who paid?”

“He remembers a woman in a dark coat. We’re asking the people who worked the yard last night.”

Daravan looked down at the map. There were too many doors. Behind one of them, perhaps, Marielle was trying to stay awake.

“Captain,” Allandra said. “A word in the passage.”

She waited until the door was shut behind them.

“You’ve given us the evidence,” she said quietly. “What did you see that isn’t in the report?”

He looked at her. She had left the pen inside, but there was ink on the side of her finger.

“At the first house she left us part of Mael’s cuff,” he said. “She broke a shutter so someone would hear her. At this one, there was nothing she meant us to find.”

Allandra waited.

“The cloth was dropped on the way out. They gave us that by mistake.” He kept his voice low. “If she could have left us something, she would have.”

“I know,” Allandra said. “That frightens me too.”

He hadn’t expected her to say it. She gave him a moment before she went on.

“Someone took the booking. Someone saw the carriage leave. They needed a road and a door wide enough to carry her through. We can follow those things even if she can’t show us where they went.”

A private court. A service entrance. A place prepared to hold someone.

“If they’ve had wards altered to keep anyone from hearing her,” Daravan said, “someone had to do that work.”

Allandra opened the door. “Ask Verya what she can get you.”

“Recent ward work,” Daravan said when he reached the table. “On the properties in the overlap.”

Yvander turned a page. “The filings are incomplete.”

“Then we need the underlying records.”

“I’ve asked the wardwright registry for them,” Verya said. “They want until tomorrow to assemble them.” She drew a fresh sheet toward her. “I will not have Lady Marielle dragged across the border because someone worries a registry clerk may object to irregular procedure.”

“What authority do you need?” Allandra asked.

Verya told her. Allandra signed, and Verya handed the authorization to a clerk with instructions to take it to the registry himself.

Yvander put five property records beside the map. “These fit the access, possible court surface, and discrepancies in reported occupancy. Others remain under review.”

Harrek leaned over them.

“Five,” Daravan said. “If we breach them in sequence, anyone waiting in the last house hears us coming.”

“Then inspect,” Harrek said.

Verya looked up. “Send inspectors under civic authority. Legitimate inquiries, with officers prepared for what might be inside.”

Harrek gathered the addresses. “I will choose the men.”

Daravan drew the street plan closer. He followed the service lane out of the lodging-house yard, past the first crossing, and looked for the turns a carriage could make.