“I presume she has your usual… modifications?” Alba said.
“Of course. And payment?”
“You can expect payment when we arrive in Galitha with our hides intact,” Alba retorted. “Payment. You should be so lucky.”
He tossed our wallets over the side and helped us up the rough rope ladder onto the deck. “They’ll be boarding before dawn and leaving Rylke Cove as soon as the port authority opens up to stamp their paperwork.” He nudged aside a barrel with his boot, and prized up a thin sliver of wood. Underneath was a cord; he tugged it, and a trapdoor opened. “Until then, hide out down there.” He stopped. “Don’t light any candles, fair?”
“Fine,” Alba said. “You’re going to let your crew know you have passengers, right?”
Erdwin paused. “Of course. Of course I am.”
“And that they won’t be paid unless we remain unharmed?”
“The usual precautions, all of that, yes.” He scanned the wharf, nervous. “Now let me get back to my usual habit of late rising lest I rouse suspicion of the Night Guard, eh?”
Alba acquiesced and we descended into the hidden hold.
I waited until the echo of his boots’ tread on the dock faded, then turned to Alba in the thin glow that a sliver of moonlight granted us. “Where on earth did you find him?”
“He found us. Thought that the good sisters would be an easy mark for one of his shills.”
“And you trust him?”
“He’s a businessman. In a sense,” she amended. “This is business. Besides, I know he won’t go to the port authority or the Night Guard or anyone else to report us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He said not to light any candles,” she replied. “This hold is stuffed with black powder, like as not, off the books. He’s probably trying to skip paying the export taxes on it.”
I shrank away from the crates pressing into my back. “Comforting.”
“Not quite as upsetting as whatever it was you did back there with the guardsman. Care to explain?”
I recalled with some trepidation how I had encircled the man, how he had reacted with the confusion I had cast on him. “There isn’t much to explain.”
“What made you think to try it?”
“I didn’t think to. I drew the curse accidentally along with a charm for us—it happens sometimes, ever since—” I sighed. Ever since the Midwinter Revolt, ever since I learned to cast curses, ever since I thought my brother was gone forever. Ever since my life had grown tangled and complex. “It happens sometimes. Sometimes when I’m startled or tired, more often than when I’m focusing.”
“And the charm for us? You drew that rather quickly.” I couldn’t see Alba’s face well in the soft blackness, but her voice had the cadence of a patient, long-suffering teacher. “I’ve never seen anything written about directly cursing or charming another person.”
“It’s what the Serafans do.”
“With music,” Alba countered. “And you didn’t use music. Or a needle and thread. I didn’t see you writing anything on a clay tablet, either.”
“You know that I don’t need those things,” I snapped. “I still have to use some kind of medium to embed the charm. It’s in your cloak. Not incorporated very well—it’s already almost gone.” The faded golden haze clung like thin lint to our shoulders, quietly slipping back into the ether.
“In that case,” she said slowly. “There are opportunities here—I ought to have thought of this before. You could develop casting to its logical conclusion.” She paused, waiting for me to pick up the explanation. When I didn’t, she sighed and continued, “If you don’t need to use anything to create the charm or the curse, why would you need a medium to transfer it?”
“Because it fades as quickly as it’s cast if it’s not anchored to something.” I thought of something else. “The light or dark, it wants to go back where it came from, whatever that means. Like the Serafan musical casting. It only lasts as long as they’re actively pouring magic into the music.”
“But you can pull it directly and embed it that quickly. The curse magic. That is something. Something, perhaps, to counter the Serafans if it comes to it.”
She sounded delighted. I felt slightly nauseated.
“Have you ever tried it before?”
I chewed my lip. I had embedded curse magic in the water of a vase and accelerated the death and decay of the flowers in it, but only once.
“Not on people,” I answered. Maybe it was wrong to withhold some of what I knew from Alba, since she was an ally—but she was an ally with her own motivations, too.
“Until tonight.”
“And as you said, I don’t think it was a wise idea.” I had no idea if the man was still muddling in a cloud of manufactured confusion. I didn’t think so—my casting had been sloppy, meant to control rather than embed the curse, so I guessed it would melt away fairly quickly. But what did the aftereffects of a curse feel like? When I began casting curses, I felt ill every time. Guilt gnawed at me for the guardsman who might be experiencing something akin to a nasty hangover.
“Perhaps so, perhaps not. It unsnarled that particular snag for us.” I heard her settling against the crates. “Best to try to sleep a little,” she said. “We’ll be underway before long.”
10
IT TOOK ALMOST A FULL DAY BEFORE THE CREW OPENED THE HOLD to check the cargo and found us. Erdwin, apparently no stranger to smuggling human as well as explosive cargo, had outfitted the hold with some jugs of stale water, a large package of indestructible sea biscuit, and a bucket. By the time the full sun bore through the ceiling above us in narrow slivers, I was grateful for all three.
When the ship’s mate cracked the hold, Alba was ready with a calm smile and her hands folded as though in complacent prayer, like a Kvys meditation statue.
The mate cursed loudly, and Alba quietly addressed him, explaining her arrangement with Erdwin. At the mention of money, the mate grudgingly allowed us on deck.
“Does he know about the black powder?” I asked.
“Most certainly, though the rest of the crew, perhaps not.” Alba watched with laughing eyes as he slipped into the secret hold. She glided away on silent feet to the rail and settled her gaze on the far-distant smudge of gray that was the rim of Fen’s outer islands.
I, however, was tired of ships. Tired of the slow passages and the miles of open ocean, of the bracing wind and scent of salt. Each voyage meant time out of commission, time I wasn’t helping the efforts of the Reformists, time I had no chance of hearing from Theodor. Miles and days stretched on ahead of us in the inky-blue northern waters.
I could practice casting, but I was tired of rote maintenance of my skill. What I had done on the streets of Rylke suggested that I had the potential to develop new skills, but I wasn’t quite ready to touch those possibilities yet. At any rate, my charms’ contribution had ceased when we’d left Fen. I might cast superficial charms on equipment already at the Hazelwhite encampment, but the bulk of our charmed investment was en route now, from Fen.