“If you must know, I stopped by the chapter house to pick up more gems.” She looked down the hall, wishing Mercy would emerge from the kitchen. “There’s been a change of plans. I’ll be escorting you to Pota Pras.”
When she looked back, his hazel eyes had narrowed. “Isbail Rosach set you to spy on me, didn’t she?”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”
He searched her face for an agonizing minute. Whatever he saw there made some of the suspicion soften. “You saved my life today,” he said in a gentler tone. “I trust you, even if I don’t trust the witches.”
There must have been a window open in the library, for a cool draft swept the foyer. Cathrynne shivered in her damp clothes, aware of how little she deserved his faith. “Goodnight, Lord Morningstar.”
“Goodnight, Rowan,” he said with a slight bow, formal and distant once more. “We depart early tomorrow. I’ll thank you to be ready on time.”
She watched him retreat into the library before climbing the stairs to the Iskatar Room. Whatever awaited them in Pota Pras, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was only the beginning of something far worse.
The Bessemer River was swollen from recent rains, its muddy waters broken by the wakes of vessels of every size. Ring-billed gulls wheeled overhead, their cries piercing the din of shouting stevedores. Fish, tar, and hemp mingled in the cool morning air, the smell of port cities across Sion.
Morningstar strode along the quay beside her. He’d glamoured his wings, appearing human to anyone who glanced their way. With his gray tweed suit and black valise, he looked like a sleek, wealthy broker on his way to a business deal. Cathrynne wore her uniform of jacket, bodice, and snug trousers, with a whip and cudgel at her hip, but cyphers were a common sight in mining country. The same ancient covenant that had given the witches control over raw gems also compelled them to defend the human population against the Sinn.
Almost every witch and cypher in the province had served on the front lines at some point, which is why so many of them bore burn scars. It was entirely different from Kirith, where Sinn encounters were rare and never deadly.
Cathrynne, who hadn’t left Arioch in twenty years, was ignorant of all this until Morningstar took it upon himself to give her a history lesson on the way to the port.
“The Bessemer is the lifeblood of Satu Jos,” he droned in his magistrate voice, “linking the gem-rich interior to the coast. Countless barges ferry raw stones and metals to waiting ships bound for every province in Sion. In return, the ships bring equipment, food, and other necessities to the towns upstream. Of course, with the advent of rail transport a century ago, much of that freight is now moved by trains.”
“You sound like a geography primer,” Cathrynne muttered, scanning the crowds for silver eyes. It had to be a witch who was trying to kill him. Maybe more than one.
He frowned. “What’s wrong with that?”
She sighed. “Nothing. Which one is ours?”
“There.” He pointed to a three-deck paddleboat with a red-painted hull. “The Cinnabar Queen.”
It was an old vessel, not one of the new ley-powered ones. Steam billowed from the tall stacks, and its massive paddlewheel turned slowly, churning the brown water to froth. They joined the line to board. It was a mix of miners and brokers. No one gave Morningstar a second glance as he presented the tickets to the purser, who directed them to a second-class cabin on the top deck.
To Cathrynne’s dismay, it was tiny, scarcely able to accommodate a single chair and bunk. Morningstar set his valise on the floor. His wings alone took up more than half the space.
“I’m going on deck,” Cathrynne announced, dropping her bag.
“Suit yourself.” He sat down in the chair, opened his valise, and pulled out a batch of papers.
Cathrynne made her way to the deck circling the second tier. It was crowded with passengers watching the city slowly dwindle behind. She found a spot at the railing and leaned against it, letting the breeze cool her face.
A young woman stood nearby, hunched in an oversized peacoat with the collar flipped up and a cap pulled low over her eyes. There was something both fierce and secretive about her posture. When she lifted her head to follow the path of a gull, Cathrynne glimpsed a tattoo on her neck. A sailing ship running with the wind, a froth of waves at its bow.
As if sensing the attention, the woman turned. Their eyes met. She flinched and skulked away, disappearing down the stairs to the lower tier. Cathrynne had never seen her before and chalked it up to a general dislike of cyphers.
She remained at the rail and watched lavish waterfront mansions drift past, their vast emerald lawns sloping down to private docks. Gardeners knelt in the landscaped gardens and uniformed maids served breakfast on stone verandas. Presently, the banks of the Bessemer grew wilder, dotted with the occasional village. The sun climbed, burning away the morning mist.
She wondered what kind of power Casolaba’s new gem possessed that so many people were chasing—and dying—for it.
After a few hours, the growing chill drove her back inside, along with the guilty knowledge that she shouldn’t have left Morningstar alone. If Mercy were here, she’d have him playing a game of cards and laughing.
Cathrynne found the archangel as she’d left him, nose buried in a sheaf of documents. “Take the bunk,” he said without looking up. “I don’t require sleep.”
She nodded wordlessly and lay down, then stole a peek when he wasn’t looking. He had rolled his sleeves up, revealing those strong, tanned forearms. A lock of dark hair spilled across his forehead, making him seem almost boyish.
But Morningstar was not a boy. He was an archangel, an irritatingly attractive one, and his presence, even absorbed in work, sucked all the air from the cabin. Thinking of him so close—and yet so unreachable—made her exhausted. The rolling of the riverboat didn’t help.
She decided that it would be wise to steal a brief nap since they might be up quite late in Pota Pras and she hadn’t slept much the night before, fretting both about the journey ahead and her disturbing encounter with the seer. She locked the cabin door, then lay down with her back to Morningstar, gazing out the porthole.
