They left mid-morning.
The streets of Pharelle were quiet. The Champ de Soleil had emptied the city of certainty, and most of its residents had responded the way Gallians always responded to political upheaval: by closing their shutters and waiting for it to become someone else’s problem. Laila walked quickly and did not look back.
Lambert walked half a step behind her, collar askew, silent in the way he got when he hadn’t slept. Wylan had his hands in his pockets and his mind somewhere else entirely.
The merchant quarter was different. Here, the city remembered what it was for. A woman in a flour-dusted apron was arguing with a carter about the weight of a delivery, one hand on the crate and the other making her point. Two clerks shared a cigarette in a doorway, ledgers tucked under their arms. A boy was chalking prices on a board outside a chandler’s shop, rubbing out yesterday’s figures with the sleeve of his coat. Somewhere above, a window opened and a carpet was beaten as though dust had caused personal offence.
Nobody was talking about Valère. Nobody was talking about the Agony answering, or the Aurarchy, or what any of it meant. They were talking about the weight of flour and the price of tallow and whether the rain would hold off until Thursday.
? The merchant quarter of Pharelle maintained a studied indifference to whoever happened to be in charge. Regimes came and went; invoices were eternal.
Laila felt something in her shoulders ease. She hadn’t realised they’d been tight.
Freight Expectations occupied a handsome building at the end of the row, an establishment that looked both respectable and discreet. This required either excellent taste or excellent lawyers. Guillaume had both. The brass plate beside the door had been polished recently, the step swept. Whatever was happening to the rest of Pharelle, this building intended to keep its standards.
A secretary whose suit was crisp enough to cut paper admitted them without hesitation. Either Guillaume had left instructions, or the man had been trained to recognise a de Vaillant on sight.
Guillaume was waiting in his office. The room smelled, as it always did, of money and citrus, but today there was something else beneath it: salt air, faint but unmistakable. Laila filed that and moved on.
He stood behind his desk with his hands clasped behind his back, waistcoat immaculate, a coin turning between his fingers with absent dexterity. He had been waiting longer than they had.
“Laila,” he said. His arms opened wide, as if they were a gift he’d been hoping for. “And company. I was wondering how long it would take.”
“How long what would take?”
“Before you brightened my doorstep.” The coin turned. “You need a ship.”
Laila had prepared a careful approach to the question. She had, in fact, rehearsed the phrasing on the walk over, calibrating the balance between request and expectation that a conversation with Guillaume required. She found she could discard most of it.
“Yes.”
“Good.” Guillaume’s smile widened. “Because I have one. And rather more besides.”
Lambert’s eyes moved across the office: door, window, desk weight. Laila had seen him do it in churches.
“You seem remarkably prepared,” Lambert said.
“I am remarkably prepared. It’s one of my more endearing qualities.” Guillaume settled into his chair and gestured for them to sit. “After Isabella’s departure through my premises, it was only a matter of time.”
“You couldn’t have known we’d come to you,” Laila said.
Guillaume’s expression didn’t change. He had known exactly that. “Laila. I may not be Alexios, and you and I may never have been close, but you don’t think I haven’t learned some of your moods by now?” The coin turned. “Your daughter left through my mirror to join Captain Voltari. She never arrived. When that intelligence reached me, I knew it would reach you shortly after.” He let that settle. “And I know this family well enough to know what happens next.”
Lambert said nothing. His expression suggested he was reserving judgement on whether being predicted by Guillaume was flattering or insulting.
“So,” Guillaume said, and stood. “Shall I show you what I’ve been preparing?”
He crossed the room and locked the door with a businesslike click. Guillaume enjoyed being mysterious, and he had been practising.
? Most merchants kept their secrets in safes. Guillaume kept his behind a smooth manner, which was considerably more dramatic but significantly harder to insure.
He turned to the tall mirror that dominated the far wall.
It was a magnificent thing. Gilded frame, intricately carved with swirling sunburst patterns, each detail catching the lamplight. Laila had seen it before, on previous visits, and assumed it was decorative. She was beginning to revise that assumption.
“This,” Guillaume said, producing a small silver key from his waistcoat pocket, “is Saffron’s finest work.” He knelt and inserted the key into a mechanism near the mirror’s base. “Custom commission. Two mirrors, matched and attuned. The key stores the activation, so I don’t need my wife present every time I want to commute.” He glanced up. “She was very clear about that. Something about not being woken at unreasonable hours.”
“One turn,” he said, and twisted the key.
The mirror’s surface rippled like disturbed water. The reflection warped and shifted, and then it was no longer a reflection at all. Beyond the glass lay another office, slightly smaller, sunlight falling across polished wood. And beyond its window, a jagged coastline under midday sun.
Guillaume stepped through without hesitation.
“Come along, then,” he called back, his voice carrying a faint echo through the passage.
Lambert frowned at the rippling surface. Wylan leaned forward, one hand reaching toward the glass before he pulled it back. Laila’s hand moved instinctively toward a concealed weapon before she caught herself.
They followed.
Guillaume had furnished the Havralis office as a mirror of the first, down to the mahogany desk, the leather chairs, and the careful arrangement of ledgers and navigational instruments. The gilded mirror on the far wall completed the symmetry. But the room was smaller, the air tasted of salt, and from somewhere below came the rhythmic complaint of waves against rock.
Wylan crossed to the window first.
Below, a harbour stretched out in bright sunshine, busy with commerce that didn’t bother advertising itself. Vessels rode at anchor, masts sharp against a clear sky. The coastline was unfamiliar, and the wind carried salt.
“Havralis,” Wylan said. He was already looking back at the mirror. “How is she maintaining the attunement at this distance? Warlock boons shouldn’t hold a stable aperture across — what, three hundred miles?”
“Ah.” Guillaume’s smile sharpened. “Here’s one I prepared earlier.” He gestured at the harbour. “My harbour office. Laurent runs the operation from this side.”
As if summoned, a door opened at the far end of the room. Laurent Chevalier appeared with a ledger under one arm and a smile that preceded him into the room by several feet. He took in the three de Vaillants, adjusted his cravat, and swept into a bow that was both gracious and entirely unnecessary.
“Madame de Vaillant! What an unexpected delight.” His voice filled the office the way it filled every room he entered. “Gentlemen.” He glanced at Guillaume. “I take it we’re past the discreet phase of the operation?”
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“Capably and with considerable flair.” Laurent set the ledger on the desk, inclined his head, and left satisfied.
“You have a portal,” Laila said, “connecting your offices across two cities.”
“I have a wife with extraordinary talents and a keen understanding of operational efficiency.” The coin turned. “She did the work. I carry a key.”
Laila looked at the harbour, then back at the mirror. This is how Isabella reached the coast.
“How long have you had this arrangement?”
“Long enough.”
Lambert had been quiet. Now he spoke, and Laila recognised the tone.
“You’re very good, Guillaume.”
“Thank you. I do pride myself on my professionalism.”
“No.” Lambert was watching Guillaume the way he used to watch witnesses. “I meant at keeping your other activities concealed. Even from me.” He paused. “The one piece of the puzzle I was never able to resolve, when I was investigating the theft of the egg, was how it travelled from Pharelle to the coast so quickly after Aeloria discerned it was no longer beneath Notre Reine.”
Guillaume’s coin stopped. Just for a moment. “Lambert, do you really think this is the best time to unbury old secrets?”
“Now, when it’s inconvenient, is always the best time. You leave old secrets for later and they have a way of disappearing.” Lambert held his gaze a moment longer, then let it go. “And yet, much as I would wish to revisit this, we do have more pressing matters.”
“We do.” Guillaume gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”
He led them through the office and into a corridor that smelled of timber and rope, past ledgers that were doing their best to look innocent, and clerks who did not look up. Guillaume trained his people well. At the far end, he produced a second key and opened a locked door that led not outward, but down.
The spiral staircase was narrow and smelled of brine and old rock. With each turn the sound of the harbour above faded, replaced by a deeper rhythm: the slow pulse of water moving in enclosed space. By the third curve, Laila judged they were at sea level. By the fourth, below it.
They emerged into a cavern.
It was vast. The ceiling arched high overhead, natural rock reinforced with supports that had given up any pretence of decoration. The air was cold and tasted of salt. And in the centre of the cavern, moored to a stone quay in a body of seawater so still it looked like black glass, sat a ship.
She was sleek, dark-hulled, and built for speed, every line deliberate, nothing wasted. Steam stacks rose from her mid-section, currently cold.
“The Black Corsair,” Guillaume said. “The fastest, most discreet vessel in my fleet.”
Wylan had already moved to the quay’s edge. “Are those compound pressure valves? On a vessel this size?” He was craning toward the upper deck. “And the boiler configuration, that’s not standard, that’s a closed-loop recirculation system. Guillaume, who designed this?”
“A woman in Valdris who doesn’t officially exist. I’m told she was flattered by the commission.”
“I want to meet her.”
“You can’t. She doesn’t officially exist. I just said that.”
Wylan was already halfway up the gangplank. Lambert watched him go but didn’t try to follow.
“The ship is ready?” Lambert asked.
“Provisioned, crewed, and waiting.” Guillaume turned from the Corsair and faced Laila. “Which brings me to why I’ve been expecting you.”
He moved to a chart table set against the cavern wall. Maps had been laid out, weighted at the corners, annotations in Guillaume’s hand.
“You have one of the finest intelligence networks in Pharelle, Laila. I’ve always admired it. But your network is political. Institutional. It operates through salons, courts, the Church, the nobility.” He tapped the chart. “The high seas are a different country. Your eyes and ears are mute when it comes to the open water.”
“Get to the point, Guillaume.”
“The point is that what you’ve seen of my operation — Laurent, the merchant contacts, the favours I’ve done for you over the years — is the Pharelle end. The respectable end.” The coin turned once, slowly. “Who do you think arranged for Captain Voltari to meet Isabella at the Rogue’s Gallery? That wasn’t your network, Laila. That was mine.”
Laila’s ears flattened. “You rotten scoundrel. I knew you had reach, Guillaume. I didn’t know you had this.”
“My dear sister-in-law, I am a simple merchant of the seas, interested in trade and commerce.” Guillaume spread his hands with serene innocence. “What would I know about such things as statecraft, espionage, and smuggling?”
“Guillaume.”
“Freight Expectations is a shipping company. Shipping companies hear things. Captains talk. Harbourmasters gossip. Port authorities keep records that they think are private.” He shrugged. “My network may be narrow in scope, but it reaches rather further than Pharelle.”
Laila stared at him. It was, she had to admit, impressive. She hated him a little for that.
“And you didn’t think to share this.”
“One of my operating assumptions,” Guillaume said, and the warmth left his voice for something more precise, “is that the de Vaillants are always being watched. Always. By the Church, by the Crown, by the nobility, by people whose names neither of us knows.”
He let that settle.
“That shadow is useful, because it means every eye in Pharelle is fixed on you, which allows the far less dignified Beaumonts to get on with business.” The coin resumed its turning. “I couldn’t be heavy-handed in your presence without drawing that attention to my operation. But Valère’s declaration has every intelligence service in Gallia looking at the Aurarchy, not at us. This is the first clean window either of us has had in months.”
Lambert spoke. “You know about Navarro.”
“Captain Alarico Navarro, the Salvation’s Promise, cargo manifest listing one item of extraordinary value. Yes.” Guillaume tapped a point on the chart. “His last confirmed position was near Fairhaven. After that, silence. But my people have been tracking the shipping lanes, and the pattern tells a story.”
He traced a line south from Fairhaven. “For the past several months, there has been a marked increase in vessel damage reports in this corridor. Hulls scored, rigging torn, two ships lost entirely. The port authority at Fairhaven has been attributing it to rough seas, because blaming a kraken would be bad for the insurance rates.”
“A kraken,” Wylan said from somewhere above them on the Corsair’s deck.
“Something large, territorial, and disinclined to share the waterway. Whether it’s a true kraken or something else, the effect on shipping is the same. Vessels that approach the Trench from the north come back damaged. Vessels that approach from the south don’t come back.” Guillaume looked at Laila. “Navarro reportedly went west, but there is no record of his arrival.”
“You think his ship went down.”
“I think something stopped it from reaching its destination. Whether that was the creature, the sirens, or plain bad luck, the trail goes cold at the same point where the damage reports cluster.” He paused. “Which also happens to be the approach corridor to Undertow Keep.”
Laila’s finger traced the chart. The Trench, the Keep, the shipping corridor. The same water.
“Show me where she was intercepted,” Laila said.
Guillaume traced a line from Havralis south along the coast. “She left from this harbour. The rendezvous with Elara was here.” He tapped a point. “She never arrived. Which puts the intercept somewhere in this corridor.”
“You knew her route,” Laila said, each word placed with precision. “You’ve known the intercept corridor this whole time.”
“Within a reasonable margin, yes.”
Laila’s hands were flat on the chart table.
“You’ve been sitting on all of this,” she said, “and you’ve had this ship waiting, and you’ve had Elara—”
She stopped.
“Where is Elara now?”
Guillaume smiled.
He turned toward the Black Corsair and raised his voice. “Captain Voltari. I believe you know the Duchess.”
A door opened on the ship’s quarterdeck. Elara Voltari stepped out into the cavern’s half-light wearing a vivid blue headscarf and a pistol at her hip, and moved like she had nothing to prove. Behind her, a figure emerged onto the quarterdeck but stayed at the rail, watching. Nikolaos. Laila recognised the silhouette before the face: thinner than Alexios, leaner, the same strong jaw carved from less generous wood.
“Duchess,” Elara said, descending the gangplank. “I’d say this is a surprise, but Guillaume has been telling me you’d come for three days now. I was beginning to think he’d lost his touch.”
“Captain Voltari.” Laila regarded her. The last time they had spoken was at the Amber Ballroom, with Saffron’s wards up and Nikolaos carrying the ghost of her dead husband’s features across the table. “I was under the impression you’d sailed.”
“I had. Saffron sent word that Isabella had come through the mirror looking for me. Naturally I turned the Corsair around.” Elara’s expression held, but her voice didn’t. “I was too late. By the time I made harbour, she was already gone.”
A silence settled between them, which Laila held onto.
“So I stayed,” Elara said. The softness left her voice. “Guillaume may own the ship, but these are my waters. And I intend to get your daughter back.” She looked at Lambert, then up at Wylan, who had appeared at the Corsair’s railing with grease already on his fingers. “You’ve met my daughter, I understand. I do hope she was civil.”
“Theodora was many things,” Lambert said. “Civil was occasionally among them.”
Elara laughed: short, sharp, genuine. “That’s about right.”
Laila looked from Elara to Guillaume to the charts laid out on the cavern wall. Weeks. He’s been planning this for weeks.
“Someone had to plan the next part.” Guillaume wasn’t smiling. “You’ve been fighting fires for months, Laila. All of you. I couldn’t help with the fires. But I could make sure that when you were ready to move, there was somewhere to move to.”
The coin resumed.
Laila turned to Elara. “How well do you know the approach to the Trench?”
“Better than anyone alive.” Elara folded her arms. “I guided Navarro and the Salvation’s Promise to Fairhaven myself, years ago. I know the currents, the shoals, and where the creature patrols. And I know what the sirens don’t want you to find.”
“Then we sail for Fairhaven,” Laila said. “Intelligence first. Then the Trench.”
Elara nodded. “Fairhaven it is. Three to four days, depending on the weather and how much attention we want to attract. The Corsair can change her face when she needs to.” She glanced at Guillaume. “Assuming someone hasn’t touched the rigging since I left.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Elara looked at Laila. “When do you want to leave?”
Laila looked at her sons. Lambert’s collar was crooked. Wylan’s hands were black to the wrist.
“As soon as we can,” she said. “There are arrangements to make first. A day, perhaps two. We’ll be bringing Divina as well.”
Wylan’s head appeared over the railing. “She’s going to want to see these engines.”
“She can look.” Elara’s tone left no room for negotiation. “She doesn’t touch anything without asking.”
“Fair,” Wylan called down. “But you should know that when Divina asks, she asks very persistently.”
She turned back to Laila. “I’ll be here. As will the ship. As will the tide.”