![]() Your snuff is at the top.”įletcher’s razor grin returned as he extracted the small tin. “We reached an agreement on the case, Mister Fletcher, if you’ll recall. “And what are you trying to smuggle this time?” Fletcher asked, rotating an ivory bracelet around his wrist. ![]() His arm twinged as the case was discovered. ![]() “Search him.”Ĭrane stood silent as Fletcher’s companion patted him up and down. “I assume you’ve been plotting that particular turn of phrase.”įletcher shrugged, but his smile turned to scowl. “The infamous Crane, finally come to roost.” Together they pushed the sloop sloshing back into the water, Gilchrist climbing aboard as it buoyed off the sand, and then Crane turned and started up the beach.įletcher was as squat and leathery and unpleasant as Crane remembered him, vest open on a collapsing chest, baring carefully-filed teeth. They hadn’t brought a lantern.Ĭrane put out his long hand. Up the beach, Crane’s welcome party was dimly discernable. They stood with tide licking their legs, Crane a spindly shadow, Gilchrist’s silhouette shorter and broader beside him. Gilchrist swung out after him, mouth tight in the way Crane knew was disapproval. He scratched at his arm for a moment, just above his Guild mark, then stopped. “I left enough for the cartographer,” Crane assured, easing out of the boat and sinking to his ankles in the silt. Their passenger stirred in the back of the sloop, drawing a glance from Gilchrist. Starlight had seeped into the pale sand, making it shine. One never knows what the situation may require.”Ĭrane bared his teeth in a grin. “What are you taking with you?” Gilchrist had seen the case, as he saw everything. Night flowers prickled Crane’s nose like needles. The warm wind was carrying island sounds, island smells. “This may come as a shock, Gilchrist, but some find you unfriendly.”Ĭrane laughed, but Gilchrist was silent as he guided the single-masted sloop around another twisting reef. “Be that as it may,” Crane said, “I humbly posit that of the two of us, I am the superior negotiator.” He re-checked the waterproofed case tucked into the band of his trousers. Crane, meanwhile, was bony and pallid in the way more common to denizens of Brask and the north. His sinewy arm against the boat’s carved tiller was dark, dusky. I’ve been in more of these pits than you. Gilchrist snorted, beetle-black eyes still fixed on the approaching shore, but a few moments later he spoke. “Spare me the belly of that stony beast! Think on our many years together, I beg you.” ![]() “I’m willing to sign the confession, now, Mister Gilchrist,” he said. He mimed manacles around his blue-veined wrists as he turned to his companion. The sprawling prison walls were outlined in a sickly blue-green glow, algae skimmed from the tide pools for crude illumination, and as dusk fell across the waters the gaol looked like an enormous dying sea creature beached on the island shore. ![]()
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