Marina Dre's Arc

Chapter 12 of 14

The freight elevator carried Marina down into the dark. Bullets had chipped the wall above her head. She had the buyer's face now, and his watch with its trident crown. But a face was not a name. If she could not tie that watch to someone real, he would board a boat and vanish into the sea he came from. Her daughter would stay bought, and no court on the isle would believe a word. She needed a name by morning, and she knew only one place that kept the kind of records that reached that deep. She went to the Dockside Archive Hall. The old wooden building smelled of salt and dust. Shelves held logs of every ship, cargo, and crest that had passed through the harbor for a hundred years. Marina knew royal marks were filed here. The trident crown had to lead somewhere. But the ledgers for the underwater traders were sealed, and the clerk would be gone until dawn. She had hours, not days. A lamp moved between the shelves. Chester Halloway stepped out, cap low, satchel still slung across his chest. The old postman had carried her bugged wine bottle to the buyer under threat. She had blackmailed him once, and he had not forgiven it. "You," he said. "I should've known the trouble wasn't done with me." "I need the sealed trade ledgers," Marina said. "The ones with royal seals. You moved mail through this place for forty years. You know which drawer." Chester's jaw tightened. "And if I don't?" Then he looked at her face, at the dried blood on her sleeve, and his anger cracked. "Your girl," he said quietly. "It's still about your girl." He had a grandson he'd left frightened in a safe house. He knew what it cost to fail a child. He led her to a low cabinet and worked the lock with a bent pin. Inside lay ledgers stamped with pearl-woven seals. Marina turned the pages fast. Trident crowns. Trade routes to the underwater kingdom. One entry listed a buyer who had purchased family heirlooms across sixty years. Beside the trident mark sat a name and a port of origin. She copied it twice. Then she set a small shell on the top shelf, its lens aimed at the door. The hidden camera blinked once and went dark, ready to catch him if he returned for these same records. "That's him?" Chester asked. "That's him." Marina closed the cabinet. She had the name now, and a filed royal seal to prove the watch was no costume. The buyer could not simply disappear. But the ledger showed something worse. The purchase of her daughter was already logged, signed, and sealed as lawful trade under the old king's mark. To free Mia, Marina would have to break a sale the underwater world itself called legal.