Verecleeve's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The Swordmaker gave Verecleeve a trail, but the trail cost him time. He still owed Jorum a debt. The bartender knew more about the Magus than he had told, and he would keep the rest until Verecleeve found the person who had wrecked his barrels for six years. So Verecleeve went back to the pub with a lantern and started under the floor, where the casks sat in the dark. He found scratch marks on the oak. Small tools had bored the plugs, then sealed them again. Whoever did this drained a little from each barrel and left no leak a bartender would notice. Verecleeve traced the pattern to a loose board in the wall. Behind it he found rope, a hand drill, and a stopper carved to fit Jorum's casks. A woman stepped out of the shadows before he could stand. She wore ragged tight pants and a torn tank top. Three wave marks were tattooed on her cheek. She held a knife low and easy, like she had held it many times. This was the barrel tamperer. "You Jorum's dog," she said. It was not a question. "I track a man in black robes," Verecleeve said. "Jorum pays me in what he knows. You're the price." "Sea Runner," she said, tapping her cheek. "Stuck ashore. A ship costs coin." She nodded at the casks. "His liquor sells. I sold it back to sailors. Six years of tolls for standing on ground that hates me." Verecleeve lifted his rifle a hand's width. She did not flinch. She only shifted her weight, ready to cut him if the barrel came up. "I don't want your throat," he said. "I want you gone. Off his barrels. Off his floor. That's what he asked." "Then let me buy the ship," she said. "One more night. I take enough for passage. I leave for the water. You never see me." He thought of the full moon, and the runner heading east, and the hours he was burning down here. He lowered the rifle. "No," he said. "You leave now. Empty-handed. I tell Jorum it's done and he can't say I lied." Her knife hand tightened. Then she looked at the barrel, at his steady eyes over it, and read the odds. She spat on the floor and slid her knife away. She gathered her tools and climbed the stairs into the pub, gone toward whatever water would take her. Upstairs Verecleeve set the drill and the carved stopper on the bar. Jorum stared at them. "Sea Runner," Verecleeve said. "Six years. She's off your barrels for good." Jorum ran a thumb over the stopper. He believed it. He poured a drink and drank it himself. "The man you want," Jorum said. "He doesn't travel light. He keeps a healer with him, a woman with silver hair and a blue stone at her chest. Grondallynn. She mends any wound with the Magus arts." Verecleeve went still. A tracker could kill a man. He could not kill a wound that closed itself.