Milo Deepcrest had asked three questions about her parents' death, and the woman in her stolen seat had counted every one. Milo saw it in the stranger's stillness across the bazaar, the way she tracked Milo's teal hair through the crowd of shoppers. Milo had taken the council seat from her grandmother. Her parents, the king and queen, had died before that, and no one had ever named who killed them. Milo meant to. But the thief in her seat was watching, and one wrong question would warn the killer before Milo had proof. So Milo stopped asking. She drifted between the coral stalls instead, pretending to shop. She bought a basket of silver-scaled fish she did not want. The whole time, the watcher stayed six stalls back, never closer, never gone. Milo needed the eyes off her. She could not hunt a killer while she was hunted. A voice cut through the market noise. "You've got a shadow." Milo turned. A woman leaned against a stone pillar, barefoot, in a torn skirt bleached pale by the sun. Cowrie shells dotted her dark hair. She was no mermaid. She breathed the water like it owed her nothing. Milo had heard the name whispered at the docks. Cleo. The pirate some called a legend. The one who was chasing a wreck nobody could reach. "I don't know you," Milo said. Her fin edges flexed, sharp enough to split coral. "You know what I want." Cleo did not move from the pillar. "My family ship. It's sunk in your deep water. You know what put it there." Milo's throat tightened. She did know. She had kept that fact close, waiting to spend it well. "The one behind you," Cleo said. "Watching. You want her gone a while." "How do you know that?" "You keep buying fish you won't eat." Milo looked at the basket in her hands. She had not noticed Cleo noticing. "I can pull her off you," Cleo said. "Loud trouble at the far stalls. She'll follow the noise. You get an hour clean." She tilted her head toward the watcher. "You give me what you know about the wreck." It was a fair trade and a dangerous one. Cleo would hold a piece of Milo after. But an hour unwatched was an hour to find who killed her parents. "Do it," Milo said. Cleo pushed off the pillar. She walked into the crowd and, three stalls down, shoved a cart of stacked shells. It crashed across the market floor. Shoppers scattered. Vendors shouted. The watcher turned toward the noise, pulled by it, and swam after the mess. Milo was alone. She dropped the basket and moved the other way, fast, toward the quiet record stalls where the old death rolls were kept. For the first time since her parents died, no one was counting her questions. But Cleo now knew Milo's secret was worth trading. And she would come to collect.

The hour in the record stalls gave Milo a name. Her parents had died on a chartered ship, and the charter bore a council seal she knew. But the knowledge cost her. Cleo now held Milo's secret about the wreck, and Cleo could tell the thief in Milo's seat that Milo was still digging. One whisper would warn the killer. Milo needed something to trade back before Cleo talked. So Milo followed the pirate to land. The tavern sat above the waterline, its sign dark wood and smoke-stained. Only hard people drank there. Milo could not walk on legs, so she rose from the shallows at the dock edge, gripping the slick pilings, and watched through a gap in the wall. Cleo stood inside, arguing with a woman Milo had never seen. The woman wore a red coat and black hair past her waist. She spoke in short, cold words, and the room gave her space. This was Trina, Cleo's aunt, the pirate queen whose ship Cleo needed to reach the deep wreck. Milo heard enough. Trina was circling Cleo for something Cleo's captain had taken. Trina would lend the ship only if Cleo paid her back. That was the trade Milo needed. Cleo came out alone to the dock, jaw tight. Milo let her get close before she spoke. "Your aunt won't move until you give her what her captain stole," Milo said. "You don't have it. I can see that." Cleo stopped. "You followed me." "You hold my secret. I went looking for one of yours." Milo pulled herself higher on the piling. "I know these waters better than any ship's charts. The thing Trina wants was aboard a boat that went down near my reefs. I can find it." Cleo's green eyes stayed flat. "Prove it." "I can't, standing here. But you can't reach your own wreck without her ship, and you can't get her ship without me." Milo kept her voice level. "So we're even now. You don't tell the council I'm still asking questions. I help you pay your aunt. Neither of us owns the other." For a long moment Cleo said nothing. Water slapped the pilings between them. "You're sharper than you look," Cleo said at last. "Fine. The leverage dies. We trade straight from here." "Straight," Milo agreed. Cleo turned back toward the tavern, then paused. "My aunt doesn't forgive. If you can't find what she wants, she takes it out of both of us." Then she was gone through the dark door. Milo sank back into the shallows. Her hold over her investigation was safe. But she had traded one debt for a harder one. Now she owed a pirate queen a thing she had not yet found, in deep water she had not searched. And the name on that charter seal was still waiting.