Page 55 of The Lost Reliquary
Nolan notices my agitation. “What?” He stands and moves around the fire when I don’t respond right away. “Did you find something?”
I pull the book to my chest. “Are you going to stop being a jerk if I show you?”
“Lys.”
“Fine. Here.” I reveal Jogue’s drawing. It depicts a street, or maybe an alley. He’s captured the scene in great detail, right down to the graffiti on the walls, a mash of symbols that look like nonsense, or a child’s scribblings.
Symbols that match the signature on the letter.
“Are there more?” There’s an eager tightness to Nolan’s words. “A translation of what they mean?”
“No. That’s the only drawing with them. But one of Jogue’s goals was to spot the nuances of his destinations, capturing the unique aspects of them.” I turn a few pages back, to show him what section the rendering is part of.
“Cyprene?” Nolan takes the book and examines it closer. “We can’t be sure.”
“Makes sense, though, doesn’t it?” The city of Cyprene lies on anisland far from the mainland, in one of the most isolated areas in the Devoted Lands—the former territory of the Salt Goddess. And, most importantly, a place where no Chosen lasts long. It might technically owe fealty to Tempestra-Innara, but it hasn’t been directly within their control for nearly half a century. “The heretic headed to a port city. And where better to keep something as important as a stolen reliquary than as far beyond the reach of the Goddess as it can get?”
He wrestles with the revelation. “We should follow the heretic. That’s a solid lead.”
“Unless he’s already on a ship to Cyprene.”
“Which we could find too.”
“But would find faster if we detoured to a closer port.”
Everything about Cyprene is logical. He just doesn’t want to admit it. But I wait, and predictably, the desire to succeed wins out over the desire to prove me wrong. At least that hasn’t changed.
So, when the rain finally breaks around dawn, we turn our intentions south, toward the port of Phrygis.
“You want to book passage,” says the captain of theSquid’s Shadow, “onmyship?” Captain Cleophas’s voice is low and rich, her manner straight to the point. And a little bit suspicious, which it should be.
“I do.” The haughtiness in the response makes me want to cringe. I do not like this new Nolan, who appeared upon our arrival in Phrygis. Bold. Confident. With the mannerisms of someone who expects to get his way. He slipped on this new skin as easily as he shed the old one the moment he shoved me in the pit, the moment we finally reached the port. The tension of the road, his clear anxiety to gain ground on our target… gone like they were never there. Maybe this is who he really is: a manipulative, slimy liar who knows how to shift himself in order to play whomever he comes across.
Or maybe it simply bothers me that it seems to be working.
“Passage for myself and my bodyguard, as well as our horses.” A hand gestures vaguely my way, followed by a broad smile. “Your ship came highly recommended.”
I stifle a snort. This ship was theonlyone recommended, after twocareful days of picking around Phrygis’s docks, making inquiries about reaching a destination that, strictly speaking, shouldn’t be one any upstanding citizen should be asking about. The crawl of eyes trying to glean our intentions made things even edgier than they’d been while traveling. Exhausted and twitchy, we keep our hoods drawn when on the streets, taking special care to avoid clerics and city officials—anyone whose social stratum might be worth infiltrating. Any gaze that lingers a little too long is suspect, and I find myself searching for hints of the unnatural—a too-bright glaze, a reddening, the gleam of realization. In Lumeris, Belspire, even Sethane, I wouldn’t have given these people a second glance. Common, weak, and meant to serve us. Now any of them could be a Renderer in disguise. Any one of them could be our undoing.
If this worry needles him as much as it does me, he hides it. “Let me do the talking,” Nolan said at the start of our search, more an order than a request. “You wanted us to work together,” he pressed when I objected. “So let’s work together. There’s no smashing through the door here, killing everyone to get what you want. And I’ve no interest in sneaking aboard and hiding in some musty corner of a hold. If we find a ship that goes to Cyprene, we need to make them think we are worth having aboard.” He waited for me to argue this. I couldn’t.
I have to admit that Nolan looks the part he’s playing, that of an enterprising, ambitious young merchant, clad in new garb we acquired for him upon arrival. Unassuming enough to not draw attention, high-quality enough to hint at means. Still, a boat to Cyprene isn’t as easy to find as a new jacket. But between that and his newly calibrated persona, the captain seems to be interested.
At least, she hasn’t tossed us out on our butts yet.
“And where exactly do you wish to go?” The captain doesn’t ask who recommended her ship, or why.
Which is interesting, though Nolan only smiles knowingly as he sips his tea. “To where your ship goes, and others don’t.”
Captain Cleophas refills his cup from an exquisitely patterned pot unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, then sits back, considering the request. She’s tall, with a very dark complexion that tells me either she or her recent ancestors were born somewhere beyond the DevotedLands; bare, muscled arms; and what I suspect is real gold woven into her braided hair.
I like her almost immediately—her weird tea set, her cabin filled with exotic trinkets, but especially her maps pinned to the walls. For the first time, I am able to fill in the margins of Prior Petronilla’s map. There’s unfamiliar coastlines, inlets to foreign rivers, even an archipelago shaped like a sleeping cat. It sets off a deep ache in me, and a desire to contradict Nolan and pick out one of these other places instead. Except… I wouldn’t make it that far. Which adds jealousy to my longing. Captain Cleophas is clearly untethered, able to go where she wants, when she wants.
Meanwhile, she stares at Nolan, who remains unfazed by the lingering examination. If pressed, his story is that he is from a modest but upcoming family, with a very particular business opportunity. Which of course he couldn’t share, but is willing to pay handsomely to reach his desired destination. None of this has been spoken aloud, and yet he manages to exude the vague shape of it with unnerving ease.
“You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid,” she says. “This ship goesmanyplaces.”
Wary. A good sign. Or bad, if we’ve made a poor choice. There’s nothing in Cleophas that indicates she’s thinking about picking us apart for a profit, but the wrong sort of request could get us reported to the local authorities, trouble we don’t need.
