canica (3/7)

Kestral. Slaketown. Wendel’s March. A heavy parcel wrapped in leathers. Words whispered in town squares. I slipped a note under a gravedigger’s door, I dimmed the lantern as arranged when from my perch upon the rooftops I saw the man in grey.

'They smoke, some of them,' the courier sneered. 'Foreign stuff. Strong. Good; yeah, good. They smuggle it in through the guardhouse.' He wanted to impress me with the petty secrets he knew. I wondered.

You know where the parcels go, I asked. Who they’re for. I guess that you do.

Wood complained as he sat back. He rested a bony ankle on his knee and started tapping out a tune on his thigh. The guest we awaited was late. 'Yeah,' he said. Tap tap tap-tap tap. 'Guess you guess right. You’d not believe me if I told you, though.’ He scratched the stubble on his chin. His gaze crept round to the window, brows raised over lazy eyelids, his indifference overstated. ‘Why? You heard something?'

Copper winked with reflected moonlight as I passed a coin back and forth between the knuckles of my hand.

Folk say the Margravine’s on the move, I heard myself say. Something’s planned. Something big, maybe. They’re reports, the parcels, missives from her spies.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, that’s what I heard.’

I never saw the courier again, or any of the others. The faces always changed. Only he remained the same. But he never joined me on the tasks he set, and his visits grew rarer and rarer.

‘Follow me, Canica,’ he said.

There was a place we returned to often. We rode and sailed from town to town but sooner or later we would come back to that copse overlooking Hember’s Mantle. Sometimes I would wait for days.

I leaned in closer to the fire, fully conscious of the image I made, my eyes glinting out from my dark face. The others watched me closely.

Each time I would pray for contradiction. I would search for it in their exchanged glances, in their furrowed brows.

The island states are mobilising, I said. The Margravine has grown complacent and the islanders are laying the groundwork for rebellion. They’re reports, the parcels.

Missives from their spies.