Part I
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"If a man who claims to see the future is a fool, how much more so, the man who believes he can control it? We think we steer the ship of fate, but all of us are guided by unseen stars."
-Thick as Thieves
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The leaf of parchment, heavy in her hand, may have begun to wrinkle and fray, but the script held fast and strong on its face.
Eda Thorne is hereby cordially invited to attend the summer's opening hunt, this year hosted on the estates of Familia Veracruz, Valenzia, Saragon, as guest of one honorable Ynés Veracruz, Magnate of Küstenleben. Guests will arrive on the summer solstice and are welcome to enjoy coursing dogs on game. Falconry will be permitted as the weather allows. Horses to be stabled courtesy of the estate.
Your attendance is anticipated and appreciated.
Ynés Veracruz, The Lady Schöltz
Familia Veracruz
Her eyes lingered on the blue and gold seal stamped at the bottom of the leaf. It was still a wonder to her how it even reached her, given Eda's glaring lack of postage address or permanent residence. But lo and behold, while laying low in a wine bar in lower Drest, the most unassuming Lyonnine boy addressed her by name and handed it right to her. She had heard plenty of rumors regarding the surprisingly interconnected dealings of Familia Veracruz, as they so often addressed themselves, but this was uncanny. But what was more uncanny was the phrasing of the letter's closing statement. It was as if she was intended to arrive there, whether by her own volition or otherwise. She imagined having rejected the invitation outright, only to be spirited away into the inky night, gagged and blindfolded, and shipped off to the south. She shuddered the odd notion away and thanked her lucky stars that that hypothetical reality had not come to pass.
There she stood, then, parchment in hand, before the richly stained chamber doors of Ynés Veracruz. The Lady Ynés Veracruz, who was supposed to be one of the keynote guests of this summer solstice hunt. The deafening quiet of the empty halls was only tempered by the occasional shifting of the family's personal guard, posted at the chamber door, arms folded with an air of boredom and a lack of concern. He cleaned underneath his fingernails with the sharp end of a cloak pin absentmindedly.
"Lady's known you'd arrived for the past twenty minutes or so," he said, finally speaking up after the air had lingered in silence between them just long enough. "I would be getting yourself in there before you're doing your rich men's business sweaty and on horseback." In truth, Eda wasn't sure she'd even intended on staying long enough for the festivities to begin in earnest. She'd scarcely ridden a horse a day in her life and she had no ambitions on that changing anytime soon. The wagon ride over from the city proper was enough of a slog, what with the dust, unrelenting sun, and roads that seemed to be constructed more so out of potholes and good intentions than cobblestone and mortar. She gave the guard a brief nod and, upon realizing she'd be getting no help from him, returned the parchment to the safety of her belt pouch and gave the door a knock and gentle push.
The chamber was modest, defying Eda's previous, much more grand expectations. The simple furnishings included only a four-post bed, an armoire, a dressing table, and a mirror. At the foot of the bed stood what could hardly be argued as a wooden bench. Last she'd seen anything that decrepit was the night she broke into an abbey to sleep for the night. Vows of piety and poverty seemed to necessitate the use of the most splinter-ridden planks available in Albionne. The bed was dressed for the summertime in sheer white linens embroidered with impossibly tiny red flowers. Opposite the door was a lightly dressed window overlooking a central courtyard Eda hadn't yet been able to explore, having been ushered upstairs as soon as her arrival to the estate was made known. Down there overdressed guests milled about, socializing and scrutinizing packs of slender-legged gazehounds and fesnyngs of polecats in cages and falcons of sizes and colors she'd never even seen before. The wind carried a conversation aloft through the open window and Eda caught mention of "Hare and jackals, maybe even a pard..." and she felt her breath catch in her chest for half a heartbeat. Whether that had been from the thrill of the thought or the fright she wasn't sure. Before she could figure it out, though, another voice broke the silence.
"I'm so pleased you could make it on such short notice, miss Thorne." Ynés addressed her from in front of the mirror without turning around, no longer scrutinizing herself in the reflection but looking at Eda through it. Her outfit of choice was about as modest as her bedchamber. It was little more than a thin blue linen cotehardie, hair tamed and pinned into submission beneath a plain silk scarf, and a far cry from the fineries of her guests. Her singular adornment was a staggeringly flashy black sapphire filigree ring, kept safe on a thin chain around her neck. There was a hunt, and then there was a hunt, thought Eda. From what Eda did know of such sport, it was clear Ynés was to enjoy a role of much more active participation than her peers. Ynés cleared her throat.
"I know this is an odd meeting place, but it was the most discreet I could think of without people getting too touched by their own curiosity, for lack of more polite phrasing." She turned to face her with an expectant stare. "Well, you may as well close the door. He couldn't give a shit what we talk about, but he's a new hire, apparently. Not sure yet if he can be bought..." She waved a hand limply in the general direction of the door and Eda awkwardly obliged, shutting the door behind her. "Forgive me for being forward, but you are certainly not what I expected when Jabril had described a low-level seafaring criminal from Albionne, but I've never turned down a surprise before." Her face immediately flushed to beet-red and she felt out of place a thousand times over. This girl had some nerve, didn't she? Eda smoothed out the front of her tunic and trousers. She'd always dressed rather practically, if a little on the plain side, but surely a rich girl would understand taking liberties with one's fashions. Hers just happened to take a utilitarian, Obrovoskan bent. It was the way of all seafaring folk, placing comfort and function before aesthetics.
Nevermind the fact they were the treasured hand-me-downs of a dear and long-dead man.
She reached her right hand into her trouser pocket and rubbed a single northern coin for good luck, not that she would need it.
"I can see where there would be some confusion." Eda's face was slowly returning to its natural, fairer hue, and Ynés smoothed out the back end of her skirts and lowered herself onto the bench seat in one fluid motion before waving her over. She gestured to the stool tucked below the dressing table and Eda once again obliged, pulling the stool over and seating herself. This felt more like meeting with a barmate for an evening of catty chatter than whatever important, if discreet, meeting of minds this was apparently supposed to be. She dabbed the slowly beading sweat from her brow with a clothed wrist. "Well, it's no matter. Jabril thought you would be a good fit for this job I have in mind, and his judgment hasn't failed me yet." Ah, there it was. Eda knew there was no other reason someone the likes of her would be getting an invitation to something like this from a complete stranger like Ynés without there being a very good reason to go through the trouble. Ynés gave a reassuring half-smile and Eda returned it with a skeptical and appraising stare back. "It won't be a difficult undertaking for you, promise." Eda crossed her arms and straightened up some, saying nothing.
"I'm sure you're familiar with the O'Briain-Viteazul textile operation?" Eda cocked a brow at the name. They were some of the most prolific fiber distributors she knew of. Their riverboats and wagons were the bread and butter of her footpad days playing the distraction in highway robberies. In fact, she still had a knife scar on her right side from robbing one such riverboat, when the captain's hands were quicker in reaching for the blade than hers were in reaching for her hip sack of noxious quick lime. She had gotten an inadvertent mouthful of the stuff and white-hot iron to burn the cut closed for her efforts that night. She shifted in her seat as she recalled the sensation of accepting death as she was unceremoniously tossed overboard to bleed out, drown in the river, or suffocate on the lime, whatever had the gumption to take her first. "Yes, miss, you could say that." The answer seemed to satisfy and Ynés clasped her hands together in her lap, leaning to peer out the window from her seat. The huntsmen were eager and the horses tacked, so it wouldn't be much longer now before the festivities began. "I figured you would be, so that will thankfully keep this brief. We have a contract going, Lady O'Briain and I. With Jabril having taken up a post in Nordenmark with the Fervent Tempest it's become difficult to secure and transport our raw indigo to her quickly and safely." Eda followed Ynés' gaze out the window to a particularly uncooperative gelding making a scene in the courtyard beyond. "I'm hoping," Ynés began, somewhat distracted, "that you can be as prompt and discreet with my product as you have been thus far in handling your invitation. You'd be compensated appropriately and compensated for any additional stops I require you to make along the Saragon-Albionne route. Of course, you'd have to captain, but given whose wing you were last under, that should be a non-issue."
Eda didn't mind notoriety. In fact she welcomed it, but it was baffling to her how some well-off farmers from Saragon gathered so much dirt on her in the first place. She would have to look further into this Jabril fellow and see for herself. "Does any of this interest you at all, miss Thorne?" Eda studied her face for a moment, not finding signs of deceit and instead only hopeful expectation. "I'm assuming there's a catch?"
Ynés chuckled a little. "There's no catch as long as you don't get nosey in the bottom of the cargo hold and if anyone asks you don't know what's down there. Port authority doesn't like standing around down there for more than an hour or so anyway, what with the smell."
Eda didn't laugh.
"Fine. You'll be making cargo drops under the table as well. Things I don't want taxed to the nth degree. Nothing that immediately concerning, but I have a city to bankroll now. I'm sure you understand." Eda did understand, but didn't particularly like the sound of it. She didn't take too kindly to being made a fetch-maid for someone else's shadowy business dealings. But all that coin, however... Eda's own meager coffers were growing frighteningly light. She swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat.
"I'll have to see the coin first."
Eda's bright eyes never left Ynés' own startlingly blue ones.
Ynés didn't skip a beat. "I had a feeling you would say that." Her expression remained serene and unchanged. "Open that drawer next to you," she said, motioning again with a hand to the dressing table. The drawer came free with a gentle tug and slid with a satisfying smoothness.
Eda's breath hitched in her throat once more, this time in shock. Nestled in a bed of black crushed velvet was the biggest chunk of Obrovoskan amber she had ever laid eyes upon. Even uncut and unpolished, it gleamed pale and soft in the filtered sunlight, casting beams of refracted light around the drawer and into her face. Eskin had once spoken of the beauty of Obrovoskan amber, and how men would fight over pieces a fraction of the size of this one, which would've filled at least half her palm. She caught herself mouth-agape staring into the drawer when Ynés spoke up once more.
"It's real, don't worry. It should cover at the very least the cost of your services for the better part of the year. You'll receive a couple of stocked coffers to stow specifically for other expenses while you're traveling."
Eda's head swam. If this was to be her payment for just shy of a year's work, what on earth was she really dealing with here? Some men saved their entire lives to amass the wealth that now sat in the drawer next to her. Before pressing further, Eda decided some questions were best left to answer themselves with time.
"Well?"
Eda's eyes snapped to attention. Before she found herself even giving it consideration, she nodded her head.
Ynés pulled a pin out of her scarf and gave her palm a firm prick. A bead of crimson pooled and gently rolled down the crevices of her hand.
"I hate doing this right here, and like this, but I think I'm going to have to run off before Lladro's bitten by my horse again." Ynés took the liberty of reaching for Eda's hand, pricking hers, and clasped theirs together before Eda could object. The sting of the prick was soon dulled by the squeeze of Ynés' delicate-but-firm grasp and the warm, slick slip of the blood between them.
"I take it you know how to shoot?"