A Brother's Price

stunned by the insight to Halley’s soul.
    “Yes. I think I finally realized why Halley vanished.”
    “Any idea as to where ?”
    Ren shook her head. “No, and if I’m going to offer for Jerin, I need to find her soon.”
    Raven looked pessimistic. “I have been searching for her, discreetly, not that any of my people could bring her home against her will if they found her.”
    Ren snarled a curse, getting up to cross the room to the washbasin. “I can’t offer for Jerin without Halley. I can’t put word out to Halley that I need her back to make an offer; if I did, the world would know.”
    “It might be the only thing to make her surface.”
    The newspaper story of the attack on Odelia should have brought her running . Ren could think of only one reason why Halley hadn’t reappeared when Odelia was wounded.
    “It would add fuel to fire the rumors about her.” Ren splashed cold water onto her face; it dampened old tears that burned anew. She leaned over the bowl, water dripping from her face, blinking away the salt fire in her eyes. “Plus our enemies will then know that she is traveling without royal guard.”
    Raven held out the hand towel. “I’ll set more people on finding her. Quietly.”
    Ren scrubbed dry her face. “Would it put you short on finding the Prophets?”
    “Oh, yes, the cannons. We found the ship they used to transport them from Heron Landing. The Onward . The cannons were unloaded, here in Mayfair, the night before we arrived.”
    Ren started to smile, then remembered Raven’s theory on how they could find the ship. “The crew is dead?”
    “The thieves included two kegs of ale, heavily laced with arsenic, with their payment. The captain and eight of her sisters are dead. Six more are not expected to live.”
    Ren jolted at the name of the poison. “Did any survive to talk?”
    “None that interacted with the thieves directly,” Raven said. “Those who did survive told us the captain was hired in Heron Landing to pick up ten heavy crates downriver, and give passage to the gentry family riding herd on the cargo.”
    “What made them think the women were gentry?”
    “Cut of the clothes they wore, the way they talked. There were eight to ten of them in their late teens and twenties, fair of coloring, average height and weight.”
    So the cannons were here nearly ten days ago. Most of the witnesses were dead. Dozens of ships had come and gone during that time.
    “So our haystack grows again.”
    “They only had a few hours to hide the cannons before my orders to check all incoming and outgoing cargo arrived in Mayfair. There’s hope we can run them to ground. We also have a lead.”
    Raven reached into her vest pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was a leaf of common foolscap, cheap in quality, the fool grinning at her in the watermark. With a light hand, someone had covered one side of the paper with pencil shading, revealing a series of crude pictures marching across the paper like letters.
    “What’s this?”
    “A trick I picked up. If someone has written on the top sheet of a pile of papers, the next sheet down retains an impression of the writing. You can capture the impression by shading the page with a graphite pencil.” Raven grinned smugly. “The drawings are written thieves’ cant. Apparently the thieves wanted the cannons elsewhere. During the trip, they tried to talk the captain into changing the scheduled stops and couldn’t. They also tried to hire the ship out once they arrived at May-fair, but didn’t want to wait for the two-day layover that the Onward had planned. They borrowed paper to write out this note and sent it by runner. A short time later a woman showed up with some roustabouts and wagons to unload the cannons. Lucky for us, the gentry returned the unused paper.”
    Ren gazed at the crude drawings. “Can you read it?”
    Raven’s mouth gathered into a chagrined smile. “No.
    I’m trying to track down someone who can read it and yet would be unlikely to be involved in this case. I don’t want to tip off our thieves.“
    Ren stripped out of her sleeping shirt and started to dress in the clothes laid out for her. The idea of waiting chafed. The longer they waited, the less chance they had of finding these murderers. She was buttoning her slacks when an idea came to her. “I wonder—do you think the Whistlers still know their thieves’ cant?”
    Raven shrugged. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
     
    Eldest Whistler nodded