Luck in the Shadows

for nearly an hour in silence. At last they found themselves in an open square with a fine view of the harbor below.
    The great signal fires atop the Canal pillars were blazing, and their reflections mixed glints of ruddy light with the pure sparkle of the moonlight like a giant's handful of silver and red gold cast across the dark face of the sea.
    "That's the place we want," Seregil announced, steering Alec into a nearby alehouse.
    The place was comfortably dim and crowded. Working their way across the smoky room, they settled in a corner with their mugs. Seregil read through the manifests again, then sat back with a frustrated sigh.
    "This one has me flummoxed, Alec." Taking a long sip from his mug, he rolled it pensively between his palms. "Of course, we didn't really expect to turn up anything. But to have the damn things right in our hands and not be able to wring the truth out of them—It's worse than finding nothing at all!"
    Alec leaned over the sheets. "You really think there's a clue in here, don't you?"
    "I hate the thought of missing something if it is there."
    Seregil took another disgruntled gulp, then sat staring into the mug's depleted depths as if waiting for some oracular answer to float to the surface. "Let's have one more look. No, better yet—you read them out to me."
    "That'll take forever," Alec protested. "You know I'm terrible at it."
    "That's all right, I think differently when I listen and it's better if you go slowly. Just read the «Outgoing» columns."
    Tilting the parchments to catch the scant light of the nearby hearth, Alec bent dubiously to his task.
    Seregil leaned back against the wall, eyes half closed. Aside from helping with a few troublesome words, he showed little sign of interest until Alec was in the midst of the fourth manifest.
    Three cases parchment, ten crates tallow candles," was he read, ticking off each entry with a finger. was "Sixty-five sacks barley, forty casks cider, thirty coils two-inch rope, fifty iron chisels, two hundred wedges, three score mallets, two crates statuary marble, twenty rolls of leather—" Seregil's eyes flickered open. "That can't be right. You've wandered into the 'Goods Received" column."
    "No I haven't." Alec pushed the manifest across to him. "Says right here, "Goods Out of Port" and below it "parchment, candles, barley—"
    Seregil sat forward, squinting where he pointed. "Two-inch rope, chisels—" You're right, it does say marble. But this shipment is docketed for a mine on the Osiat coast." His voice sank to a low whisper. "No, a quarry! It's listed here as bound for the Ilendri pits."
    "So?"
    Laying a hand heavily on the boy's shoulder, Seregil raised a meaningful eyebrow. "So why would anyone pay to ship two heavy blocks of fine carving stone to a stone quarry?"
    "Bilairy's Codpiece! That's it!"
    "Perhaps, unless it really was marble in those crates, shipped back for some reason we have no way of determining. Still, it is suspicious."
    "So where does that leave us?"
    "At the moment?" Grinning, Seregil gathered up the manifests and rose to leave. "It leaves us in a cheap alehouse with six-to-a-bed accommodations upstairs. I believe we've earned a tidier hostel and a good
    supper. Tomorrow we'll see what we can turn up at the docks."
    "What about the quarry, that Ilendri pit? Shouldn't we go there?"
    "As a last recourse, maybe, but it's a week's journey there and back, and it's certain they won't have the gold there now. I doubt they ever knew they had it. No, I suspect we can find our answers a good deal closer to home."

36 Trouble on the Highroad
    They spent the next few days on the windswept quays, tracking down ships running the White Hart's old routes. Though they located several vessels, none of their inquiries resulted in much useful information. On their fourth day there, however, a stout little coaster with the unlikely name of Dragonfly wallowed into port with a load of stone.
    Alec and Seregil lounged against a stack of crates as they watched the deckhands hoisting blocks of various sorts onto the quayside. Rough slabs of building stone were encased in heavy rope nets to prevent them from grinding against one another during the voyage. Finer, more fragile blocks were protected by wood and canvas framing.
    "She must have stopped at several quarries on her run," murmured Seregil.
    "Let's hope Ilendri was one of them," Alec whispered back.
    Strolling up to the quay, they began looking over the various pieces as if