Eysa sat on the horizon, a smudge against the sky. Ingbord could just make out the volcano’s peak. She could see it, but they never got any closer.

  She stood at the bow, hands cold where they gripped the rail. It was the same as it had been all morning: Vardvik hanging there like a rainbow on the horizon, forever just beyond reach.

  She glanced away. Looked back. Maybe, just maybe it would have grown closer while she wasn’t looking.

  Still the same. Still just out of reach.

  “Don’t worry,” came Eoin’s voice, soft and amused. “We are moving.”

  She didn’t answer. But her jaw twitched slightly.

  He shifted beside her. “It’s always like this,” he said. “The last bit takes the longest. It’s the water’s way of teasing you. Lets you see home, then makes you ache for it.”

  She said nothing. Not yet.

  “Truth is,” he added, “we’ll be there by midday. Less, if the wind keeps up. But you can glare at it all you like. Might make the island come faster. Worth a try.”

  That earned him a glance. Cool. Not unkind.

  “I am not glaring.”

  “As you say. But I almost think the mountain feels it. Being stared at like that.”

  Ingbord exhaled, slow and thin through her nose. Not a laugh. But nearly.

  He turned his gaze forward again. “You want to stand here and will the island closer, I’ll keep you company. I've nothing better to do.”

  They stood that way for a while. The sea shirred below. The sail flapped above. Vardvik came no closer.

  She didn’t look at Eoin. Her eyes stayed fixed on the coastline, on the crooked line where sea met stone.

  When she spoke, it was barely more than breath.

  “Why didn’t he tell me?” Not anger. Not even surprise. Just the question, laid bare.“Why didn’t he say how bad it was? That Othmark’s no ally. That they’re bleeding us dry. That we’re fenced into a corner, no ships, no money and no way out.”

  Her voice didn’t shake, but there was something raw underneath.“I thought I was being sent to bargain.”

  She gave a small, humorless sound, barely a laugh. “A little trade, a little tact. I thought I was actually going to buy that map.”

  She shook her head.“That coil of rope,” she said. “Did you know I made it?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer.

  “It was mine. For sale there in Skeld. I recognized the splice. I’d botched the lay on one strand and had to join it mid-line. My own mistake, plain as day.”

  Her mouth tightened. “I couldn’t even afford to buy back something I made with my own hands.”

  “I left my home to sail into a country I didn’t understand, with no coin in my pocket … and I'm coming back a thief.”

  She took her eyes off the horizon and turned to Eoin.

  “And you. He never said a word about you. About what you are.”

  “Didn’t he?” Eoin asked. “Maybe not in words. But if he didn’t tell you, did he not at least make a road to show you?”

  Ingbord’s gaze lingered on the horizon a moment longer before she nodded. Just once, sharp and small. She didn’t argue, but her jaw remained clenched.

  The silence stretched. The island held its place on the horizon, just as it had all morning.

  After a time, Eoin patted his pockets and asked, too casually and airily to be anything but deliberate, “By any chance, do you still have that pebble I gave you?”

  She turned her head. “Pebble?”

  “The one I gave you,” he said. “In case I needed to bury you at sea. I just remembered -- I need it back.”

  Ingbord reached into the pocket of her short cape and drew it out, and insignificant thing, smooth in her palm. She held it out.

  He took it with a quick smile.

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  The silence returned easier this time.

  Ingbord kept her eyes on the horizon for a moment longer, then spoke. Not sharply, not softly, just a question offered into the space between them.

  “How did you know I had a ring in my pocket?”

  Eoin grinned. Broad, unapologetic. “You told me.”

  She frowned. “You guessed.”

  “Mm.” He turned his eyes back toward the horizon, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “That first day. When we were rowing. You blistered your hands. Then you hid them in your pockets.”

  Ingbord said nothing.

  “And then you yanked them right back out again. Like you’d just remembered you were hiding a guilty secret in your pocket. If you’d just left them there, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But you gave yourself away.”

  Still she said nothing.

  “And then when I thought about it later, I knew it was gold.” Eoin went on, almost musing, “I like gold.”

  She turned her head, curious despite herself.

  “You knew it was gold. How did you know it was a ring?”

  “You kept patting your pocket. But you never pulled out a coin. Even when it might have helped. So, I knew it wasn’t coin. Still gold though. Something small and precious. Sentimental.”

  He didn’t look at her. Just grinned at the sea.

  “And once I’d guessed,” he added, “you kept proving me right. Not just any ring, either.”

  She didn’t answer at first. Then, softly: “I kept it by accident. After the Seeking.”

  Eoin didn’t answer. He just looked at her sideways. Not long. Not hard.

  Ingbord sighed. “He sent me with no coin, and no choice but to steal.” Her voice was calm, but the edges were sharp.

  “He didn’t tell me how bad things are. He didn’t tell me about you, and he somehow forgot that I was going with half a fortune of his gold in my pocket.”

  She paused, not for breath, but for control.

  “He sent me empty-handed with a walking talking lying stealing myth for a companion.”

  Her mouth curled, just slightly—not quite a smile. “And all the while I thought I was in charge.He knew, damn him. He knew Eysa could never honestly afford to buy his map. He made a thief out of me on purpose.”

  She glanced away, then back.

  “I think I might actually throttle him when I see him."

  Eoin smiled faintly.

  “Oh, no," he said. "Don’t do that. Your hands—they’re too small. You never get them all the way around his neck. Go for his heart instead.”

  She didn’t laugh, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

  Eoin let that sit for a moment, then his tone shifted.

  “He won’t be meeting us."

  Every eye on this ship is a potential spy,” he said. “Every whisper will find its way back to Othmark. There’s no reason for the prince of Eysa to personally greet two failed traders limping home with nothing but sand in their boots, and he can’t be seen to do so.”

  She absorbed that in silence.

  “The crew thinks we’re unremarkable,” Eoin said. “And they have to keep thinking that.”

  Ingbord nodded, understanding.

  “You go first. Get off the ship and leave me standing. Keep out of sight and go straight to the keep and Torsten. No side-glances. Stay out of sight, but don’t look like you’re trying to. He nodded at the roll beneath her jacket, hidden by her cape. “Use the back ways if you can. I’ll handle the boxes.”

  A pause.

  “Will he be there?” she asked.

  Eoin’s smile flickered. “He’ll know the moment you arrive.”

  She didn’t answer him. Not with words. She just turned back to the rail. Ahead, the harbour had drawn closer, crouched now in the volcano’s shadow.

  *********

  The Plover slowed.

  Even Ingbord could feel the careful check of sail and rudder. The harbor mouth had always been narrow, but now it was uncertain. The Twice-Born Storm had shifted the seabed, and the steersman guided the ship into harbour with due caution. The Plover barely crept forward, sails trimmed near to nothing, the hull testing the water like a stranger at the doorstep.

  Only once the lines were cast and the ship had settled did she move.

  Ingbord disembarked without ceremony. No goodbyes. No backward glance. Just one hand on the rail, a light step down, and her boots hit stone. She kept her eyes forward. Moved with purpose but not haste. She was off down a side street before the crew finished tying off the lines. Once she was off the gangplank, she never once walked where the sailors might see her.

  Back on the dock, Eoin waited.

  He adopted a hang-dog slouch, mouth set in a grim line of defeat. A picture of quiet defeat. The crew, still busy with lines and rigging saw what they expected to see: the poor bastard whose angry wife had stormed off and left him with the boxes.

  He slipped out of sight, found a spot just beyond the gangplank, and sat, waiting and watching for the right opportunity.

  A familiar handcart rattled up the quay. Behind it, a man he knew.

  “Skari,” Eoin said. “Mind if I borrow that cart of yours?”

  “Thought you’d be off to the keep.”

  Eoin sighed, gesturing up the hill. “The magician is. Marching off to the keep for a hot bath, a hot meal and a royal reception, I shouldn't wonder. Me, I got left behind to bring her effects.”

  Skari looked past him to the stacked boxes. “Just the three?”

  Eoin gave him a long-suffering look. “Three’s plenty, when they weigh what these do.”

  Skari snorted. “Left front wheel wobbles,” he said. “And it squeaks too.” He stepped back, already letting go. “Yours, if you need it.”

  Eoin nodded once, his thanks unspoken and understood.

  He set to work with exaggerated care, hefting each box with caution. He stacked them slowly, deliberately. Made a show of squaring the load. Paused after the second one to dust off his hands. Grunted when lifting the third. Set them just so, so that the cart would stay balanced.

  Skari watched him for a moment, amused but not questioning it.

  “What’s in ’em?”

  Eoin gave him a broad wink. “Not for the likes of me to say. Magician’s business. Prince’s business.”

  He wrapped both hands tight around the cart’s hand-grips and nosed the cart forward. The left wheel shrieked like an outraged gull. Eoin didn’t flinch. He kept his hands on the grips and carefully, patiently, wheeled the boxes up the hill to the keep, wheel squealing all the way.

  People turned to look. Dockhands, fishermen, mothers, children. One old man squinted from a doorway and elbowed the woman beside him. A pair of boys abandoned their game to watch him pass. A likely lass watched him pass too, eyes tracing him like a fingertip.

  No one stopped him. But he might as well have been clanging a bell all the way up the hill.

  Three boxes. Heavy as a dead ram. Magician’s business. Prince’s business.

  By the time he reached the halfway rise, the story had already outpaced him.

  “She went away, didn’t she? Came back with treasure she did.”

  “Didn’t trade for it, surely.”

  Trade? More like a raid if you ask me!”

  “Stole it clean, she must have. And gave it straight to the prince, too.”