in the water without hesitation. In an instant she climbs onto Big Ean’s boat, settling into her coat despite the rising heat. I catch a glimpse of straight, gleaming black hair beneath the hood before she tucks it back.
My stomach twists, a familiar dread settling in me. I suspect already—but I won’t know for certain until I can look her in the eye.
As with all fat rats, the kind who pay more than they should for what we offer, Big Ean ferries her back alone, without filling the rest of the scurry. I need to assess her, figure out why she’s throwing so much gold away on a few days’ journey. And if she’s worth the risk of transport. If not, I’ll toss her back in the river and leave her to ratting on the shore.
She climbs from the scurry to the keel deck without aid, dripping water everywhere. The coat stinks close up, like sewage. I wrinkle my nose as I approach her, gesturing for Big Ean and my polers, Gill and Riette, to stand aside. She doesn’t drop her hood, so I yank it back for her.
Silver veins her eyes, and her skin is cold bronze. I try not to flinch.
“Half the gold now, half at the Gates” is all she says, her voice softened and slowed by a butter-rich Piedmont accent. Freckles dust her cheeks, a spread of stars beneath her angled, black eyes. “Is that suitable?”
She’s educated, rich, and noble, even with the disgusting coat. And she wants to go all the way to the end of the line, to the Gates of Mizostium, the place where the Great River meets the sea.
I clench my jaw. “What’s your name and what’s your business on the rivers?”
“I’m paying you for transport, not questions,” she responds without hesitation.
Sneering, I wave a hand back to the scurry. “You can find another keel if my terms don’t agree with you.”
Her reply is whipcrack fast. Again no hesitation. No second-guessing herself. I wonder if she even knows how to do so.
“My name is Lyrisa,” she says, chin still high. Her eyes rake over me. I get the feeling she’s looked down on men like me all her life. “I am a blood princess of the Lowcountry, and I need to be at the Gates of Mizostium as soon as possible.”
I almost toss her back into the river then and there. Only the danger of her ability, trained and lethal whatever it may be, stills my hand. Behind her, Gill tightens a grip on his pole. As if he could simply strike her and be done with it. Riette is more intelligent. Her hand goes to the pistol on her hip, unfastening the button keeping it holstered. Even Silvers aren’t immune to bullets. Most of them, anyway.
I wish I could touch my own gun, but she’ll see me do it. “Who, and more importantly how many, of your father’s Silver hunters are following you?”
Finally she wavers, if only for a moment. Her eyes drop to the deck, then blaze back to mine. “My father is dead.”
A corner of my mouth lifts in a cold smirk. “Your father is the ruling prince of Piedmont, currently at war with the Rift. We Rivermen aren’t as stupid as you think we are.”
“Bracken is my uncle, my mother’s brother,” she snaps. Her eyes narrow, and I wonder what her ability could be. How many ways she could kill me or my crew. How someone like her could possibly need us to get downriver—or why. “My father is dead, for six years now. I did not lie and I resent the implication, Red.”
Despite her blood, her Silver-born tendency to lie, cheat, and abuse us, I can’t see a lie in her eyes or hear it in her voice. She doesn’t flinch under my inspection. “How many hunters?” I ask again, leaning toward her, though all my Red instincts cry out in protest.
Lyrisa doesn’t move, neither retreating nor meeting my challenge.
“None. I was journeying north into the Lakelands with a convoy when we were attacked by rebels.” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder at the bank. A breeze stirs her hair, blowing a gleaming, thick curtain of black over one shoulder. “I am the only survivor.”
Ah. It clicks in my head. “I suppose you want your uncle to think you died with the rest?”
She nods, her face betraying no emotion. “I do.”
A Silver princess abandoning her kingdom, dead to all who knew her. And wanting to stay