Rafe ordered the stew, because it was what everyone else was having and because he hadn't eaten since noon. Maeve moved back down the bar and Rafe took his drink and leaned against the counter to watch the room.
The man beside him had been there when Rafe arrived and showed no signs of leaving. Tall, broad, golden-haired, with amber eyes and the particular ease of a man who was precisely where he wanted to be. He was watching Maeve with patient, proprietary attention, and when she came back down the bar and said something sharp to him that Rafe didn't catch, he smiled at her like she'd paid him a compliment.
"Dante," the man said, without looking at Rafe. Still watching Maeve. "You're the river captain."
"Rafe Lupeus."
"She told me about your ship." He finally glanced over, amber eyes direct, unhurried. "You'll be in good hands with Rowan and Silas. They know what they're doing."
"So I've gathered."
Maeve came back, set a bowl down in front of Rafe that smelled like it had been on the fire for hours, and gave Dante a look.
Rafe took his bowl and went back to his table.
He was almost done with his stew when Dex sank in next to him bringing him another drink.
"The fae woman's been here a year," Dex said, sliding into the seat next to Rafe. "Storm fae, which everybody knows, nobody's pretending otherwise. Town apparently had some negotiation about it when she first arrived. Elder Varric—he's bedridden now but he weighed in, and Emmett sat with it."
Dex hadn’t been looking for info on the fae, but he had a fox shifter's gift for walking into rooms and becoming part of the furniture inside ten minutes, and the couple at the table beside him had been talking about the lake weather. He kept his voice below the fiddle. "They let her stay. Conditions were informal. She keeps herself at the edges, she practices control, she doesn't make promises about the weather because promises about the weather from a stormcaller aren't worth the breath they're said on."
"What happened when she first arrived?"
"The word 'precautions' came up a few times." He took a drink. "Nobody's using the word problem. They use 'situation.'"
"She's not a problem to them?"
"Not yet. Not currently." Dex set down his cup. "She's made herself useful. Buys local, doesn't cause trouble, keeps her head down. People like her in the way people like someone who's trying hard and hasn't hurt them lately." He paused. "Which is a fragile kind of liking and everybody knows it."
"Who else knows the history."
"Twyla Honeytree. She knows everything. The harbourmaster has the file the Council would have put together when Isla applied to stay. Rowan, probably, given how carefully he manages his words around the subject." He glanced sideways. "Why."
"Because someone was on the river road last night after dark," Rafe said. "Moving carefully. Stopped near the dock turn."
The fiddle in the back corner had picked up tempo and someone had joined it with a drum. The noise level had risen enough to give them cover.
"Could be anything," Dex said.
"It could be."
"But you don't think so."
Rafe turned his cup in his hands. He thought about the river road, the darkness on it, the quality of the quiet.
He was about to say something else when the man three seats down the bar raised his voice enough to carry, talking to the man beside him about upriver movement. Normal dock talk, the kind that ran through any waterfront establishment in any town, trade logistics and route conditions and who'd come through recently.
"—second captain asking after the Ashvane by name. One of the traders on the north channel mentioned it. Name of Sloane."
Rafe went still.
The man kept talking, not about Rafe, not addressing him at all, just two locals comparing information the way people did over drinks. The name had dropped into the conversation and kept moving past it like it weighed nothing.
Dex had heard it too.
Rafe picked up his drink and finished it. Set the cup down. The warmth of the room pressed in on all sides, fiddle and candlelight and the smell of the stew going cold in front of him, and his wolf had moved from its usual settled watchfulness into something sharper.
Malrick Sloane.
