By midmorning he was at the dockside tavern.
The freight runners who usually greeted him with nods or brief trade talk were different today. Two men he'd done repeat business with over the last three years, solid operators on the north channel, were sitting at their usual table near the dock door. When he walked in, neither looked up. One shifted his chair slightly, turning his body away from the entrance. Small movement. Deliberate.
Rafe ordered coffee from Petch and waited.
The third man at the table was someone he recognized from the manifest conversation Dex had reported. Older, heavy-set, with the sunburned neck of a long-haul riverman. He was doing most of the talking while the other two listened.
Rafe finished his coffee before he walked to the table.
"Henner," he said to the man on the left, the one he'd traded dock space with two seasons back. "You've been running my wool route for three years. Last month you told me the Ashvane was the most reliable vessel on the channel. Now you can't look at me."
Henner's jaw worked. "Rafe. It's not like that."
"Then what's it like?"
"People are talking. That's all."
"People are talking because someone gave them something to talk about. A forged manifest posted on the supply board with my route dates matched to storm losses." He kept his voice level. Conversational. The bar had gone quieter around them. "You'verun this water long enough to know what a manufactured correlation looks like."
Henner glanced at the heavy-set man, then back. "Nobody's accusing you of anything directly."
"No. That's the point. Nobody accuses directly. They plant the idea and let the river do the work." He eyed the heavy-set man. "I don't know you."
"Garren. I run freight out of the Ardenmere basin."
"Ardenmere." Rafe let the word sit. "Who told you to come to Hollow Oak, Garren?"
"Nobody told me anything. I run this stretch every spring."
"You've never docked here. I checked the mooring records this morning. First time in Corwen's log is four days ago."
Garren's face didn't change but his hands went still on the table. The other two men were watching the exchange the way people watched fighters size one another up.
"I go where the trade is," Garren said.
"So do I. The difference is I don't carry forged paperwork when I do it."
He left the table. Petch was wiping down the bar with studied disinterest. The room had heard enough to know something was moving beneath the surface, but Rafe hadn't given them enough to build a story on. That was intentional. He wanted the questions hanging, not the answers and to see if Garren went to who had put him up to this.
Outside, the dock was bright with noon sun. He stood at the waterline looking out at the mooring posts, counting the vessels currently tied up. Five, including the Ashvane. Two were regulars he knew by sight. One was Garren's heavy barge. The last was a narrow charter tied at the far end, no flag, no visible registry.
Dex appeared at his shoulder. "The charter. It came in two nights ago. No mooring record filed."
"Same one from before?"
"Same description. Light build, fast hull. Whoever owns it doesn't want paperwork attached."
Rafe looked at it for a long time. Then he walked down the dock toward it.
The man sitting on the charter's stern rail was young, mid-twenties, with the build of someone hired for speed rather than strength. He was eating an apple and didn't look up when Rafe's shadow fell across him.
"Nice morning," the man said.
Rafe stepped onto the charter without invitation. The man finally looked up. His eyes moved to Rafe's shoulders, his hands, the set of his stance. Something in his face recalculated.
"I'm going to ask you one question," Rafe said. "And you're going to answer it honestly because the alternative involves me and six feet of water."
The man stopped eating.
