Emmett turned back to Rafe. "What are you asking for?"
"I'm not asking for a mob or a public confrontation. Sloane doesn't respond to noise. He responds to pressure applied in the right places." Rafe held his gaze. "I'm telling you what's happening in your town so you can position your people where they'll do the most good. The dock tavern, the Hargrove farmstead, the western path near Isla's cottage. If Sloane knows the Council is watching, it changes his calculus."
"You've thought about this."
"I've been dealing with this man for nine years. I know how he moves."
Emmett leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked. He picked up the altered manifest again, held it at an angle to the window light, studying the handwriting.
"I can’t run a man out of town on the word of a visiting captain and some altered paperwork," he said. "That's not how this works."
"I'm not asking you to."
"I know you're not. You're asking me to watch." Emmett set the document down. "I can do that. I'll put someone at the dock tavern. Quiet. Observational. If Sloane's people are moving through there, I want to know who they're talking to. I'll have someone check the Hargrove farmstead. Find out what name he's using, how long the rental agreement runs, whether he's had visitors."
"And Isla?"
"The western path is already on a patrol rotation. Has been since she arrived." He paused. "We don't watch her because we're afraid of her. We watch the approach because she asked us to."
Rafe hadn’t been expecting that. She'd asked for it. A woman who lived alone on the edge of a magical town had asked the Council to watch her path. Not for protection but warning, so she'd know when someone was coming and could prepare herself.
"I'll increase the rotation," Emmett said. "Two passes instead of one. Evening and early morning." He stood. The meeting was over when he decided it was over, no ambiguity about that. "Leave the documents. I'll have Moira verify the handwriting comparison against anything else we have on file."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I haven't done anything." Emmett walked them to the door. "Lupeus. How long before your ship is ready?"
"Two days."
"And after that?" Emmett looked back with those steady gray-blue eyes that had probably been reading people since before he took the Council seat.
"I haven't decided," Rafe said.
"Decide soon. Because if what you're telling me is accurate, leaving this town puts Isla Green in a worse position than you found her in. And I'd rather not clean up that mess after the fact."
Rowan walked him back to the dock. The afternoon had gone cool, clouds building over the northern ridge, the lake picking up a light chop from the breeze.
"He'll move on it," Rowan said. "Quiet. His way. But he'll move."
"I know."
"The other question he asked you. About after."
"I heard him."
Rowan nodded. Picked up his tool belt from where he'd left it on the dock rail. "Two days is two days. But I've built enough things to know that some of them are worth staying to finish." He walked up the bank road without looking back.
Rafe stood on the dock. The Ashvane’s bow rail was straight, hull sealed, rigging mount braced for tomorrow's hardware. She was almost ready to go. She was almost his again. The water was right there, the river beyond the lake mouth, the channels north that led to contracts, obligations, the life he'd built on the principle that moving was safer than staying.
Two days. Emmett's question sat in his chest beside the wolf that had been pulling towards her since the first night. He gazed toward where she’d be one last time with a heavy sigh before he went below to finish the cargo mounts.
23
ISLA
Isla hadn't planned on stopping at Griddle and Grind, but Twyla had a way of knowing when someone needed to sit down.
She'd been walking through the square on her way back from checking the erosion markers at the dock turn, her boots muddy, her hair tied back with a piece of kitchen twine because she'd lost her last proper tie somewhere between the cottage and Corin's orchard. She'd intended to pass the café, pick up her pace, get home before the afternoon turned cold.
