Predictably, Ferdinand blushed in the way only she could achieve.
Osana looked more than satisfied as she dismounted her horse. The waters sloshed rhythmically against the rocks and wood, a fevered hum against the call of the gulls and hollers of men frenzied with last-minute tasks before leaving the harbor for home.
When Osana was close, Ferdinand tugged on the starched cuffs at his wrists. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to wear it in pursuit. The uniform is simply helpful for doing the business of the Crown.”
“So is being the previous king of Ardenia.”
Osana elbowed him and made a point to casually brush an invisible speck of dirt from his ivory doublet before resting a hand on his chest and looking up into his face. Her eyes were that stunning blue of Basilica, and the sun had dusted her cheeks and brow with color reaching to her dark hair. She wore it in a loose braid for riding, though she preferred it free and wild—as did Ferdinand. “I rather like you in uniform. Wear it. Geneva will charge you like a bull the second she sees you in it.”
This was true and he gave a quick laugh—something he only really did for Osana. “I won’t wear it for precisely the reason it is helping me here—it looks too official. Stands out too much. Speaks for the Crown. If we’re to find Geneva, we must melt into the sand.”
Now Osana was the one laughing.
“I hate to break it to you, Ferdinand, but you won’t melt into anything as tall and tough as you are.” She straightened the cape sewn onto his shoulders, gripping the meat of them to drive home his obvious strength. “You’d make a terrible watcher.”
Osana’s lips quirked, those beautiful eyes crinkling gently, and Ferdinand wanted to kiss her right here and now. But if he acted on that impulse every time he had it, they would never find Geneva.
And finding her was a must.
Not simply because Amarande had given him the task, or because Koldo was right and Geneva was a danger—to Ardenia and Torrence, yes, but also to anyone who had ever defied her, himself and Osana included—but because he did not want anyone else to find her first.
Despite it all, for all her faults and ambitions, Geneva was the woman who raised him. And Ferdinand wanted her safe as much as he wanted her unable to endanger people he loved. He did not know the solution, or how he’d truly feel when he set eyes upon her again, he just knew that he wanted this role and would’ve asked for it if it had not been offered.
Apparently, Osana felt the same way. She was partly here to be with him, he knew, but she had her own reasons for wanting to track down her aunt.
Ferdinand cleared his throat, attempting to be all business. “Lucky for us you are a fine watcher with a year of experience. The birds have been sent, I assume?”
She nodded. This was her task—contacting the resistance network still active in Torrence, informing them of the pursuit of Geneva, and telling them where to send information, centralized to Amarande at the Itspi. “You were right about Geneva stealing caracaras. Two missing.”
Yes, of course. Piya and Toka—he’d known on sight they were gone. Though Ferdinand wasn’t convinced that Geneva had had time to call them away as she fled. He thought it more likely that she sent them out the moment she gained word of Celia’s defeat and Luca’s victory. She played the fool when he arrived with Amarande and Luca,but there was plenty of time for a message to arrive from the handful of Warlord advisors she had selected to babysit her surrogate.
Osana reached into the pockets of her trousers and pulled out a folded parchment. “A record of where the birds went. Might not be perfect because we’re sending Warlord birds to Otxoa watchers, and those watchers are likely on the move as always. Moreover, we can’t control what those watchers will do when they learn of Luca’s victory. Stay put? Drop away altogether? Or perhaps, when they learn of it, converge on the Hand to see their new leader? Hard to say. We might end up with exactly no eyes looking out for Geneva because they’re all gaping at the glory that is the Otsakumea claiming his throne.”
Ferdinand accepted the parchment and ran down the list of names and last-known whereabouts of the Otxoa watchers before tucking it in his own pocket. “Well, perhaps if my hunch is true, it won’t be a problem because we’ll know exactly where she’s gone.”
“And what is your hunch, oh First Knight and Protector of the Crown?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. It’s a two-part hunch. We must confirm the first part to make it to the second.”
Osana ran her hand along the gold buttons that fastened the cape to his collarbone. A tiger’s head broach sat on the left side of his chest, identical to the one Koldo wore as leader of Ardenia’s armies. Her fingers lingered over the tiger’s eyes—two small diamonds glittering in the falling salmon light. “What…” she whispered, as that same hand trailed up to his jaw, “do you suppose we do while we wait?”
Ferdinand knew now that he’d inherited his stoic calm from General Koldo, but that demeanor did not negate the fact that he was a teenage boy and Osana was everything his heart had wanted for the past year. “You’re going to tempt me at every soft moment on this trip, are you not?”
“Life is short, Ferdinand, I won’t miss a chance to make you blush.” That was both a promise and a threat, and Osana bit her bottom lip to prove it while appraising him further. “Besides, I need to make up for lost time. Geneva kept me away from you and those rosy cheeks far too long.”
Just then, there was a flash over her shoulder—a man jogging toward them with a scroll tight in one hand, the other waving them down.
“Harbormaster Brundi,” Ferdinand said, too loud to his own ears, addressing the man too far away and too early, but doing so to give Osana time to pull away from him, and present herself by his side. This man would not judge him or begrudge him a romantic interlude, but… given he was as recognizable as Osana had intoned, Ferdinand didn’t much want the details of his heart spreading far and wide in harbor gossip.
“Your Highness, I have the census.” Brundi was the ruddy sort who sipped sagardoa from noon until midnight, all his hard edges soft with heavy intake of the cider and time spent watching others move about the docks. As the harbormaster arrived, he thrust the parchment scroll out like a sword and into Ferdinand’s waiting hands. Ferdinand unrolled it as the man caught his labored breath.
By the time Brundi could speak again, Ferdinand already had all the information he needed.
“It seems that at the time of Inés’s arrival, we had fifty-seven ships undocumented and sitting within the harbor, but now we have fifty-six.”
“One missing?” Osana confirmed, angling the parchment away from Ferdinand so that she could read it better.
“Yes. Of Myrcell, though it’s been stripped of its colors—we found one of Inés’s triptych flags washed up along the rocks on the southern side of the cove.” He angled his body toward a bite missing from the line of rocks south of the main mouth of the harbor. “Body washed up just down the way from that. Myrcellian soldier.”
