Page 157 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

“Yes, I know the way,” the girl snapped.

“Good,” Nore said.

She cocked her head. She had lovely eyes, Nore noted; pale blue, nearly violet, ringed in brown so pale it shone gold in the candlelight. “And I know the shields. How do I know me and my crew won’t be incinerated when we enter the bay?”

“You have my word,” Cas said.

Cross looked at him humorlessly. “That means fuck all to me, Khari.”

Nore smiled, flashing her teeth. “Because I have business with the High Lady,” she said.

The boy groaned. “Captain,” he said again.

“Business that’s likely to get you killed?” she asked.

Nore shrugged. “What does it matter, if you get five thousand marks out of it?”

The captain watched her for another moment longer, and then she stuck out her hand. “You have yourself a deal,” she said. “I’m Isla Cross, captain of the Searaven. This is Nicodemus, my first mate. And for an extra two thousand, I can make that two days to Locke from here. I’ll even let Khari come along without throwing him overboard for previous disagreements.”

It took all of Nore’s effort not to smile triumphantly. She stuck her hand in Isla’s and shook. “You have a deal,” she said.

Nore had spent a lot of time on ships—and quite a lot of time on ships lately, in particular—yet she had not been in a cabin this small before. She suspected it was secretly a cupboard. But it had a bed, and it was dry, and she had time to reason things out. Caspian seemed to be weighing his own reasoning as they sat in the cabin after dinner, working on their scheme. She sat on the edge of the desk while Cas stretched out on bed, possibly hiding from Isla and her crew.

“Nore,” he said, hesitating. “Are you sure about this? We don’t have to go back.”

She looked at him evenly. It was her decision to go to Locke, yes; her decision to trust that the High Lady would not kill her immediately; her decision to warn Locke instead of running. Caspian did not have the full grasp of the Nestrian plot, and Nore wasn’t sure how long the High Lady could hold.

She could imagine Locke growing more and more paranoid, shutting down, shutting out. A note from one of her personal guards, pressed into someone who wasn’t Nore’s hand in a crowded ballroom. Nore thought, with a sick feeling, she knew exactly what kind of other means Idistra’s nobility was capable of if Locke did not fall into the traps she had set.

“Going to Locke is the right thing to do,” Nore said. “She has Gail, but he will not confess—and she does not know what a tenuous position she’s in.” She shook her head. “I don’t actually want Idistra to go back to war. I don’t want anyone else to die, and I want to fix whatever mess I’ve contributed to.”

“It’s the dangerous thing to do,” Caspian said. He looked at her like he was trying to read her or memorize her—whichever one, it didn’t much matter. As long as he did not protest, she was not changing her mind.

“And you know better than anyone that often the right thing and the dangerous thing are, unfortunately, one and the same.”

“Annoyingly, yes.” He sighed, scraping a hand down his face. “I hope Locke was not too hard on the commander for letting us go. She was none too keen with my bargaining for your life.”

“She wouldn’t be,” Nore said.

“Why are you so sure?”

She hesitated, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “Because I think she loves him, and for some people, that matters quite a lot.” Because, even with all the times she threatened him, Nore was certain that if it had come to it, she wouldn’t have been able to kill Caspian herself.

His hand touched her waist. Nore jumped; she hadn’t heard him come close. “Are you seeing similarities between Locke and yourself?” he murmured against her hair. Of course he’d read the path of her thoughts. He always somehow managed to.

“Perhaps,” Nore said.

He kissed the top of her head. “Terrifying,” he said pleasantly. “But for our sake, I hope she is all threat and no follow-through, just like my beloved wife.”

“I highly doubt that’s the case,” Nore said.

“Oh, I’ve heard rumors of her body count. It certainly isn’t,” Cas said cheerfully as he stepped back. “But let us both rest our hope on the prevailing idiocy of love.”

“We’ll have more than that, Cas,” Nore said, getting up and going to her bag. He eyed her from the bed.

“What do you mean?”

Nore dug out the packet of papers from her pack: reports to Lindan from Idistra, Gail’s notes, her own. “You and I,” Nore said, feigning confidence, “are going to figure out what is happening to Locke’s power. And then we’re going to find out how to fix it.”