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“Oh. Yes,” Zeliha said. “I trust him.”
“Good. As do I. He was worried about that, seems to think that spies might be seen as inherently untrustworthy.”
“We don’t promote people to the intelligence ministry if we have even a shred of doubt about them,” Zeliha said.
“That’s what I told him. Nevertheless, he dropped a mountain of half-formed ideas on my desk, vomited everything he knew about anything even remotely sensitive that I was at liberty to hear about. One of those gems was that they may have located where the counterfeits are being produced.”
“Mayhave?” said Pinar, who was leaning against the far wall with her arms crossed. “I thought the ministry of intelligence dealt in more certainty than that.”
“Only because they usually keep their mouths shut if they’re uncertain,” Eozena said dryly. Kadou stifled a wince. “It’s a privately owned warehouse on one of the harbor islands. The one time they managed to get someone inside, it was empty. They found the forge, the workbenches, and a cache of copper ingots. That’s it. No dies, no coins.”
Eyne made a warning noise of unhappiness, and Zeliha gestured to Siranos. “Bring her,” she said. Her voice was just the slightest bit too sharp.
Siranos obliged, pressing a kiss to Zeliha’s temple as he laid the baby in her arms. She only twitched slightly at it. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured to her, and walked out the door.
“You know as well as I do, Majesty,” Eozena continued, “that the ministry of intelligence is up to their eyes in work after last night. They don’t have the staff to have the warehouse staked out twenty-four hours a day on a hunch, and it’s tricky to get to it without being seen by the gods and everybody. They’ve done a few spot checks over the last couple of weeks—there was one night that there was work going on inside, but the doors were locked—and they know, because god and everybody sees, that there’s a boat of workers that goes out to the island most nights. Which brings me to the favor that I’d like to ask.”
“Go ahead,” Zeliha said.
“Majesty, I’d like to borrow Pinar and see if we can get any more specifics from that warehouse.”
“And you want Pinar because she already knows things?” Zeliha only had to consider for a moment. “Yes, all right.”
Eozena turned to Kadou. “Highness, I’d also like to ask for two of your three.”
“Which two?”
“Your choice, but I would beverygrateful if Evemer was one of them.”
Of course she’d want Evemer. Kadou wanted just as much to guard him jealously, hoarding him away. But that wasn’t fair, was it? Evemer was stifled in this house as much as Kadou. And if Kadou himself couldn’t leave to put his hands on the problem, then at least he could know that Evemer was doing the very best possible job with it. “All right. Him and . . .” He looked between Melek and Tadek, hoping one of them would volunteer.
Without a word, they turned to each other and played a quick game of tas-makas-kagit, which Tadek won. “Lucky me,” he said, all wreathed in smiles. “I’ll go.”
They went out after sunset, their faces and hands rubbed with ash to better hide them in the moonlight. Eozena had a rowboat waiting in a hidden cove at the waterfront. The four of them piled into it, silent but for the black waters that slapped against the hull with a hollow sound.
They rowed across the mile or so of dark water, the wind and waves blowing shocks of chilly sea spray over them. Eozena directed them to the second-biggest of the harbor’s islands, rocky and thick with trees. The islands were all owned by various merchant associations, who had built warehouses to store their cargo when the city proper had become too crowded and expensive for new ones.
Evemer jumped out of the boat when they got close to the shore and dragged it up onto the narrow beach, into the shadow of an overhanging tree. Pinar followed and lashed the boat to the tree, leaving the rope taut—easy to cut it free with one slash of a sword if things went poorly and they had to run.
“This way,” Eozena said, her voice no louder than the wind. She led them around to the far side of the island, the four of them walking in single file through the wood.
Evemer was so straining his eyes to see, and so straining his ears to hear, that he didn’t notice for a moment that the smell came to him before anything else did—bitter smoke on the wind, and the tang of hot metal. Then, the sound: voices, the ringing clang of hammers on metal. Eozena gestured for them to go carefully, and she crept forward, blending seamlessly into the shadows. Evemer followed her, Pinar beside him and Tadek just behind, as they made their way around the rocky slope.
The wall of the warehouse was stucco-covered brick, built into the side of the island’s steep, rocky hill, and the only windows were high above them. They seemed to be covered with thick, black curtains—unusual for a warehouse, which wouldn’t require decoration—but in the oppressive darkness they could see just a hint of lamplight limning the edges.
“Is that one open?” Eozena hissed, peering upward.
“No,” Pinar whispered back. “But there has to be one somewhere, if they’ve got a forge going in there.” Together they crept around the edges of the warehouse, and on the far side, facing away from the city, they found it. A wide window open high above, near to a rocky outcropping that Evemer would have thought too steep to climb without equipment.
Pinar eyed the rock face, speculative. Before any of them could speak, she was scaling it, her fingers finding crevices in the dark and her toes finding every foothold until she was perched high above. She leaned out, trying to get to an angle to see in the window, but the outcropping was too steep to do so without risking a fall that might have broken her neck.
Eozena turned to him and Tadek. “Too old to be spider-crawling up the side of a rock,” she said. “One of you will have to.”
Evemer and Tadek shared a glance. Tadek’s hand drifted to his side, bulky with bandages. “If it’s all the same to you . . .”
Evemer nodded.
It was much more difficult for him than it was for Pinar. Though she was nearly of a height with him, very tall and long-limbed, she was perhaps half his weight, all bones and wiry angles. He was winded by the time he reached her, standing on a very narrow natural ledge formed by the boulders. His fingers were sore and scraped from trying to find handholds in the stone, and his boots were surely scuffed beyond salvaging.
