Page 148 of Heir

Arelia blushed and Tas laughed and held up his hands. “No need to look annoyed, little brother,” he said. “I prefer lovers my own age. Now, where the hells is Quil? Sit, sit. Tell me everything.”

Twohours, a meal, and a dozen arguments with Arelia later, Sufiyan had caught Tas up. The spy paced along a well-worn groove in the floor. Sufiyan wondered how much time he spent up here, doing Empress Helene’s bidding.

“Your timing really couldn’t have been worse,” Tas finally said. “When you didn’t show up a few weeks back, I assumed something went wrong and moved forward with a backup plan.”

Sufiyan had known Tas his whole life. The man hadn’t become a preeminent Empire spy by doing anything halfway.

“And you can’t undo this plan,” Sufiyan surmised. Tas shook his head and sat at his desk, pulling something from one of the drawers: a thin chain of glittering, purple-black metal.

It was oddly mesmerizing, and Sufiyan found he’d reached out to touch it without noticing. He flinched when his skin met the cold metal.

“It feels strange,” Arelia said as she took the metal into her hand. “Dead.”

“This metal is why I’m here,” Tas said. “It’s found only in Kegar and it suppresses magic.”

Understanding and hope hit Sufiyan like lightning. “We need gobs of it,” he said. “To bring the sky-pigs down. Tell me you have more.”

“Idon’t have anything,” Tas said. “The Ankanese are another matter. They deny the existence of the metal, but a source told me they’re expecting a shipment soon. Didn’t know when or where—”

“Thus, the wooing of the harbormistress’s…friend,” Arelia said. “Why not ask the High Seer for it? We have a treaty with Ankana. They’re honor bound to aid us.”

“That was supposed to be Quil’s job,” Tas said. “It was the entire reason the Empress sent him here. As a spy, I can’t speak for the Empress. But the High Seer likes Quil. He was to ask for the metal and claim his intelligence sources confirmed its existence. He’s a prince—they can’tthrow him out of the country for knowing things a monarch should know. I had it all worked out. But now—”

“Now you have to steal it,” Sufiyan said.

“My source confirmed that the harbormistress is worked up about a shipment arriving in nine days. The dhow will bear a green flag—which means there’s a seer on board. Boarding it would be an act of war. If it’s traced back to the Empress—”

“There goes our treaty.” Sufiyan sighed. Nothing came bleeding easy. “You can’t blackmail the seer? Bribe them?”

“The Ankanese are irritatingly moral,” Tas said. “Graft and blackmail carry life sentences, and I don’t much like prison.” He shuddered, an old memory flitting across his face. “Besides, they see the bleeding future. I don’t know how to work around it.”

“Their foresight is imprecise.” Arelia looked out the window thoughtfully, and Sufiyan could practically hear the gears in her head turning. “It’s good for large-scale threats, like wars. They’re not like the jinn, who can see specifics. The seers are star-readers. They guess at the future. They might get hints of sabotage, but they won’t know how, or when.”

“Their guard will be down after the shipment’s delivered,” Sufiyan said. “Instead of stealing the ship—”

“Take the shipment.” Tas pulled out a map of the Ankanese docks. “I considered that. But the shipment goes from the dhow to a barge and straight to the docks.” He pointed to the map. “Then to the Vault of Seers. Once it’s in, it’s not coming out. The seers will have a full complement of troops escorting the metal. I’ve got a grouchy pirate captain who owes me a favor and you two. Even if we could take out a few hundred Ankanese soldiers, they’d chase us all the way back to the Empire.”

Sufiyan examined the map of the harbor. It was far too shallow forlarger dhows. Thus, the barges. Judging from the color of the ocean that he’d seen earlier, it had a sandy bottom.

“I have an idea.” Sufiyan turned to Arelia. “It relates to what you said earlier—about aquatic engineering…”

Nine evenings later, just after sunset and with a storm soaking through his clothing and Arelia muttering beside him, Sufiyan was seriously questioning his sanity.

“This isn’t going to work,” Arelia said. “A hundred things could go wrong. A thousand.”

“They won’t,” Sufiyan said, though Arelia was probably correct and Sufiyan fully expected to find himself in an Ankanese prison before the night was up.

“Ready, you two?”

Tas appeared behind them, unnaturally jaunty. He was in his element.The madder the plan, Sufiyan’s ama used to say,the happier he is.The spy clapped one hand on each of their shoulders. “This is going to work,” he said. “I feel it.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Arelia turned to Tas in a panic, rain dripping off her eyelashes. “The pulleys—I’m not sure how the storm will affect their function. I—I didn’t expect these conditions—”

“Don’t worry.” Tas smiled. “Ankanese prisons aren’tthatbad. I hear there are windows. And not too many rats.”

With that comforting pronouncement, he left, and Sufiyan found himself looking into Arelia’s terrified face.

“It’s going to be fine,” he said.

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