Page 64 of The Storm of the Empire

I pulled the bar I’d kept hold of from my robe and sighed. “Where do you want to start?”

It was tedious work, and it gave us more questions than answers. There were bulk supplies of grains and other dried foods, plus bedding and other necessities, but for what? we could not guess.

“Could they be going to the big temples? There are huge numbers of priests in the cities at any given time. That number must need a lot to survive.”

“Even in the cities, the priests do much of their own growing. Temples mostly sustain themselves. Plus, with all the donations they receive, why would they have need of such quantities?” Hazel argued. “This looks more like the kind of supplies the army sends to set up an outpost or other kind of base. I just don’t know what the priests are doing with it all.”

My head was swimming. Nothing made sense. Just then, the dinner bell rang, and we were happy to take a break.

Hours after the evening meal, I found myself unable to sleep. Hazel was dozing in her hammock, and I was wide awake in mine. I was used to sleeping wherever I could lay my head, but I had too many thoughts to settle. Quietly, I found my boots and tiptoed from the room, leaving Hazel to sleep while I took in some night air.

The deck was always quieter at night, and I thought I could find a place to sit and think unnoticed. But when I stepped out on deck, there was more activity than I expected.

A couple of deckhands were shifting crates and two figures argued in hushed voices on the port side, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying with the wind howling like it was. Did storms develop overnight here too? On the voyages I’d taken across the Middle Sea, we rarely stayed along the shore like we had.

Faolan mentioned multiple stops before the Ice Kingdom, but we weren’t even heading in the right direction for Ice, so I had to guess we would be seeing a lot of the realm if we saw out the voyage. But it’s not like I could ask. If I stayed true to my cover, I would either know or not know depending on how well-informed I was in my role. Either way, asking would call that into question. So we were left along for the ride, both literally and figuratively.

Usually, ships only kept a skeleton crew on deck at this hour of the night, so the bustle and movement of crates confused me. Why would they be hauling cargo up on deck in the middle of the night?

Was this some sort of ghost drop? There wasn’t an island this close to the coast, but maybe there was a shallow sandbar to leave something on? Those months I worked aboard a ship, we didn’t do them often, but ghost drops did happened, especially if we were smuggling something and didn’t want to draw the port guards attention to our cargo.

There was very little moonlight, so I stayed mostly hidden while in the shadows as I moved closer to the two. Finally, the tone of the voices reached me. Veles spoke in a harsh tone, but I still couldn’t make out the words. The male whose back was to me didn’t look like Faolan, but maybe the way he had his hair pulled back changed my perception of him? There was nowhere closer to even try to approach, and the rail was absent of cover, so I was forced to hold my position and observe.

Veles threw a rope ladder over the side, letting it unfurl down the side of the ship.

This had to be a ghost drop, but for who? I calculated the distance we could have gone since leaving the port. Even at the speed we were traveling with the storm winds at our backs, we still weren’t past the tail of the Storm Kingdom in a day and a half.

Suddenly, a face appeared over the edge of the rail, nearly making me gasp. I clapped a hand over my mouth while Veles handed the first crate to him. A short time later, another male came up the ladder just far enough to receive a crate. They took only two, both marked with the sun, and then Veles slowly pulled up the ladder.

Not a word was uttered between any of them.

I sank further into the shadows as they walked past, returning to their quarters. I glanced at the helm where the night watch fae steered, but his attention wasn’t anywhere near me. He looked off into the endless blackness where the ocean met the stars, so I took the risk. I darted to the rail, squinting to look over the edge. I could just barely make out a smaller boat bobbing over the waves.

It was impossible to gather any identifying information about them. They were faceless in the cover of the darkness. All I knew was that they took a couple of crates. I went over every detail to commit it to memory but also to make sure I didn’t miss anything important.

The crates had a yellow stamp on them. Were there any yellow stamped crates in the mass of ones in the room Hazel and I were bunking in? I only remembered seeing blue. But there were too many. We hadn’t been through them all. There wasn’t enough time. Not with our crew duties and acting like we were just normal, casual workers and meant to be a part of the crew.

I slipped back into the shadows, staying on deck longer than I should, so no one noticed me leaving so soon after the captain.

A sound behind me made me freeze. Had I been caught sneaking around and seeing something I wasn’t meant to see? I whipped around and found Faolan watching me, his expression unreadable in the dark.

“Goddess, you startled me!” I put my hand to my heart. “I was just…” I search my mind for a reasonable excuse. If he was in on whatever that was, I didn’t want him to think I saw.

Faolan raised a hand to stop my excuses, and my heart sank. I was caught. What would happen to Hazel if they threw me in the brig for this? “You were just witnessing our captain participating in a ghost drop. Same as me, friend.”

I frowned. Was he saying he was not involved?

“It’s none of my business,” I countered. “I was just getting some air.”

Faolan stared off toward the shore where the small vessel was now headed. “Maybe you should make it your business. That was cargo from the order’s manifest, which I’d been told was a gift of wine for the captain. Which is why it was placed in his quarters.”

“So why would he be handing it overboard in the dead of night?”

“That is a good question,” he mused.

His demeanor surprised me. I’d thought of Faolan as easy going in the short time I’d known him, especially about morally gray areas, but this seemed to have rankled him.

“I should take my leave,” I said, daring to take a step around him. But he was transfixed on the now no longer visible boat retreating from our wake.

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