Wednesday, October 16

Siltsilver Bay

Something moved under the boat, and the effort of holding down her panicked revulsion had Indirk gritting her teeth. The oarsman noticed her discomfort anyway and said, “It’s just one of those things they call Grim Confidants, heading off to the Writhe Roil, no doubt. You’ll get used to them.”

Indirk kept her gaze forward on the glassy surface of the bay, its many fragmented reflections throwing light back up to blue-white sky. She didn’t let herself blink, didn’t let herself look down at the inky tendrils churning past in the deep. “I know. Just surprised me, is all.”

“Yep, they’ll do that.” The oarsman leaned back on the ferry rutter. “Oh, get a few coils off that line for me, will you? Let the sail down a bit.”

Indirk nodded, adjusting the green sailor’s jacket that did, she supposed, imply that she knew how to sail. All staff of the Admiralty who were not spies had done actual naval service, and Indirk’s cover story included three years patrolling the Writhesea and a couple modest skirmishes with Vont’s navy, so she damn well better act like she was the kind of person who knew how to let down a sail and who didn’t panic at the glimpse of a mid-sized Confidant in the water.

As Indirk let down the line, she looked to the south, where the local Writhe Roil gleamed like a wet tumor on the shore between where Gray Watch’s quay ended and the Mathik Peninsula began. It looked like an enormous ink-soaked squid half-submerged in the sea, pulsating and sometimes humming audibly with the magic of the deep. It sloughed globular Confidants from its body, their many tentacular limbs writhing like flagella as they swam about the sea and eventually returned to merge with the mass. It was somewhat less disturbing than the occasional glimpse of Writhewives walking about Gray Watch. The Writhewives were easily mistaken for normal sollin anthrals until one glimpsed the eerie yellow glow inside their pupils or a flick of curling black tendril under their collar or among their hair.

The oarsman watched Indirk stare.

She tied off the sail and looked away, just ignoring the moment. When it came to the Writhe and its various offshoots, Indirk was sure she wasn’t the only resident of Gray Watch who just couldn’t get used to it. Staring ahead at her destination – the Mathik Peninsula and the gleaming estates of the Embassy District there – Indirk held her briefcase close to her side. Code Five box for lighthouse renovations? But the file had also cleared funds for further construction of Embassy installations as well as the hiring of more naval veterans to staff and guard the place, something the Commodore had all but concealed at the very back of the file.

It wasn’t unusual for Admiralty clerks like Indirk to run these errands themselves if they had time, so when the oarsman moored at the pier on the Mathik Peninsula and asked Indirk if he should wait, she said “No,” and stepped casually onto the salt-bleached wood. It groaned under her boots as she scuffed through silt, onto sand, onto wind-worn pavement that ran up to gray stone walls and estates with slate facades and brass lamps around ornate doors and wide windows. Carriages and horses waited outside gates, drivers ever at the ready. Watch officers stood on every corner and walked every road. She nodded to them with a friendly smile. She wondered if Phaeduin would be able to infiltrate this place one day. Oh, how the Rhyqir Valley Alliance would love to have someone undercover as a Watch guard around here.

The Embassy office was the first building she came to, not very different from where Indirk worked in the Admiralty offices, just a different bureaucracy with fancier desks. There was nothing to see there. She dropped the file in the Code Five box and left to wander the district, walking with head high like she had somewhere specific she was headed. Here, great buildings were set aside for rich merchants or visitors of note from Cradsoun or elsewhere. She supposed these manors weren’t that different from a Writhe Roil, with all the comings and goings of their strange peoples.

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Nothing much had changed since she’d been here last. Indirk paused to look toward the manor that had once been the embassy of Revan, empty now. In her first year undercover, Indirk had caught sight of one of Revan’s ancient Glass Men on the balcony, a shining golem that refracted the light as he paced beneath ponderous matters of state. But since the Rhyqir Valley Alliance had signed on to Revan’s trade compact, Revan was an implied enemy of Gray Watch. The building was empty, windows dark, estate gardens nonetheless maintained by a staff of hard-working anthrals who didn’t care at all about politics.

Revan’s embassy had been built into a gray cliffside near the westernmost coast of the peninsula, where the Glass Men had been forced to look upon the Writhe Roil. Stepping near the water, Indirk noticed new stone construction on the beach, a wall and an empty doorway with a freshly paved path leading to it. The door led into the cliffside, a dark archway, a hollow vanishing into the earth. It was overseen by a pair of armored Watch officers. Was this the new construction that the Commodore had authorized more investment in?

Renewing her confidence, Indirk pinned her now-empty briefcase to her side as though it held something of great importance and headed for the doorway. She would nod at the guards and head in, if they let her.

They did not. An armored man held out a steel-plated hand and said sternly, “Nobody’s authorized today.”

Indirk stopped in her tracks. It had been worth the try, but now she had to get out without too much suspicion. “A clerk at the embassy sent me this way with a file for Revan’s records.” Maybe she could pass off getting lost. She leaned to look past the guard into the darkness beyond the doorway. She could see firelight in the depths, but not near enough to make anything out. That was strange and eerie. Who would want to walk through that much darkness before coming upon their first lamp?

“You’re in the wrong place,” said the officer. “Go somewhere else.”

The other one was looking at Indirk harder, his arms crossed unhappily as he perhaps noted how she peered past the archway. “Hold on a second. What’s your name? I need to take it down.”

Indirk straightened and looked at the man in some surprise. “Indirk Correlon. From the Admiralty office. What do you need to take that down for?”

“I need to take it down,” the man repeated, and then pointed at her briefcase. “What’s the file? I’ll record that, too.”

“That is a Code Five file!” Indirk lied, feigning pride as she held her empty briefcase away.

“And I’m authorized for Code Six,” the man countered. “What’s the file?”

Indirk blinked in alarm, not just because she was afraid to be caught but because Code Six was reserved for actively serving naval commanders and the Commodore’s inner circle. She should’ve contained her surprise, but Indirk said, “Code Six? Not on your life. What the hell is your name, then?”

Instead of responding, the two officers looked at one another. Then one sighed and said, “I need you to stay right here while I get-“

But someone behind Indirk said, “I want to know, too.”

It was sudden enough, close enough, both casual and said with enough force that both of the guards flinched and Indirk instinctively stumbled away. When she spun to see the speaker, she saw only an anthral woman garbed head-to-toe in fine gray leather. The newcomer stood on the sandy beach, staring at the Watch officers with a very serious expression. One of the Watch officers caught Indirk by a sleeve, as though she were trying to get away, but he didn’t look at her and she didn’t look at him. For the moment, all three of them were focused on this stranger.

The Watch officer managed to say, with a confused tone, “Nobody’s authorized today. Who are-?”

“I just asked a question,” the woman said, looking between the three of them. Yellow light flashed in the depths of her eyes. There were no footsteps to hint at how she’d come to the beach, as though she’d appeared from nowhere. Beneath her collar, against the skin of her neck, an inky darkness shifted. “What is your name, sir?”