The Girl He Sold Returned as the King's Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Empty Coat

Astrid and Beryl track the missing carriage to a Riverbend grain barge and save the drugged bookkeeper. The page he hid bears her father's signature.

The carriage sat on the river road, a mile short of the station, with its door open and its horses still in harness.

I climbed in and looked at the seat.

The bookkeeper's gray coat lay folded on the cushion, sleeves tucked in, collar smoothed flat.

"Nobody folds a coat like that when they're being dragged off," Beryl Quinlan said from the step.

"Somebody wanted it found tidy," I said. "Somebody wanted us to think he ran."

I pressed my fingers into the cushion and felt something small and hard under the stuffing.

It was a dart tip, stained blue at the point.

I held it up to the lamp and sniffed it once.

Wolfsbane, thinned with something sweet to slow its work.

"They didn't kill him," I told Beryl. "A dose this size puts a grown man to sleep for most of a day."

"Then he's somewhere with a floor," Beryl said. "Which is good, because I've got thirty guards and no idea where to point them."

I stepped down and crouched by the wheel.

The mud there was churned by boots, six or seven pairs, and one set was dragging.

The drag marks ran down the bank to the water.

Along the river, a grain barge was tied under the old mill, flying a green pennant.

Riverbend green.

My mouth went dry.

Beryl followed my eyes. "That your pack's color?"

"It was my father's pack's color," I said. "I haven't belonged to it for a long time."

She looked at me for a second and didn't ask.

"Six with me, the rest hold the road," she said to her guards. "Quiet feet."

We came down the bank in a line.

Two men in green jackets stood on the barge deck, passing a flask back and forth.

One of them saw the guards and dropped it.

"Royal Guard," Beryl called. "Hands where I can see them."

The taller man had a crossbow behind the rail, and he brought it up.

He was aiming at Beryl.

I was already moving.

I had a scalpel in my sleeve and a vial of bitterroot in my pocket, and I used neither on him.

I picked up a coil of mooring rope from the planks and threw it low across his shins.

He went down hard, and the bolt went into the sky.

Beryl landed on his back with her knee between his shoulder blades.

"Thank you, Investigator."

"You're welcome, Captain."

The second man ran for the gangplank and found three guards waiting at the bottom of it.

He sat down on the dock with his hands over his head.

I left them to Beryl and went below.

The hold smelled of wet oats and tar.

The bookkeeper lay on a pile of sacks with a dart in the side of his neck and his lips gone gray.

He was an old man with ink-stained thumbs, and he was still breathing.

I pulled the dart out with two fingers.

Then I cracked the bitterroot vial and held it under his nose, and when he didn't stir, I rubbed it into the gum above his teeth.

"Come on," I said. "Come on. I need you at that hearing."

His chest lifted.

His eyes opened and found my face and went wide.

"You," he whispered. "The girl with the number."

I hadn't expected that.

"You remember me?"

"I kept the books for the carnival master for eleven years. I remember every child." His voice shook.

"I remember the ones who didn't get sold again, too. The ones who got away."

"They took my coat to make it look like I ran," he said. "But I never carried the ledger in the coat."

His hand crept to his boot.

I helped him pull it off, and he dug a folded square of paper out of the lining.

It was soft with sweat and creased almost through at the folds.

"One page," he said. "I tore it out the night I knew somebody would come for me. Nobody would believe me without it."

"Whose page?" I asked.

"Yours. Look at the bottom line."

I unfolded it on my knee, under the lantern the guards had hung from a beam.

The entry was in a clerk's neat hand.

Girl, nine. Fair. Thumb taken in the boy's presence. Sold at the Riverbend docks, summer festival. Paid in full.

Under that was a second line in a different hand, bolder, pressed hard into the paper.

Guaranteed by the Alpha of Riverbend. No inquiries to follow. E. Molyneux.

I read it again.

The old bookkeeper watched my face.

"You know the hand?" he asked.

I did.

It had signed every one of my school reports until I was nine years old.

It had also signed the notice that said I was drowned.

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