Silver Secrets

Chapter 6: Bree

It's a sunny day, but cold, especially down here at the docks where the sea air is wet and fishy. I've finished my tour of Moon Bay's pockets and now I'm waiting for Eddie to finish his shift. His work is a lot more honest than mine, but not half so well paid. Today I got a purse of silvers, ten coppers, and even a bracelet. That was risky, but worth it. Ed will only get ten coppers at the end of the week. That, for hauling heavy crates on and off merchant ships all day. It's not fair.

I sit down on a wall, watching Eddie as he works. He must be nearly done now, as there's not many crates left. It's quite nice sitting here in the sun, even though I don't have a coat or anything. Eddie likes sitting here too. Sometimes he comes down in the evenings when he thinks I'm asleep, but I can see him from the window. He says the smell of the sea reminds him of our home, the real one, and I have to believe him because I can't remember it. I was only little when the raiders came and Eddie ran away with me. I wonder if our home smelt as fishy as these docks do.

"...and then the bitch tried to kill him!"

My ears perk up at the chance of palace gossip. I glance down behind me. It's a long drop to the road on the other side of the wall, where carts bring goods and stuff to the docks, but right below me is a boy a bit older than me and a man about Eddie's age. The older one is a dock worker, but the boy is dressed in a palace servant's uniform. Probably a delivery boy or something. They get sent down here a lot.

"How?" says the older man. I lean back a little, but not so much that they'll notice me listening.

The boy wiggles his fingers around his head. "Psychic powers. She'd've killed him, if the guards hadn't dragged her off."

The dock worker shakes his head. "Crazy, letting a psychic being a bloody laundry girl after what they did to the Queen."

"Bree?"

I jump, but luckily the two men don't notice I was listening. I glance down. Eddie stands in front of me, his shirt damp with sweat and his bright ginger hair plastered to his face.

"Hey, Eddie!" I hop down off the wall. "Are you finished?"

"Yep." He sighs and brushes his hair out of his eyes. "Let's go. I hope you got enough for a trip to the bathhouse. I stink."

"Of course I did." The bathhouse isn't that expensive, though I don't tell Eddie how much I got until we're in the alleys between the warehouses, because the last thing I want is for a city guard to hear me bragging about my pickpocketing.

Our room is right on the edge of Moon Bay's warehouse district. It's in the loft of a warehouse belonging to a 'friend' of Angaret's, but I don't think they're really friends because Angaret doesn't have friends, except for River. I think Angaret probably killed someone for him and he pays her back with cheaper rent than we'd find anywhere else in Moon Bay.

Even though I hate living here, it's nice to be out of the cold, once we've gone up the rotting wood stairs at the side of the building. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if they got too mouldy and fell down in the middle of the night, because nobody has the key to the trapdoor that leads down to the rest of the warehouse.

Clay isn't back from work yet, but Angaret and River are there. They're both sat at the wobbly wooden table and River is reading something. It looks like a letter. Neither of them look up until Eddie goes and sits down across from them. I get my pickings out of my pockets and go over too. Angaret makes me show her what I get every day. I think it's so she'll know when I'm not useful any more. I put it all on the table, but she doesn't even look at it.

"Is River getting letters from secret admirers again?" Eddie says. I wish I was brave enough to talk to River like that.

"That was one time," she snorts. She tosses her black hair over her shoulder, and for a moment it shimmers greenish in the lantern light. She's very proud of her hair, but I just think it looks like seaweed. "This letter is from the palace. We have a job."

"From the palace?" Eddie's eyebrows shoot up into his hair. "Let me see that." He reaches out, but River hesitates.

"You can't read."

"The seal, I meant."

Reluctantly, River hands the letter over and I lean over Eddie's shoulder to look. I can't read either, but the writing is small and loopy and the paper is thick and expensive-looking. Eddie folds it down to look at the seal on the back.

"Isn't this the palace seal?"

"That's why I said the letter was from the palace."

Eddie turns the letter back over to look at the writing. "Is there a signature?"

"No. I found it under the door when you were at work, Edmund," says Angaret. "We've been assigned a new target by an anonymous person at the palace. Two targets, actually. Apparently there was an incident last night involving a psychic named Melanthe and a werewolf named Rowan Bedauri. Both have been sent to a village called Highhold, in the western mountains, for one reason or another. Someone is offering a large reward if we make sure they don't return." 

"Rowan Bedauri," Eddie mutters. "I heard of him. He's a Lieutenant in the city guard."

"Something like that was going to happen eventually," River sighs. "You can't trust werewolves. They thought he could control himself, then as soon as the full moon was up..." she makes a clawing motion with her hands. I want to tell her that nobody trusts water elementals either, and at Castle Alderth they have special toilets so someone like her can't hide in the sewer and assassinate King Lysander when he's taking a shit, but I keep my mouth shut because I don't want to give her any ideas.

"The thing is, we don't know if this letter is real," Angaret says, taking it back from Eddie. "It could just be a lure to get us out of hiding."

"Or it could be that someone is offering a thousand golds if we take these two out," River grins. I don't like it when she smiles because it reminds me that she doesn't have normal teeth when she's in the water, and they look more like shark teeth.

That's when I remember what I heard at the docks today. "I think it's real," I say before I can think twice about opening my mouth.

Everyone looks at me. River's eyes are pale blue and cold, and Angaret's are narrowed like she's the cat and I'm the mouse. I shrink into Ed's shoulder, but I can't take back what I said.

"How do you know, Bree?" Angaret says eventually.

"I heard a palace delivery boy talking about it," I say, screwing up my forehead as I try to remember what the boy said. "He said someone tried to kill someone else last night. He said she used psychic powers and the guards stopped her." They look like they want me to say more, but I've got nothing else. "That's all I heard."

Angaret sighs and stares at the letter, even though she can't read either. "The delivery boy was planted," she says after a while, in a voice like she's just made a big decision. "Bree was supposed to overhear him, so we'd know the letter is real."

Before she can carry on, there's a heavy clopping sound on the stairs outside, then the door bangs open and Clay ducks in.

"Hi, Clay!" I call over.

"Hey, squirt." He kicks the door shut with his back leg. Clay never does anything gently or quietly. He notices us clustered around the letter. "What's that? Are we being evicted again?"

"No." Angaret stands up. She's not especially tall, but it seems like she's the biggest person in the room, even bigger than Clay. "Go get your axe, Clay. We have a target."

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A/N: Hi guys! I know I said I would publish two chapters when one of them is a Bree POV but I don't think I'll be able to get another chapter up today as I have the flu or something and looking at my computer screen is kinda painful :( I'll publish another one as soon as I can though, so see you then!