“But the elf’s spell didn’t turn up so much as a chip. Someone else must’ve dumped the rings.”
“Perhaps,” Gally said. “But why? Father Ubb has the only motive to throw the Sea King’s Eyes away. I would guess someone managed to stash them somewhere Cloth-of-Gold’s spell couldn’t reach.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know.” Gally gave her an apologetic smile. “Magic?”
That settled it for a few hours, till the sun mounted the noontime sky and eight bells called the sailors to dinner. Gally, who had spent the morning grilling them on work songs and shanties, was invited to mess belowdecks and gladly went along. Alix remained on the quarterdeck, not particularly hungry and content to enjoy the breeze.
After a while watching the sunlight glitter on the broken-glass surface of the sea, she shut her eyes and listened to the sounds of the ocean. She wanted to hear the world like Gally did with her trained ear: the waves pattering on Mariamber’s prow as she cut through the water, the wind beating the sails, the occasional call of a gull as they neared the Isles of Azure.
And… a rat?
Alix cocked her head, trying to capture the sound. It came and went unpredictably, like the rat was scurrying back and forth beneath a gap in the planks and only audible from one spot. She peeked beneath her boots, but there was no hole. Something else was causing the sound to rise and fall.
But what? In her position on the raised quarterdeck, Alix stood directly above one of the passenger cabins. She shut her eyes again and tried to think like Gally, imagining the narrow hallway formed by bulkheads through which little doors opened on the cabins. She imagined herself walking down that hall, making a left…
Chiss’s cabin. Alix was standing above the acerbic rogue’s quarters, she was sure of it. The sound of the rat still came and went, but she couldn’t begin to explain what it signified, or why the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end.
Alix shook her head like a horse shooing flies and made for the companionway. Something was afoot, no doubting it, and it was better to tell Gally now than risk being tardy with information. Gally would know what to make of the strange sound—
She nearly walked straight into the gal in question, who came up short on the steps of the companionway and stared wide-eyed at Alix, a coil of springy blonde hair hanging over one cheek and her glasses askew.
“What is it?” Gally asked.
“Probably nothing,” said Alix. “But I reckoned I ought to say—I’m hearing something.”
“What?”
“A rat—no need to tell me, they’re common enough on ships—but a strange one. The sound comes and goes, loud and soft, there and gone again. It’s in Chiss’s cabin.”
“You’re sure?”
“As steel.”
Gally straightened her glasses. “Cavalier… let’s go solve a mystery.”
A hundred heartbeats later Gally stood watch in the hallway, wearing an air of trying her damnedest to project nonchalance, as Alix eased Chiss’s cabin door open. The little room was dim, and quiet other than the creaking of the ship’s timbers, the slap of the waves, and—
The sudden chittering of a rat, so loud Alix startled and nearly fell backward into the hall.
“That is strange,” Gally whispered.
“Told you.”
Alix slipped through the door and shut it silently behind her. The cabin was dark aside from a little daylight slipping through cracks in the planking above her head, catching dust motes in faint-glowing curtains. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust, and while she waited, she listened.
The rat noise had come from the near corner of the cabin, to the left. It was quiet now, but Alix could hear the soft tack-tacking of an animal scurrying across the floorboards. She held her breath. The rat came closer, but quietly… until all at once its chittering was amplified tenfold and the whole cabin seemed filled with an army of squeaking, snuffling rodents.
Alix pounced, and landed soft-footed in the corner with one arm making a barrier and the other clamping down on something much colder, harder, and clankier than an animal.
As the cornered rat leapt over Alix’s arm and shot away into the shadows, she lifted the thing she’d grabbed: Bishop Draskis’s ear trumpet, the mouth of which was half filled with blanket batting, frayed bits of tarry rope, and a kingly store of biscuit crumbs. As she raised it to her face to get a better look, the rat’s unfinished nest slipped out in a shower of detritus. From the little end of the trumpet, the part Draskis stuck in his ear-hole, the shushing sound of sliding junk rang out into the room at an astonishing volume.
Gally turned instantly from her vigil when Alix slipped back out the cabin door. “What was that noise?”
“Rat droppings.” Alix held up the ear trumpet. “Made louder by this gewgaw. Is it magic, you think?”
Gally took the trumpet and rubbed two fingers together beside its mouth. The sound was clearly audible in the hall, resounding from the listening end. “It’s absolutely magic.”
A leather-lunged shout came from high above their heads, needing no magical amplification: “Deck, there! Land ho! Two points off the port bow, and she looks like the Isles!”
Alix and Gally shared a look. There was little time left if they hoped to unravel this mystery. Soon Mariamber would make port, Father Ubb would be unloaded on the Azure Guard, and the real thief would slip away with the Sea King’s Eyes.
Alix blinked in the sudden glare of the maindeck. Up on the quarterdeck, Captain Axe hovered at the quartermaster’s shoulder as she made some minute adjustment to their course, glancing back and forth between the mainsail and a compass near the wheel. Gally wasted no time, but darted right up the steps to Axe’s side. Alix’s heart leapt to see her in action.
“You’re holding the wrong man,” Gally was saying as Alix joined them by the wheel. She showed Axe the ear trumpet. “We found this in Chiss’s cabin.”
“The bishop’s listenin’ horn?” Captain Axe tugged at his braided beard. “What’s it signify?”
“Well…” Gally hesitated, glancing at Alix. “I’m not certain. If I had to guess, I would say Chiss took it off Bishop Draskis so she could use it to listen at Cloth-of-Gold’s door. He mentioned he was a light sleeper—a thief would want to make sure he was out.”
“And she stowed the horn where, under her bunk?”
“Not exactly,” said Alix. “It was in the corner of her cabin. On the floor.”
