Chiss, leaning against the bulkhead in the same roguish black leathers as the night before, yawned. “You won’t find them on his person. They’ll be stashed somewhere about the ship.”
“Is that so?” asked Cloth-of-Gold. “Where did you hide them, sea-priest? There’s no use prevaricating. You were in my room just now, you can’t deny that, and my rings are missing.”
“How dare you accuse me of theft!” Father Ubb pushed the elf away with a meaty hand, finally breaking the grip on his collar. “It was attempted theft. I’ll admit it: I snuck into your cabin this morning to take back what belongs to my god. But you woke up the moment I set foot over the threshold, you sharp-eared nuisance. If the Sea King’s Seven Eyes are missing, someone beat me to them.”
“That’s the sorriest excuse I’ve ever heard,” said Chiss. “He’s stowed them somewhere, mark my words. Why’d you do it, Father? The Wet Faith not pay as well as it used to?”
“Accusing me of avarice, eh?” Father Ubb turned on her. Now his face was reddening. “Nothing so base drives me. In fact, I was attempting to save the lives of everyone aboard this ship!”
“Mariamber ain’t a ship,” said Alix, but was ignored by everyone save Gally, who squeezed her hand.
“What in the names of all the Lords Below is going on here?” roared Captain Axe from the deck end of the passageway. He was tidily dressed in his blue-and-white uniform and looked surprisingly put together, except only the left half of his beard was braided.
“Cloth-of-Gold has accused Father Ubb of theft,” said Gally, her eyes glittering with an energy that made Alix’s heart leap. “He woke up to find Ubb in his cabin and his jeweled rings missing, but Ubb claims he was only planning to steal them, and someone else got there first.”
“You were planning to steal ’em?” Captain Axe fixed Ubb with a squint-eyed seaman’s glare.
“Yes,” said Father Ubb tightly. “Will you all stop squawking and allow me to explain why?”
Gally pushed her spectacles up her nose, looking for all the world like she was running the circus. “Certainly.”
“When the Seven Eyes of the Sea King were taken,” Ubb said in pious tones, “Pantelever was furious. The Ruby Sea stormed ceaselessly until seven ships had sunk, one for each stolen jewel. The sailors who survived told terrible stories of great tentacles like the arms of a kraken, seen only in lightning-flashes—the Sea King’s fingers, reaching up from the deep to pull them below.”
“I told you!” cried Bishop Draskis. He had been listening keenly through his ear trumpet. “Your Pantelever’s no Lord Above, he’s a demon from Below and nothing more.”
“He’s not real,” said Chiss in a tone of boredom.
“It doesn’t matter!” said Captain Axe. “Where’s the jewels, Father?”
“It matters a great deal,” Ubb said. “For even if I had stolen the Seven Eyes, they wouldn’t be upon my person. My plan was to return them to the Sea King.”
“You intended to throw them in the ocean?” asked Gally.
“Yes. Otherwise this ship is in grave danger. If his jewels are not returned, the Sea King will rise up and take them.”
“Meaning he’ll give us the tentacles like you said?” asked Alix, who was beginning to think there might be something interesting about religion after all.
“Pantelever would break this ship in half if it got him his eyes back.” Ubb sniffed. “I merely planned to make the process easier on all of us.”
“Pish!” said Cloth-of-Gold. “I’ve never heard such rot in all my centuries. I don’t believe it for a moment. Captain Axe, throw this man in the brig.”
“Gladly, your honor, only there ain’t a brig. Regardless—” Axe stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle that Alix could well imagine hearing over the roar of a gale. There was the sound of pattering feet, then two sailors with muscles like corded rope appeared behind the master. He indicated Father Ubb. “Smythe, Ortland, clap this man in irons and stow him somewhere out of the way. We’ll let the Azure Guard sort him out when we make land.”
The sailors grabbed hold of Ubb, a man to each arm. The priest immediately began struggling and caterwauling, but the seamen dragged him implacably away.
“You’ll regret this!” Ubb shrieked as they wrestled him down a companionway. “The Sea King will reclaim his own, you’ll see!”
Alix had no chance of falling back asleep after a scene like that, so she and Gally fixed their clothes and found a spot on the deck to watch the sunrise. It was no less splendid than sunset the night before, rising in a great shimmering white sphere like the heart of a flame and casting a long silver path on the face of the sea.
“You could almost walk on it,” said Gally, watching the glitter.
“But don’t,” Alix said. “Unless you’re half mermaid and I missed it somehow.”
She thought that would earn at least a chuckle, but Gally just slumped against the rail, staring pensively out to sea. They were crossing Daring Sound, the great depths between Sunhollow and the Isles of Azure. The water was uneasy here and Mariamber rolled to every swell.
“Tell me if I’m right,” Alix said at length. “You’re considering the padre.”
“You don’t think he did it, did you?” Gally turned, speaking rapidly, like the bottle of her thoughts had been uncorked and they were all spilling out. “If he really woke Cloth-of-Gold the moment he stepped in the cabin, how could he have taken the rings? I’m inclined to trust his alibi, too, or his excuse, or whatever you’d like to call it. He looked genuinely afraid that the Sea King would rise up and seize us. Whether or not he’s right, he believes it, I’m certain of that. And even if he had stolen the jewels, he couldn’t have tossed them overside. You and I were between him and the deck, remember?”
“I remember,” said Alix. “Being as how it was just fifteen minutes ago. So where are the gems?”
Gally deflated as rapidly as she’d sprung to life. She slouched against the rail and looked back at the sea’s silver shimmer. “I don’t know.”
“But you’re fixing to find out.”
Gally shrugged vaguely. “How many thefts am I expected to solve? I’m a bard, Alix, not a Judge Investigator. I’m not Mother.”
Alix, however, had taken hold of her argument like a terrier at the hole. A good challenge would bring her girl back to life or nothing would. “True enough, Gally girl. But tell me this: didn’t you just love your big moment at Nosepig’s wedding? All eyes on you, commanding the room, laying out the whys and wherefores of that whole tangled mess. Tell me that ain’t a bardic scene.”
Gally was silent, her face contemplative.
“Go on, tell me.” Alix leaned gently against her, and Gally’s slouch straightened somewhat as she returned the gesture. A moment later her head was on Alix’s shoulder.
“Even if I did unravel it,” she said through a sigh, “I doubt they’d let me sing the solution.”
Alix snorted and put an arm around her girl. Together they watched the sun rise, bright and heavy.
An hour later, Cloth-of-Gold called them all together on the quarterdeck. Captain Axe stood beside his burly sailors, who held a shackled Father Ubb between them. Chiss slouched against the rail, picking her teeth with a splinter of wood and looking for all the world like a spectator at some cheap melodrama. Bishop Draskis, back in his voluminous sand-colored robes, stood a little apart, clutching his ear trumpet.
Cloth-of-Gold stood as straight as the mainmast. He brushed a lock of shining golden hair behind his ear. “I have asked you here to witness a spell of finding. Father Ubb may think me a fool to be easily fleeced, but this is not so. Every merchant with any sense knows how to guard his goods, and I am pleased to say that finding spells are the most effective method. The magic will discover my stolen jewels in but a moment.” He fixed Father Ubb with a glare. “Assuming they’re still aboard, not salting over at the bottom of Daring Sound.”
“I told you, I didn’t have a chance,” said Ubb, his face reddening. “I only pray whoever took your baubles has the good sense to toss them overboard.”
“We shall see,” said Cloth-of-Gold. He reached into his voluminous robes and withdrew a small vial. Within it, specks of gleaming silver floated in what looked like blue-gray mist. “I give the thief one last chance to come clean.”
Chiss rolled her eyes. Bishop Draskis coughed into his free hand. Father Ubb glowered.
“Very well.” Cloth-of-Gold gripped the stopper of the vial and wrenched it open with surprising vigor. There was a moment of silence, then Alix heard a tinkling sound just at the edge of her senses as the mist slowly rose from the vial. The silver flecks flashed in the morning sun.
The mist spread, getting harder to see as it thinned, though the bits of silver were still visible as winking motes that caught the eye as they tumbled slowly through the air. Alix watched as they began settling on surfaces around the deck like expensive snow: casks and barrels, ropes and sails, even the onlookers’ hair. She felt a sudden itch and tingle on the back of her hand and looked down to find a fleck had landed there.
Gally laughed. “They tickle.”
Sparkling mist was still rising from the mouth of the vial, far more than it could have contained. The passengers watched in admiring silence as the spell rolled down the quarterdeck companionways to the maindeck. The sailors working there paused, sweating in the summer sun, then began chuckling and slapping at themselves and each other as silver settled on them as well.
