Tides Collection

4. Suspicions

When Syrina woke, it was dark. Triglav perched on the roof above her. That she woke up at all was good news. Going through the Papsukkal Door without an exit plan was a good way to get killed.

She looked up at Triglav, who’d noticed her wake and stared down at her with his giant slow-blinking eyes.

“Good boy,” she said.

She took her time hopping rooftops back to her drainage chamber where she could examine the box. It was a normal key lock, well-made. She jammed a chicken bone into it, one of a handful she’d picked out of the garbage on the way back, and pulled it out again. She did it with a few more and studied the scratches on them. Then she took out a small knife from a tool kit she’d stashed with the naphtha supply she kept there and went to work carving up a passable key. It was time-consuming, but she didn’t want to smash it open without knowing what was inside.

Thirty minutes later, the box was open. There was a leather sack crammed with two hundred Three-Sides, including more than a few stamped with the Sun-and-Moon of N’narad. There was also a thick ledger, which she began to thumb through.

The numbers were in order, or so it seemed at first. Expenses of production and materials were right in line with what she’d expected, considering Skaald’s troubles with the Corsairs. But the profits from sales were low despite the high production costs from what looked like a large number of custom orders. The more she read, the more she realized that the amount of product shipped to Fom vastly outweighed the profits coming in. Someone down there was getting a hell of a deal, which solved one mystery and created another. Either Lees was fudging his numbers to avoid paying taxes, or he was shipping a sizable chunk of his merchandise to Fom for free. Especially the special orders—advanced stuff, from what Syrina could tell by looking at the ledger—seemed to be going out with no one paying for them.

The N’naradin importer listed in Fom was a woman named Stysha N’nareth. There was a good chance she wouldn’t know anything about the missing parts or money even if Syrina ever made it to Fom to ask her, but it was worth remembering the name just in case.

There was another name in the ledger that stood out, too. An accountant in Eheene—Ehrina Ka’id. Syrina knew of her. Ka’id was a big player in Eheene. She worked for many local politicians, and Syrina was willing to wager the woman had at least an inkling that something shady was going on with Lees.

Syrina spent the rest of the night going over the numbers, but that was all there was. Enough to confirm Ormo’s suspicions that Lees was up to something, but not enough to know what it was. The simplest explanation was tax evasion, but something about that theory didn’t quite sit right. It seemed too elaborate. There were easier ways of not paying taxes for a man as connected as Xereks Lees.

What troubled her even more was that Ormo would’ve already known most of the details in the ledger before he sent her in. She tried to ignore the spark of anger that lit in her belly. She shouldn’t care. She was his Kalis. He could tell her to do anything he wanted, and he didn’t need to explain himself to anyone, least of all her.

A little after midnight, Triglav came into the drainage chamber. He’d caught a rat somewhere, and he perched on a stump of crumbling clay pipe, holding its limp form in his beak a moment before tipping his head back and gulping it down whole. When he finished, he turned his attention back to Syrina and gazed at her with his big questioning eyes. She watched him eat and thought about all the little things that weren’t adding up. She kept going back to Lees’s supposed Syndicate backing. If Ormo was going to sick her or another Kalis on Lees—or any of the names she’d found in the ledger—he needed some serious evidence that misdeeds were being done. The ledger told the story without revealing the plot or most of the characters.

Anyway, if Ormo asked Syrina to make a ledger look like money or materials were disappearing in Fom, she’d have one for him in fifteen minutes. She could even make one up in Lees’s own handwriting in a couple hours, as long as she had a sample of the real thing to work off of. If this was the only evidence Ormo took to the other High Merchants, he’d be shamed out of the Syndicate and then assassinated. The ledger by itself couldn’t be used as evidence. Just as well, since it was too risky to keep.

The next morning, she hammered the lock on the box with a rock until it broke, put the ledger back in it, and ditched it under one of the piers where someone would find it after the tide went out again. She left the money in the muck in the drainage chamber to give to Ormo next time she saw him.

* * *

She waited until her arm was working again a few days later. The flesh between the tattoos was pink and raw, but the lines had re-entwined over the scars, and the bones were straight and solid-feeling. Her shoulder was still sore. The bolt had cut deeper than she’d thought, and she must’ve fractured something else when she swung her arm around on the other side of the Papsukkal Door. At least the limb wasn’t a target anymore. In the meantime, she sat in the drainage chamber and watched Triglav sleep. She was glad he was there.

She was down to two possibilities outside of going to Fom, which, thanks to the Church of N’narad, would add complications she didn’t cherish dealing with. The accountant Ehrina Ka’id, and Lees himself. Lees obviously knew what he was doing, and Ka’id did insofar as much as it was her job to keep track of it, numbers-wise. She probably didn’t know anything she didn’t have to. After all, the damning ledger was at Lees’s office, in Lees’s handwriting. Still, Ka’id would be too smart to not realize something underhanded was going on. She’d also be smart enough to pretend she didn’t see it.

There wasn’t anyone else. Even if Orvaan knew all the dirty details about his boss, he wouldn’t rat, and he probably knew very little anyway. He was a hired goon, and good goons stayed ignorant of their employer’s business.

In the end, poking more around Lees and going to Fom were both beehives she didn’t want to jab sticks into, at least not until she’d run out of all other options. So it was back to the accountant.

Syrina decided she’d pay Ka’id a visit.