The second day brought wind and a traveler who specialized in useful lies.
They met him at a cross-canal inn that still served bitter tea and worse bread. He was thin, ink-stained, and wore a coat covered in pockets that bulged with rolled maps. His name, he declared with a flourishing bow, was Pell. He claimed to sell the most accurate charts of the upper canal system available to mortal coin.
“Also the least accurate,” he added cheerfully when Kael raised an eyebrow. “Depends on the customer’s face. You lot look like you need the true ones. Or possibly the ones that keep you alive. I can never tell until the second cup.”
Sera’s hand rested near her rod. Vesh examined a sample map with scholarly suspicion. The lines shifted slightly when Lira’s lattice brushed them—glass-ink, lightly s
