Page 4 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

“The first two were missed, at first,” Kota said, avoiding Nore’s gaze. “But when the third theft occurred, Marek—your new sixth clerk—flagged it, and we discovered the previous thefts.”

Nore pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. It was already a quarter past ten; she didn’t have time for this.

“And you didn’t tell me,” she said, forcing herself to breathe through the anger, “because you were protecting the sixth clerk, because he should not have missed the previous discrepancies. Unless you were involved?”

“Ms. Gordon, I swear to you I had nothing to do with it. I was trying to get to the bottom of it.”

She wished Kota had come straight to her instead of hiding it. Nore took one breath, then let it out and counted to five, then took another. “And now you’re going to tell me why I shouldn’t fire him,” she said once she was certain she wouldn’t say anything ridiculous.

“It’s only, the bandits in the harbor—”

“I don’t care about the bandits in the harbor,” Nore said, anxiety rising up familiar in her chest. She stood from her chair and stalked toward the bookshelf, turned, doubled back. She paced with her hands tightly clasped behind her back. The bandits in the harbor didn’t matter, because in most cases, they weren’t bandits at all: half of them were spies or in the duchess’s pay, and the other half knew better than to steal from her. Even if no one knew Nore’s official position, they knew that theft within Miller & Sons Trading was quickly found and harshly punished. That was what happened when one had a finger in everything: they tended to know, immediately, when they’d been burned.

“What did I tell you on the day I promoted you?” Nore said, turning to face Kota.

Her chief clerk had gone a pale shade of green. “That you have no patience for thieves or lies.”

“Precisely,” Nore said. “I cannot tolerate dishonesty from you, and that includes deception and withholding.”

“Ms. Gordon, I didn’t mean—”

“Let this be,” Nore said through her teeth, cursing her own too-soft heart, “the only time I need to repeat myself.”

“Yes, Ms. Gordon.” A pause. “I am sorry.”

“I’m sure you are,” Nore said, forcing herself to sit back down. She still had so much to do before the coach was meant to arrive. Nore brought a paperweight closer under her grasp, a heavy arrangement of marble in the shape of grapes, and ran her fingers over the smooth, rounded surface. “And you will spend the afternoon cross-checking the purchase orders to determine exactly what was stolen.” It would not actually give Nore the answers she was looking for, but it would buy her time—and she could not have Kota sniffing any closer to this. The girl was too smart for her own good. And if samples for Nore were missing…

Kota nodded.

Nore took another measured breath and rubbed her brow. She couldn’t afford to lose Kota. Even though she was too kind, Nore saw the value she added—and having Kota here allowed Nore to travel more extensively, to expand her reach, to hear more whispers and pour them back into Lindle intelligence. Nore needed Kota here if the duchess’s demands on her time continued to increase.

“Right. The next time a theft occurs, I am to hear immediately. Is that understood?”

Kota barely winced, her eyes on the floor. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. Another pause. Nore looked down at her own hands—she had the sense that Kota was going to cry, and it was her fault.

“The samples,” Kota said, regaining her composure, “from the last shipment, the ones marked for you. They’re under your desk.”

“Good,” Nore said. “Thank you.” Nore went back to rubbing her face, as if that would chase the headache away. “Now, please leave me. I wish to remain undisturbed. And I will be meeting a vendor at half past eleven, if you could update my diary.”

“Yes, Ms. Gordon,” Kota said, even quieter. She shut the door behind her. Nore got up and locked it—she was not strong enough with her own magic to use it flippantly.

Alone and protected, she swallowed down the lump of anxiety in her throat, the exhaustion, and glanced at the clock. Thirty-seven minutes, and they would pass far too quickly.

Nore pushed her chair back and lowered herself to the floor. The cases she’d requested were there, under her desk, subtly marked to denote they were to be set aside for her, to come straight to Miller & Sons and its proprietor. She pulled a pry bar from her lower drawer and went to work on the nails.

Inside the cases were, unsurprisingly, bottles of wine. Nore pulled one out and felt along the bottom, her finger catching on the latch—the middle slid out, revealing rolled documents and a softcover notebook, wrapped in waterproof covering just in case the inner glass wall of the bottle shattered. Nore took one notebook from the case and slipped it into her bag to take to the duchess later. She turned and pulled one of the wine bottles from the display case behind her desk, which shifted the entire section to reveal a square space for storage below. Nore put the rest of the documents there for Sparrow to collect at some later point.

Sometimes, it was actually wine that waited for Nore in the red-marked cases. Mostly, it was this: reports from other spies from abroad, documents stolen from other nations’ spies, or armies, or politicians. Any manner of information was collected and returned to Lindan like this, ushered in inconspicuously on one of Nore’s ships.

Once she was finished sorting, she sat back on her heels. It wasn’t just the theft, or the unknowing. She could not be certain what exactly what was taken from her shipments: whispers or wine. And unlike the city’s other merchants, Miller & Sons’ best-selling ware was not wine. It was secrets.

She’d noticed the first theft weeks ago: only two crates missing, but both of them samples marked for her. At first, it had raised only a dull thrum of panic—these things could be misplaced, and sometimes an overzealous dockhand wanted to deliver the crates to her personally. But when the full day passed without sign of them, even though the crates were listed on the manifest, she went straight to her employer.

Nore’s instructions from there were simple: set traps. See if the thief struck again. And then, easy as anything, catch them and bring them for questioning.

Except. For the first time in years, not a single one of Nore’s traps worked.

It was as if someone invisible was boarding her ship and making away with her cargo. There was no other explanation—and though Nore did not know of any Lindle spells for invisibility, other magics made it impossible to rule out entirely.