‘The likes of him won’t be near the Assembly building,’ Jenkins said.
‘Which makes me think that whatever’s happening at dock forty-nine,’ Cora said, ‘the distance from the Assembly isn’t an accident.’
‘Business that Kranna doesn’t want to share with the Commission?’
‘Or someone looking for a Captain Tennworth. This might be our way to her, through her trade. The wares in the winery had to come into the city from somewhere. What number are we up to?’
Jenkins had been counting off the small signs displayed at each dock. ‘Forty-six, forty-seven.’
The docks had become meaner and smaller the further they’d travelled from Hook Square. Now, the quay curved away from them, and as they rounded the bend, dock forty-eight appeared, and then, beside it, was a world of activity.
‘Well,’ Cora said. ‘Would you look at that?’
There was a fleet of small barges crammed into the space of dock forty-nine. Each one was low in the water, and it was no wonder given the amount of barrels and crates being carried onto them by nimble bargehands.
She and Jenkins watched from behind a cart nearby, one that had been recently unloaded, given the traces of cabbage leaves and squashed sintas left behind.
‘That doesn’t look like wine to me,’ Jenkins said, nodding towards the goods on the quayside.
It was fresh food going onto the barge, as well as sacks of flour and what might be dried figs – longer-lasting supplies for wherever this barge was going.
‘But nothing anyone would have any need to hide,’ Cora said.
‘Unless the papers aren’t in order,’ Jenkins said, and started for the quayside, ready to demand the most common yet precious commodity in the Union: the appropriate paperwork.
But Cora held her back. ‘If this is Kranna’s business, and so maybe Tennworth’s, plain clothes might be better. Keep yourself out of sight, Constable.’
Cora made her way casually to a heavily pierced young Casker woman who was ticking things off a list.
‘Help you?’ the woman said, without looking up from her paper.
‘That depends,’ Cora said quietly. ‘You logged this with the Wheelhouse?’
The woman looked up in alarm. ‘Who’s asking?’
Cora gave the woman a glimpse of her badge then tucked it away again. ‘No need for there to be a fuss. I just want to know where this lot is going.’
The woman swallowed audibly and the piercings in her cheeks seemed to jump. ‘South.’
‘And why aren’t you declaring it?’
‘She said the Assembly might stop it.’
‘She?’ Cora said. ‘You mean Casker Chambers Kranna?’
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘How do you know—’
‘Never mind that.’ All around them, Casker men and women were moving the goods, packing them tight onto every spare inch of space on each barge. No one seemed to have noticed Cora talking to the woman. ‘Why is Kranna moving all this south?’
‘Because that’s where it’s needed!’ the woman said, fierce now, her fear gone. ‘People there, they’re suffering, and our Chambers is the only one doing anything about it.’
‘You’re obviously a supporter,’ Cora said.
‘All true Caskers are!’
‘Do you know her by any other name?’
The woman frowned. ‘Kranna? No. Why would—’
A shout went up from one of the barges. ‘We’re ready, Aileen! Cast her off!’
‘Please,’ the woman, Aileen, said to Cora. ‘Please. People are desperate down there. Our Chambers says we have to keep this secret. The Assembly mustn’t find out.’
Cora waited a moment, making the woman think she might put a stop to this – she worked for the Commission, after all, and the Commission carried out the bidding of the Assembly. Then she nodded and stepped away, back to Jenkins. From their hidden vantage point they watched as, one by one, the barges left the quayside.
‘South?’ Jenkins asked, when Cora told her what Aileen had said. ‘But surely all that food has just come from the south, from the Lowlands. The Lowlands feed the Union.’ Jenkins was almost reciting her Seminary learning. ‘Why send it back again?’
‘Good question,’ Cora said.
‘And why is Kranna involved?’
‘Another good question, Jenkins, but I think I have an answer for that one. You seen those stories in the ’sheets, about the trouble in Bordair?’
‘Of course. Sounds terrible, people so hard up they’re drowning themselves. You think Kranna is sending food to them?’
‘Seems plausible. But here’s a question for you, Constable. Why would that Casker bargehand be against feeding his own people in the south? Why would the Perlish Assembly be against it, for that matter? The pennysheets say that it’s Bordair in trouble, but maybe there’s something else going on here.’
‘You mean Chambers Kranna is feeding people other than Caskers,’ Jenkins said slowly. ‘But who?’
‘That’s something we might need to find out. One thing is clear: those supplies are going south.’
Seven
The next morning, as Cora approached Z’anderzi’s Kantina, venue for the Perlish election story, she wondered why she hadn’t been to Z’anderzi’s before. She’d heard plenty about it over the years. It was the only place outside the twin duchies of Perlanse where the dividing line between the East and West territories was officially observed. In her parents’ day, it had been the place to be seen with a glass of something expensive in hand, with the favoured, fashionable side of the building – East or West – changing from week to week. Cora had memories of her father discussing it with his trading hall pals of an evening, the talk floating in the clouds of pipe smoke that filled the salon at the Gorderheim house. Looking at the place now, she could see exactly why it had been such a draw for Victor Gorderheim, in the days before Ruth ruined everything. It was just her father’s sort of place.
Z’anderzi’s was a tall, thin building that took up the corner of a wide street. The angle meant there were two front walls, each of which was made of smoky glass. One had red solder between large square panes, the other blue wooden frames around curved windows. Either side looked the kind of place drinks would be served in tall glasses with long, thin spoons, and food would glide around on silver trays, never served in pieces bigger than Cora’s thumbnail. There couldn’t be anywhere in Fenest more different to the Dancing Oak, Cora’s favourite betting ring, than Z’anderzi’s Kantina.
Each frontage had a pair of grand double doors, and each of those had a kenna bird designed in little bits of coloured glass above. Mosaic, her father had called it. A red bird for West Perlanse and a blue for the East. The birds were usually seen together; in the realm’s symbol, their long necks wrapped around each other so that the birds could look into the other’s eyes. Whenever Cora saw the sigil, she thought the West’s bird was about to peck out the eyes of the East, unless the East got there first. To see the kenna birds separate like this, one over each doorway, was odd.
Were the Chambers inside yet? They would all be in attendance for the Perlish story, all sitting in whatever part of Z’anderzi’s the Commission had sectioned off for the good and great of the Union. Except one of them wasn’t so good. One of them was Tennworth. The Casker, the Seeder, the Rustan. A choice of three. Good odds and yet Cora felt far from ready to place a bet. Not yet. She needed to talk to Casker Chambers Kranna, find out the truth of what was behind the barges she’d seen yesterday. Find out if Kranna went by another name.