Chapter 5: Inquisitor Renhart

Royce Darnveil had spent twenty years learning not to show fear on his face, and right now, watching the Inquisition boat draw up to the Gray Current's side, he was grateful for every one of those years.

The man who climbed aboard first wasn't what Darnveil had expected. No armor, no display of rank — just a lean man of middle years in a plain gray cloak, his beard neatly trimmed, his eyes so pale they seemed almost colorless in the evening light. He crossed the unfamiliar deck with the ease of a man used to any deck he stepped on immediately becoming his own.

Behind him climbed two soldiers in uniforms bearing no insignia — no crest, no color to mark which of the three kingdoms they served, which was, in itself, more telling than any flag. The Inquisition stood above and outside all three kingdoms of the coast, answering only to its own charter, and Darnveil had heard stories of Inquisition ships stopping and searching vessels under all three crowns' colors alike, with not a single monarch daring to object.

"Captain… Darnveil, is it?" The voice was soft, almost friendly. "Inquisitor Renhart, Royal Service. Forgive the delay in our path — I'm sure you had more pleasant plans for the evening than my company."

"Inquisitor." Darnveil forced his voice level, almost bored. "What can I do for you?"

"A trifle, most likely." Renhart strolled unhurriedly along the rail, examining the rigging with the air of a man genuinely interested in shipcraft rather than hunting for an excuse to search the hold. "We're tracking… incidents. Involving sound. All along the southern coast, these past several weeks. Strange disturbances in the water, if I may put it that way. Unexplained tremors. Glowing anomalies. Reports from fishermen of things they can't quite describe. Perhaps you've heard something of the sort, during your voyage?"

"The sea is full of strangeness, Inquisitor. Twenty years in these waters and I still haven't seen half its tricks."

"Naturally. And yet." Renhart smiled — politely, thinly, without a hint of warmth. "You've held this course the last four days?"

"That's right."

"And noticed nothing unusual?"

Darnveil held the man's gaze exactly as long as required — not too confident, not too nervous, the fine line he'd honed over a captain's lifetime of negotiations with port officials and smugglers alike.

"If I had, I'd say so. I've no reason to withhold anything from the Royal Service."

"Of course not," Renhart repeated, with the same polite smile that sent a chill down Darnveil's spine colder than any winter storm ever had. The inquisitor's gaze swept the silent crew lined along the rail — Gretta, stone-faced, Barro doing his best impression of boredom, the brothers Dolf and Kress with their shoulders pressed together. "Fine crew you've got. Full complement?"

"Full, as always."

"Hm." Renhart drew a folded sheet of paper from inside his cloak and, without unfolding it, turned it thoughtfully between his fingers — a gesture that struck Darnveil as rehearsed. "I have a list of port hirings from the last two months, all along the southern coast. Curious detail: at the port you sailed from a week ago, three merchant vessels registered new hands. One girl, fourteen years old, an orphan from the Careth orphanage, signed on with one of them. Care to share, incidentally, the name of your last run before that port?"

The captain's heart lurched, but his face stayed still.

"I won't share, Inquisitor, because I don't see where you're going with this. I hire whoever asks — I don't keep records of ages and life stories. I need working hands, not pedigrees."

"Of course," Renhart said a third time, and this time there was a faint, almost imperceptible note in his voice — not a threat, but patience. The patience of a man who knows he'll get what he wants eventually, and so feels no need to hurry. "Well, captain. I won't take up more of your time. I confess I'm nearly certain you're hiding nothing. Nearly."

He turned toward his boat, but stopped at the rail and looked back, as if recalling some trivial afterthought.

He paused, studying the clouds on the horizon with the air of a man for whom even the weather was an interesting clue rather than mere weather.

"You know, captain, in my years of service I've met dozens of superstitious sailors who swore they'd seen something inexplicable at sea. Nine times out of ten it turns out to be a trick of moonlight, a school of glowing plankton, or plain panic in an exhausted lookout. But one time in ten…" He paused, as if savoring his own words. "One time in ten, it turns out to be the beginning of something worth reporting up the chain without delay. I'm in these waters precisely because the Royal Service suspects we're dealing with exactly that one time in ten right now. And I find that… invigorating. Professionally speaking."

Darnveil said nothing, rightly judging that any words now would be superfluous, and that Renhart would read any reaction to suit his own purposes regardless of what he actually said.

"Ah, yes. Should you happen to notice anything unusual — a glow, marks on the water, strange behavior among your crew — know that my ship will be patrolling these waters a good while longer. We always welcome the cooperation of honest captains. The dishonest ones, I'm afraid, we find ourselves. Sooner or later."

He descended into his boat with the same unhurried ease he'd climbed aboard with, and Darnveil stood motionless, watching the rowers carry it back toward the Inquisition vessel, until the ache in his clenched jaw reminded him to finally unclench it.

"We got through it," Gretta breathed beside him.

"No," Darnveil said quietly, not taking his eyes off the retreating black sail. "We didn't get through it. He knows. Maybe not everything, but enough. He's just decided to wait, for now, until we betray ourselves completely on our own."

He remembered the inquisitor's gaze — pale, nearly colorless eyes, holding none of the superstitious panic that gripped his own crew. Renhart wasn't afraid of the sea. He was studying it, methodically and patiently, the way a scientist studies a dangerous animal before it's caged. And that thought left Darnveil colder than any storm of his youth ever had.

Only once the foreign sail had shrunk to a barely visible speck on the horizon did the captain go below and personally help Barro pry open the false bottom of the barrel. Mira climbed out pale, drenched in sweat, her legs aching from being cramped so long, but alive and free — and her first question was whether anyone else had heard what she had: the inquisitor's voice, polite and level, pronouncing the word "anomalies" with something close to tenderness, as if speaking not of a threat but of something that genuinely, deeply fascinated him.

"I heard it," Darnveil confirmed grimly. "And I like it even less than if he'd shouted and pounded his fist on the table."

He helped her out of the barrel and, for a moment, let his hand rest on her shoulder — a gesture that carried more than the captain seemed ready to put into words.

"You held up well," he said, instead of whatever he'd perhaps actually meant to say.

"I just sat in a barrel," Mira answered, rubbing feeling back into her leg.

"Sometimes the hardest thing is exactly that — sitting in a barrel, doing nothing, while someone else decides your fate. Believe me, I know."

That evening, for the first time since the voyage began, the captain invited Mira to dine in his cabin — not for interrogation, but simply to share a table, which besides the two of them also seated Gretta. The conversation moved sluggishly, in fits and starts, each of them lost in their own thoughts about the pale-eyed inquisitor, but toward the end of the meal Darnveil finally said what had clearly been turning over in his head all evening:

"He knows more about you than an ordinary inquisitor casually patrolling these waters has any business knowing. The hiring list from that port, your exact age, the Careth orphanage — that's not coincidence, and it isn't luck. Someone's been tracking such things for a long time, methodically, long before that night with the water. I don't like it, Mira. Not at all."

"Do you think he was looking for me specifically? Even before I did anything?"

"I think," the captain said slowly, "that the Inquisition hunts for singers just as diligently as I spent twenty years trying to forget about them. And I'm afraid I did a far worse job of forgetting than I'd have liked to believe."