I shook my head, smirking incredulously. He wanted a gem sage to make sure the merchants didn’t swap any stones. “I’m not my mother.” Isolde had begun to teach me the art of the gem sage before she died, but I’d needed many more years of apprenticeship if I was ever going to have her skill.

Something changed on Clove’s face then, and it made my fingers curl tighter around the handles of the heavy chest. “Better than nothing.” The tone of his voice had changed too, and I wondered if the mention of my mother had gotten beneath his skin.

I took a chance in saying it. “You know Isolde would hate you, right?” I took a step toward him.

He didn’t blink as I looked him in the eye, but the courage I’d had flickered out the moment I invoked her name. He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t immune to Isolde’s memory. It snaked around me and squeezed.

Clove’s hands slid into the pockets of his jacket. “Get on that dock. Now.”

I looked at him for another moment before I shoved the chest back into his hands and pulled the hood of my jacket up. I said nothing as I climbed over the rail and down the ladder into a crowd of dockworkers on the slip. Zola stood at the edge before the harbor master, unfolding a parchment with the fake crest imprinted at its corner. I watched the man closely, wondering if he would catch it. Sailing under a false crest was a crime that would get you barred from stepping foot on another ship for as long as you lived.

The harbor master scribbled into his book, double checking the document before he closed it. “I don’t like unscheduled ships on this dock,” he grunted.

“We’ll be in and out. Just need a few supplies before we get to Bastian,” Zola said, his manner civil and cool.

The harbor master was ready to argue, but a moment later Zola pulled a small purse from the pocket of his jacket, holding it between them. The harbor master looked over his shoulder to the main dock before he took it without another word.

Clove landed on the dock beside me, and Zola gave him a nod before he started toward the village. I followed on Clove’s heels, weaving in and out of the hucksters and shipwrights until we made it to the street.

The cobblestones were wide and flat, unlike the round ones in Ceros, but more than that, they were clean. Not a single smear of mud or even a pile of discarded harbor supplies lay on the street, and the windows of every building sparkled.