9
	Visitors to the city were always surprised to learn that Gold Street was not the richest part of the city.  Instead, it was the name given to the clusters of warehouses and pilots' sheds that lined the entire half mile stretch of the city docks.  The largest building was the customs office, where the whole east wing was being rebuilt after it had collapsed from a hundred years of salt spray and neglect.  The street, which was lined with ancient cobblestones, was always wet.  In the winter it froze and cracked, usually in the same places where the street had been repaired during the summer.  Where the cobbles broke, the dirt bed of the road was exposed and turned into mudpits which were known for their appetite for shoes.  It was dirty and often crowded , full of sailors who had only the barest grasp of civility after months at sea.
In spite of everything, Catherine loved every stone and stained wall of the street.  This was where all of the wealth of the city came in and, as far as she was concerned, it was the only place in Jaspertree where any honest work got done.  It was only a block south of Silver Street, so close that she fancied she could still smell the reek of the perfume from the whorehouse there, but here nobody cared what sex anyone else was or if they had two coins in their pocket.  As long as a person was willing to work, they were treated the same as everyone else.  Though he had never said so, she was sure that this was why her father had kept the office on the top of their warehouse, instead of working out of their home like so many other ship masters did now.
	To break the monotony of sorting through the endless piles of lading bills and passenger manifests, she propped a window open to let in the sounds from the street below.  That meant she had to weight the papers down with clean stones taken from the street and, in the case of bills, with an antique silver inkwell that had belonged to her great-grandfather.  It also meant stiff fingers and ice in her coffe, but with the window closed the heat from the little stove in the middle of the room was suffocating and she felt too alone.
She was nearly finished with her third stack of the morning when her father came in with an even larger pile in his arms.  She signed her name at the bottom of the sheet she was working on, set it aside for the ink to dry, and shoved the rest to one side to make room for the new stuff.
	“When you come back in tonight, I need you to go through these and re-check all of your figures.  I’d do it myself but I’ve just found out that a whole shipment of  oranges has gone bad and the rabbit who owns them is blaming me for it.  Re-check everything you’ve done today, too,” he said.
	“I have.  Twice,” she said “How do you feel about taking on another passenger?”
	“If they can pay, and they don’t mind having to sleep in the little cabin near the prow,” he said.
	“I mean a special passenger.  One of Elizabeth Frost’s,” Catherine said.
	She got up and put the coffee percolator on top of the stove and opened the hatch on the front to prod the coals back to life.
	“Another one?  I suppose I'll be expected to carry them for free, too.  Where on earth does she keep finding all of them?” he said.
	“She isn’t just some House girl this time, either.  I think she might be the same girl that President Keppler bought for his son,” Catherine said.
	“If that's what he did.  You know how rumors can get started.  I’m trying to run a business here, Cath, and I can’t keep giving everything away for free.  One, maybe two more trips out, and I might have enough to think about getting another ship.”
	“I’ve met her.  She was dressed like a House girl and she’s being chaperoned around by some little mouse from Silver Street.  But she looked just like the stories say she does,” Catherine said.
	She took a few pages off the top of the stack her father had brought in and flipped through them.  She didn’t find what she was looking for, which was a relief.  Even when her father wasn’t letting himself be blinded by visions of a second ship, she had to be careful how she skewed the passenger lists.  Smuggling was one of the few things that were actually illegal in Jaspertree.
	“It’s a big risk,” Robert said.
	“If you’re going to change the world, you have to take risks,” she said.
	“Is that why I had an angry militia guard in my office demanding that I pay him fifty dollars because this wolf of yours had bitten him?  I can’t afford that kind of trouble,” he said.
	“Did you pay him?” she said.
	“No.  I told him that if he was stupid enough to grab random people off the street he should expect to get hurt,” Robert said.
	His stern tone was betrayed by a quick smile and a wink.
	“If she is Keppler’s girl, you’re going to have to be very careful,” he said.
	“I always am.  You don’t think I’ve snuck seventeen people out of the city just by luck, do you?” she said.
	“I think you’ve been luckier than you realize.  Most of the girls you’ve smuggled on board my ship weren’t important.  They only owed a two or three thousand dollars, and nobody cared much about them.  But this wolf is Marcus' personal toy.  You’ll have to do more than mess with some paperwork to steal her,” he said.
	He took the coffee pot off the stove and shook it by his ear.  The grounds in the bottom of the pot rattled against the sides and some fell out of the hole that had been burned in the cheap metal.
	“You’ll have to pay more attention than this,” he said.
	He put the percolator in the bottom of the little sink at the back of the office and ran water over it to cool it off.  Catherine sat down at the desk again and sucked on the end of her pen until the ink was thawed.  Ten minutes later, while she was halfway through the first sheet of the new stack, she heard the office door close and her father’s footsteps on the stairs.
Ten minutes after that she put the finished sheet aside, capped her pen and crept over to the door.  She counted to five, the opened the door and stepped out into the hall just as Sarah reached the top of the steps.
“If I’ve learned anything from being friends with you, it’s that if you want Sarah Sullivan to turn up on time, you have to ask her out for breakfast,” she said.
She led the girl inside and closed the door while she found her coat.  She found her keys, which had somehow ended up inside her coffee cup, and shut the window so nobody would be tempted to climb up.
“Did you get everything you said you needed?” she said.
“I think so.  But do we really have to do it this way?  What about Jessamine?” Sarah said.
“She’ll understand,”said Catherine.
“Will she?  She’s already angry enough over the Sunrise fire.  I knew plenty of people like her while I was growing up and it doesn’t always take much to push them over the edge,” said Sarah.
“If that happens, we’ll deal with it.  We need a distraction, and everything needs to look convincing.  It isn't Jess we need to be worrying about now,” Catherine said.
The stove was nearly out of fuel so Catherine left it to burn itself out so she would have a warm office to come back to.  Out in the hall again she locked the door and hung the key around her neck.  Then she put her arm around Sarah’s waist and took her down the back stairs to the alley behind the warehouse.  It wasn’t wise to make it too obvious that there was nobody in the office and anyway it was a shortcut.  Sarah’s house was only three blocks away and by avoiding the walk down the front of the warehouse and the front of the cutsom’s building, they could slip down the alley behind the warehouse without anyone getting suspicious.
It had snowed again during the night and the drifts were several inches deep in places.  Catherine, who didn’t mind the cold, walked slightly ahead to kick the tops off the deeper drifts.
“Where do you plan to take her, once you have her?” she said.
“I don't know yet.  I'm sure something will suggest itself,” Sarah said.
“You’re going to take that kind of a risk?  I thought we had that you would have some sort of a plan at least.  You know how dangerous this will be,” Catherine said.
She kicked savagely at a clump of snow and got covered with powdered ice when the wind caught it and blew it back at her.
“Can you think of a place, then?  We can’t take her to your house or the warehouse, because your father has to stay clean.  And I can’t take her home with me.  You know Captain Metzger likes to hang out at the old barracks on the other side of the street,” Sarah said.
“We'll have to risk it.  I know you've smuggled things in under his nose before,” Catherine said.
“Yes, things.  Boxes of House records, and a couple of pistols once.  Not people,” Sarah said.
I'll make it up to you,” Catherine said.
“It would have to be some prize,” Sarah said.
“What about me?” Catherine said.
Sarah was silent for a long time and she kept her eyes averted from Catherine's face.  Feeling suddenly stupid, Catherine stopped and leaned against a nearby wall.  After all these years she'd thought there was nothing that could pass between them that could still embarrass her, but just recently it felt like her only talent was saying the wrong thing at the wrong time whenever they were together.
“Do you mean that?” Sarah said.
“I did.  But look, I didn’t mean to upset you--” she said.
But before she could go any further Sarah's arms were wrapped around her and she didn’t have enough breath left to say anything.
“For that, I would do anything,” Sarah said.
From then on, they held on to each other, for the warmth of body and heart, and Catherine was certain that there was nothing they couldn't face together.
The alley they were in lead to the middle of a broad, busy street full of shops and street vendors.  They were halfway across, when the crowd around them scattered and ran.  Several people bumped into them and Catherine had to pull Sarah tight against her, to keep them both from being knocked down.  This left them stuck where they were, and when people stopped hitting them and Catherine was able to look up again, Marcus Keppler stood over them.  He had one hand clutched over his muzzle and his fingers and the front of his silk shirt were wet with blood.  It looked like someone had hit him in the nose.  Richard was with him, and the boy was leading his father by one arm while Marcus cursed at him.
Catherine could feel Sarah’s fingers digging into her flesh and she could smell the liqour on Marcus’s breath.  She could see his lips sliding back from his teeth into a snarl and that sparked enough life in her brain for her to lift Sarah off her feet and run with her to the other side of the road.  The crowd in front of them shattered again, and they wound up huddled together in the doorway of a bakery.
“I am sick of the sight of females,” he said, loud enough for the whole street to hear “I hate the very smell of them.  They always stink of perfume and the wicked way they plot behind your back.”
“You don’t need to take it out on these two, do you?  They weren’t even there,” Richard said.
“They didn’t have to be.  They know what happened, just like everyone else in this miserable city will soon enough.  Females talk all the time, with their hands over their mouths or tucked up in little corners where they think no one can hear their lies,” Marcus said.
He was shouting now and he swayed dangerously from the waist up.  He shoved his son away from him and came at them, the hand that wasn’t cradling his nose bunched up in a fist.
“Look at them.  Look how they stick close together, like females always do, so they can whisper in each other’s ears and laugh.  I know who you are, Miss Coburn,” he said.  He jabbed a finger at Catherine’s chest and missed when she moved out of the way.
“Then you know that I don’t talk to anyone.  That isn’t good for business,” she said.
She dodged another jab and pulled the front of her coat more tightly closed.
“That’s all you care about isn’t it, you frigid little bitch?  You're just like your father, all you can think about is your goddamned money,” he said.
“Someone has to keep the city running.  We can't all get raging drunk at eight o'clock in the morning,” Catherine said.
She felt Sarah cringe and slip around to hide behind her, but she never had been able to keep her mouth shut.
“That’s what bitches like you are for.  People like me, the ones who really matter, can do whatever they want and still get you to do all the work.  That’s how you know who’s really in charge,” he said.
Richard came to pull him away, but that got him an elbow in the stomach which sent him reeling away.
“Yes, I know who you are, girlie, and it’s lucky for you that I do.  You’re lucky you’re not that mouse.  Do you know, I told her I would let her go?  And I think she honestly believed me, too.  How on earth did she ever manage to live this long?” he said.
“The same way the rest of us have.  She kept a straight face and swallowed everything she was given, and she knew that the very next time you needed your fix you would come crawling back to her on your knees,” Catherine said.
Sarah’s arms tightened around her waist until she was sure she could feel her ribs creak but Marcus’s grin only grew wider and he tried to pat her on the head, but he was so unsteady that his hand ended up waving in the air above her head.
“Every single goddamned time.  It’s amazing.  A smart girl like you is still working for next to nothing just to keep a fifty year old pile of shit afloat.  Him and his ship,” said Marcus.
Richard got up with the help of a tall, white-furred fox, and this time, when he took hold of his father’s arm, Marcus didn’t resist.  His eyes were shut and he was swaying more noticeably than before, to the point that it was a wonder he was able to stay on his feet at all.
“He always gets like this when he’s drunk.  He doesn’t mean any of it,” Richard said.
He turned Marcus around and pushed him back out into the street.  The last Catherine saw of either of them before the crowd closed up again was of Richard putting Marcus’s arm around his neck and leaning his father’s head on his shoulder.  She breathed out again and she could feel her heart beating against her ribs as it wound back down.  A minute later, everything was back to normal on the street, and the only person looking at them was the white fox.  He shrank back against the wall when Catherine gave him an apologetic smile and he darted away as soon as they left the doorway.
They walked quickly to the side street they had been aiming for, and when they reached it Sarah pushed Catherine against the wall and buried her face against Catherine's chest.
“Don’t ever do something like that again,” she said.
“It turned out okay.  He was so drunk he won’t remember anything,” Catherine said.
“I hope so.  He’s just the sort to carry a grudge and he has been known to have a remarkable memory for the things that make him angry,” Sarah said.
“If it comes up, then you can worry about me.  Right now it sounds like his mind is on Jessamine, and we might not have as much time as we thought.  We need to be ready to go tonight,” Catherine said.
“Nothing like an easy job to end the week on,” Sarah said.
She smiled a little and put her arm around Catherine’s waist again and by the time they got to the end of the road, Catherine was feeling nearly cheerful again.

The Coburn house had been built on the top of a hill in what had been the middle of the city two hundred years ago.  For most of its history it had served as the Jaspertree city courthouse, until its north wing had been burned to the ground by rioters protesting unfair taxes.  Most of them had been hanged a month later and part of the old gallows still stood in the front yard.  Robert could see it now from his desk in the Green Room, half rotten but recognizeable.  The house was an ugly, sprawling building when he had bought it, full of spindly arches, brick siding and fake buttresses. It still was, in spite of all he had done to try to bring it into the present century, though now at least it didn’t look so much like a cut-price castle.  He had put in real windows, instead of the arrow slits it had been built with, to let in the light and he had taken the spikes off the iron fence that guarded it.  He had painted the porch white and the window frames purple, because these were Catherine’s birth colors.
It was just too bad that Catherine hated the place. When she was eight, she'd run away from home for a week.  At thirteen, she'd painted her room black without asking him and slashed the curtains to ribbons.  Now, she spent as little time at home as possible.  It seemed like she spent most of her free time getting into trouble with Sarah.  That was unfortunate because, besides his ship, the house was all he had to leave to her if anything happened.
When everything was finished and properly signed, he slid the papers back into their folder and hid them in the bottom desk drawer.  That done, he opened a second drawer and took out another folder which held the last few bits of paperwork he needed to do before he could leave port.  The folder was lighter than he had been expecting and if he was lucky he might be able to set out as early as tomorrow.