Spider wasn't a forgiving sort of a person, but he made allowances. Which was a good thing because the people who crossed his path had an alarming tendency to disappoint.

Like his namesake he sat in the middle of a web of informants and clients, whom he treated all with equal aloof disrespect. He wasn't the sort of person who made friends, but he was the sort of person who got things done, got the information you needed, got people in touch with other people who had the skills required and handled problems with alacrity and silence. It was that silence that was the most valuable part of him. If Spider told you he would keep your secret, he would take it to the grave. Of course, getting him to promise that could be tricky, but at least his word was good.

Amaranth was one of the few who had elicited such a promise from him, by a combination of desperate trickery and rabid stubbornness. He respected that, and it made their dealings a little bit easier. That said, his response when she came to him seeking information about the Tyrell family's black sheep his response was the same as the last two information brokers she had inquired with.

"Have you lost what remains of your tiny mind?"

From sitting to standing and leaning over the desk, hands pressed open and white at the tips and almost shouting as well. Spiders two proteges or lovers or whatever they were, twin young women, looked up at him and stared before scurrying out of the room, clearly deciding that this was not something they wanted any part of. Which was well enough by Amaranth, who hadn't wanted them in there anyway.

"My mind is neither tiny nor lost, and I want to know if you can get that information. If not, I'll have to seek down other resources."

He sneered at her. "Your efforts at playing on my vanity are not only transparent, they're foolish. I don't care if you look to someone else for this, better they risk their damn fool hide than me. Get out."

She stared at him as he sank back into his seat, muttering to himself and shuffling papers and counting racks. Another minute or two and she turned, taking slow measured steps that they both knew were counted until he called after her. He made her wait till she was almost out the door as revenge. Probably sweating down her palms and in her expensive leather gloves, too. That he had procured for her.

"Out of curiosity, what in the asshole-black depths made you decide to take on the Tyrell family, anyway?" he drawled, not looking up from where he sat.

She didn't turn around, either, leaning one shoulder on the doorway. "None of your business."

An answer guaranteed to annoy him; if it were anyone who knew him less he would continue shouting. Which he still contemplated. "None of my business? My dear, if I'm going to risk my reputation and livelihood, not to mention my life, for some piece of information you wouldn't even be able to use in a court of judges, it damn well is my business. You can tell me or you can walk out that door without a scrap of help from me."

Amaranth turned around, and for both their sakes managed to conceal the smirk of victory. "I had it from a seer that Tyrell would be moving goods as part of a new deal cut with a new ... employer? Supplier?"

"He's trying to move up in the world and you're trying to drag him down where he belongs, to a jail cell. That's not news, that's been all over the markets for at least the last fortnight. You'll have to come up with something better than that."

Her face fell, which gave him a savage feeling of satisfaction. "It has?"

"You're losing your touch, little flower. Can you come up with something else or shall I give you the names of some competitors I want erased?"

Her lips wrinkled as she thought. Not that she wouldn't mind seeing some of his competition erased, either, it was a backhanded apology and an offer of sorts. But she also wanted that information as quickly and as accurately as she could get it, and that meant not going to an inferior broker. "I'll come up with something else. How long do you want me to take?"

"Not long at all. Take less than no time, if you can. And then tell me what happens, how it all falls out, I'm intrigued by this ... thing you seem to have going."

Not for nothing, but Spider poked around the Tyrell family fortune himself in any case. He maintained his lair just outside of the dockyards for a reason, and that reason being that the warring shipping families provided most of his business. Him and the twins, not that they were twins, between them could speak all the languages of the civilized world and paid attention and court to most of the dock workers and all of the innkeepers within the city. It made listening in on the airships business a great deal easier.

"I don't like the sound of this," he muttered, perched on the back of a chair with his feet on the desk. "I don't like the sound of this at all."

The twins had arrayed themselves around him, stroking his skin at calf and forearm, most likely to keep him from either flying into a temper or flying off the desk in a twitch of inspiration or comprehension. Both had been known to happen before.

"What does it sound like?" Little Wing murmured, resting her cheek against the inside of his knee. Little Petal rested her chin on the bulge of his forearm and said nothing. He still wondered if they had linked minds or were just eerie in that way twins sometimes had.

He had the habit of attracting eerie people, or maybe it was good luck, or bad, he didn't know. He figured it was his just punishment for being eerie and cryptic his own damn self, although he did it on purpose.

"It sounds like a bigger game than she thinks it is," he said, then shook his head. "Which wouldn't be hard. Damn fool woman's smarter than she thinks she is, if she would ever slow down to listen to herself."

Both the young women chuckled, though he didn't know if they understood what he meant. It was a complicated thought, the way Amaranth was a complicated woman. And fierce. He wouldn't have minded getting ahold of her if he could have managed it, back before she'd joined the Finder's Guild. But then the Guild had picked her up before he could, corrupted her to their analytical, cynical and mercenary ways, and although he was the last one to talk about mercenary ways he required a certain amount of passion from his people, and a little less careful analysis. Analysis tended to come up in favor of breaking away from the parent organization, eventually. Almost inevitably.

"There's something deeper at play here..." And maybe, if he wanted to know what it was, maybe he had better dig into Leopold Tyrell. He pushed back from the desk and stood, dislodging both women from his body and leaving him ice cold for a moment. "What family was Tyrell working for again? Other than his own."

"Tyrell works for the family Tyrell and their shipping holdings, but he takes money from the Gallico family as well to hide spirits and Black Dream and absinthe aboard his vessels. His family already bribes the guards to let them bring in repair gear and technicians who aren't guild licensed or bonded, they don't inspect the boats they believe carry nothing further." Little Petal, Violet, rattled that off in her dreamy monotone. He was never sure when he had her attention or not. Little Wing, on the other hand, had the piercing stare of a hawk and was prone to leaning over and staring you right in the face until you either looked away or pushed her away yourself.

The Gallico family, drug smugglers and, it was rumored, sorcerers themselves. Tyrell was also in over his head if he was dealing with them, and he trusted his Little Petal to remember what he'd told her about both parties in the first place. That was why he had them.

"But there are no ships in the Tyrell fleet other than his personal vessel at the moment, what would..."

A thought bucked to the surface of his mind, something improbable and ridiculous given the current status of things and yet he couldn't let it go. "Summon the port master here," he murmured, turning only his head in Little Wing's direction. "Bring him, tell him nothing, tell him Spider wants to see him. He'll come."

Little Wing narrowed her eyes at him and stared for a minute or two before she turned and streaked out the door. Strange woman. Her twin knelt down by the side of his chair when he took his seat again, trying to compose himself, and said nothing. He'd sent Little Wing off so he could have some peace without the unnerving stare, but now that it was just him and a wamr cheek against his thigh he realized that peace was a long ways away.

"If they start up this old feud again, there will be hell to pay," he told her. "They only managed not to tear apart three port cities last time because they tricked the old bastard into sleeping with the wrong woman, or so I hear. Put a death on him that would even make your sister tremble."

The tiny woman was already trembling to hear him talk about it. She knew what had happened, he realized. She and her sister had heard him talking about it. Of course, he knew he'd known that, what he hadn't known was how much it upset her. Reaching down, he tipped her face up to him with two fingers under her chin. "Do you know what putting a death on someone means, Little Petal?"

She looked away, nodding.

"... Ah. You were there, weren't you." It explained, somewhat, where he'd found and bought them and why they were so strange. Of all the things to stumble upon in this case. "You would have been... what, eight? Ten years old?"

She nodded again, still not looking at him.

"All right, then," Spider sighed, leaning back in his chair. That had settled him like he hadn't thought it would, perhaps because, like an animal, he needed to be calm to keep her from flying all to pieces when she was like this. Instinct, he supposed. She and her sister were rarely all to pieces. "All right," he petted her hair softly, to ease her down. "We'll see what the port master has to say for himself."

Amaranth Finder bounced her head off the rickety wooden surface of her desk, slowly but with great determination. No one looked sideways at her or gave any sign that this was at all unusual. Which it wasn't. There was a little smooth spot on her desk where her forehead had rubbed it to a soft shine over many, many days of banging, resting, or rubbing.

"Can't anyone tell me where the bastard is hiding, or who he's bribed to stay hidden?" No one could, of course. But no one spoke up to say that that was her job to find out, either. They were all far too familiar with her frustration to grind salt into the wound.

Her partner leaned on the edge of the desk and looked over at her. "Problems?"

She said a word ladies weren't supposed to use and raised her head, straggles of blonde hair falling in front of her eyes. "No, everything's fine, Tyell is going to walk through that door thoughtfully having clapped himself in chains beforehand and give himself up for murder and bribery." She puffed out a breath of air which only flopped the locks in front of her mouth, then pushed her hair out of her face with angry, bird-like motions.

"You're testy when you're stymied," he noted. "A boy dropped off a note at the front door for you."

"Boy..." she asked, then blinked and took note of the seal. Such as it was. A black inkstain and several trailing lines that might have been legs to an imaginative eye, a careless onlooker would see nothing more than spilled drops of ink. She tore it open and read what was on the page, her lips shaping the words.

"Other people in this office can read lips, you know." For that, he leaned over and murmured in her ear. She swatted at him. "Only trying to help."

"That's the opposite of help. All right, then, it's to the docks with us."

"You do realize..." he called after her, but she had already spun around on her chair and taken off through the aisles of desks to the cloakroom. "Dammit."

The attendant at the cloakroom was also in charge of weapons. Her oiled wool cloak swung around her shoulders and draped neatly down her body, concealing the long dagger strapped to her leg and the pair of daggers on her belt at the small of her back. He happened to know, and she happened not to care that he knew, that she also kept a pair of daggers down the front of her boots, two more in her sleeve and a final one in her bodice. At least, those were all the knives she'd either told him about or used in front of him. He might know about the garotte in her cloak collar or the way her boots were weighted at the front and back. He might not.

"You do realize that Tyrell is the least of your worries? He's hardly the criminal mastermind in the case."

"No," she agreed, slipping her arms through the sleeve holes and fastening her cloak in front. "But he is the linchpin and the access point to several other people who are more criminal mastermind, and if I have him and can sweat him..."

His skeptical look told her all she needed to know about his confidence in her interrogative abilities. She continued on anyway.

"... then I can get the information I do need. He's just a stepping stone, Martius. Just the first piece of the puzzle."

"I thought you already got the first piece of the puzzle a fortnight back and some odd days."

"Shut up, Martius."

The docks were windy. Chill, and windy, and she wished she'd broughten something that billowed less. They could hardly hear each other above the flapping of the ropes, the cloaks, the sails.

"Are you sure this is where you want to be going?" her partner called after her, leaning over her till his chin was almost on her shoulder and he still had to shout to make himself heard. "Ama, are you sure this is where he'll be?"

"Sp--" She barely stopped herself in time. "Sources say. And my source is usually damn well right."

Martius snorted. Whether or not he believed her didn't matter, though. She was certain of her facts, and Spider seemed certain of his facts, and that was what counted.

She ran through the description of him in her mind again. Tall, or rather tall ish, fair-haired and chiseled jaw, clean shaven for the most part except when there were no razors to be found in the city for love or money. Which was rarely. Paid attention to both his dress and his cleanliness, preferred silks and linen to more ostentatious fabric but still well-dressed, not the kind of thing you would want to get dock stain on. Even if he was wearing something more sensible he favored richer, more expensive colors, which would make him easy to spot out here.

"Keep an eye out for someone wearing scarlet or purple or something." She darted forward between the barrels and crates lashed down to docks or pallets that were themselves locked onto the docks. The wind blew up something fierce, making the timbers beneath them sway.

Martius made a noise behind her as though he was going to be sick. "You couldn't have picked a better time to make your sting? Say, still tide?"

"If you've got a special weather magic device on your person somewhere, now would be the time..." Not like anyone could predict still tide more than a few hours out. Or rough tide, for that matter. There were certain times of the day or night when they were more or less predictable, more likely to happen which was why they had names taken from the sea tides, but it was still guesswork.

She didn't have time to wait on someone to guess when the next good tide would be. Spider had given her information and said it was time sensitive, which meant now. And Martius could make all the disapproving noises he wanted. It wouldn't change her mind about anchoring herself to the dock and waiting all day if she had to for Tyrell to show up.

Fortunately, she didn't have to, because that could turn out to be a long and cold wait. Tyrell stomped down the dock shortly after she and her partner found a suitable hiding place, head bent against the wind and his greatcoat wrapped around him in a dramatic picture of abject misery. The greatcoat that made him at least half as miserable as every other dock-worker. He probably didn't think about niceties like that.

She watched, Martius' breath blowing hot in her ear and down the back of her neck, as Tyrell boarded a smaller ship and spoke to a rather pretty dark-haired woman in corset, blouse, and trousers. The corset and blouse were a little more revealing than one might find in the city, but not by much; the trousers were the mark of a working woman. Someone who had to do work that a skirt would get in the way of. Possibly, by the way she listed with the ship, the mark of someone who sailed the skies frequently.

"Damn."

"What?" Martius shouted almost in her ear.

"He's talking to someone. They know he's there, we can't take him now." Damn. She was hoping he'd board an unoccupied ship, or at least that she'd be able to take him before he could notify others. Belatedly she was realizing that she should have accosted him on the walk, but she hadn't had the confidence in her strength and her tiny frame. Not fighting him and the winds.

Amaranth swore some more under her breath, not that it mattered, and rose up a little to instruct Martius in how she wanted to apprehend the miscreant, when he called out to her. By name. She hadn't counted on Tyrell knowing her name somehow.

"We know you're hiding back there..." he called, mocking, laughing. She glanced back over her shoulder at Martius and mouthed we? "You might as well come out before we send someone in after you. I don't think you'll like that very much."

She came out from behind the coil of rope and two bales of canvas and realized that that hadn't been Tyrell calling her. That was someone else.

Tyrell ran past her, looking terrified. Martius stepped out in front of him and Amaranth grabbed the back of his coat, whipping him around more by the effort of a convenient wind current and her taking advantage of his momentum than any great feat of strength. "What happened?" she yelled at him, which was as good as a conversational tone at the moment. "Who is that..."

"That is Booster," came the woman's voice. The voice of a woman who was confident and assured of herself, arousing Amaranth's instant ire and envy. "And he is here to ensure that you don't accost our dear Leopold in an unlawful manner."

Amaranth rolled her eyes, keeping one fist bunched in Tyrell's coat and the other hand open and hovering above her short sword. "There's nothing unlawful about it. I'm a bonded member of the Finder's Guild, and this is still the jurisdiction of the city. As long as I'm on this dock I'm within my rights to bring him before the adjudicators."

"But you called out to him while he was on the boat. You tempted him away from safe harbor, and I don't think the adjudicators would like that very much."

"What... I never!" How could the woman say that? She hadn't done any of that. The woman was lying. Obviously. And the adjudicators wouldn't believe her.

Laughter whipped up from the smaller boat. "But who do you think they will believe, you, or the daughter of the House of Serpentine?"

Oh hell.

She'd heard rumors about which houses were involved with the pirate families, but this was the first she'd had confirmation. And she'd looked. She'd asked Spider a time or three, but even he didn't know that the House of Serpentine was involved, and her breathing was coming faster and faster as the larger ship came around behind the smaller. The woman from House Serpentine was smirking.

Another man came out of the bridge of the ship as it pulled up beside the yacht, it was a yacht, she realized. First a swordsman, tall and lean and with a face that would have been handsome if it weren't so gaunt and used. Then a woman, veiled, at least she thought it was a woman. It had a woman's shape. And then a third man. A gray, emaciated man dying by inches.

"Leopold, if you would be so kind as to bring Amaranth aboard..."

Before she could react Leopold had her arm in one iron grip, and the other hand thrust behind him in a fist. Buried, she realized, in her partner's chest. No, against his chest. With a knife hilt coming out of it. Martius blinked, his mouth open as if to protest, but any words he might have said were whipped away by the wind. He gave her a curious look, frowning, and then the wind toppled him over. Not just over to his knees or onto his chest, over the edge of the dock.

Amaranth screamed. She screamed, she could not stop screaming, not for the woman's words or the gray dying man's, not until Leopold had dragged her below did she stop screaming, and then it was only to throw one or two futile punches before she was knocked out by a heavy grip on a steel sword hilt.