“It wouldn’t have made any difference. She still had the secret. So did the Lizzy.”
“Unlike the Toland police, we don’t think anything has been stolen.” Stavros pitched his voice to be low and soothing. “We think these were arranged . . . donations . . . for the HFL movement.”
“With the added benefit of pointing a finger at the Crows and feeding the animosity growing between humans and terra indigene,” Burke said.
“Exactly.”
Sickroom voices, Monty thought. Do they think I can’t, or won’t, handle the truth, whatever it may be?
“Someone should question Leo Borden,” he said. He couldn’t picture Leo being able to pull off a jewel heist, but he could see the man as a courier—and he could easily imagine Leo thinking that Boo Bear would be a good hiding place for a fortune in gemstones. After all, who would look for them in a child’s toy, especially a child living under the same roof as Nicholas Scratch?
She doesn’t have anything else Scaffoldon or Scratch would want, so Lizzy is safe now, Monty thought. The father wanted to believe it. The cop knew it wasn’t true, could feel it wasn’t true.
“What will happen when the HFL discovers the gems Scaffoldon brought back are fakes?” he asked.
“I believe you humans call it a domino effect,” Stavros replied as Elliot slipped back into the room. “Which brings me to the reason I came to Lakeside. I will, of course, talk to Simon directly, but Grandfather Erebus decided select humans as well as the terra indigene should be prepared.”
“Gods above and below,” Burke muttered. “Prepared for what?”
“According to humans, Toland is Thaisia’s center of commerce,” Stavros said. “Many ships dock there, and a great flow of goods comes into the city from other parts of the world. Just as great a flow of goods goes out.”
“Do terra indigene ships also dock there?”
“No. We have other harbors for our little ships, harbors we share with the Intuits.”
A sharpness in the words made Monty wonder if there had been trouble in the past: fights, sabotage, other kinds of incidents that had encouraged the Others to keep their distance.
“Our ships don’t dock in the Toland port, but we still pay close attention to what comes into Thaisia . . . and what goes out.”
Monty wondered if the weight suddenly clinging to his bones was a feeling of dread.
“What is going out?” Burke finally asked.
“The Crowgard can probably tell you more than the Sanguinati since they like to poke around in everything, and my kin tend to visit the area around the docks at night,” Stavros said. “I can tell you that ships coming in from Brittania aren’t receiving all the cargo they expected to load, but they’re still being charged for the full amount. Any captain who protests is threatened with being struck off the trade list.”
“What happens to the cargo that isn’t loaded?” Monty asked.
“We noticed that ships bound for the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations are now loaded late at night when there are fewer observers. We suspect the cargo that is held back from Brittanian merchant ships finds its way into the holds of Cel-Romano ships.”
“Another form of piracy,” Burke muttered. “With your permission, I’d like to have a quiet word with a cousin of mine. He’s a police officer in Brittania, and he keeps me informed of rumors coming out of Cel-Romano.”
“Would he also be willing to use his influence to provide discreet assistance?” Stavros asked.