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Chapter 554: Reaching the City of Neverwinter

So many boats.

Edith lay on her side beside the porthole of the poop cabin and watched the Redwater River move past. Since entering the Western Region, she had counted the vessels—an involuntary habit—and the number had not stopped climbing. Paddle steamers moved between sailing ships with no sails and no wind, trailing black ropes of smoke above the water. The shipmaster had explained: steam power, indifferent to current and weather, faster upstream than any sail. Watching one overtake a three-mast schooner without apparent effort, Edith believed him.

Every one of those vessels had been built here. In the City of Neverwinter.

She made rough calculations. Roughly one paddle steamer per hour. If each carried cargo rather than passengers, the Western Region was moving quantities of material that would embarrass most kingdoms. She had learned this much from merchants: the commerce of a city could be read in its traffic the way a physician reads a pulse—volume, rhythm, regularity. The pulse of the Redwater River was strong and rapid.

All the propaganda she had seen in the king’s city might have been understatement.

She was still thinking about it when the door opened.

“Miss Conrad, still watching the boats?” Victor crossed to the settee opposite her, warm and unhurried, his brown hair arranged just so. “Some fresh air would do you good. It’s beautiful on deck.”

“I’m comfortable here.” Edith sat up and nodded to him. “Thank you for the offer.”

“You never need to thank me.” He poured himself tea without asking. “A beautiful woman’s company is its own reward.”

She had heard the same sentiment, approximately word-for-word, in seventeen different noble courts. She received it now with the same practiced warmth: eyebrows lifted, lips curved, just enough to fill the role without meaning it. Victor owned the Everspring—a two-masted private vessel, clean-hulled, well-appointed, crewed by people who kept it that way. After their original transport was destroyed, Edith had selected it from among a dozen options at the riverside dock in less than five minutes.

The only condition the Everspring required was a male owner. Victor had invited her aboard inside an hour of meeting, provided her a comfortable cabin and two servants, and charged nothing. She had told him she was a Northern noblewoman searching for missing relatives. It was not, strictly speaking, a complicated lie—she had offered comfort to more demanding marks with less.

Victor was saying something about the paddle steamers: their noise, their shaking, their unsuitability for long pleasure travel. “I boarded one to have a look,” he said. “Crude, frankly. Good enough for cargo.”

“They appeared rather suddenly,” Edith said. “There were none in the Western Region before, I think?”

“Sprang up overnight.” He twitched the corner of his mouth. “I traveled to Longsong Stronghold last spring. Nothing then. One winter later—everywhere.” He shook his head. “Strange times.”

Twenty or thirty paddle steamers in one winter. Edith filed this away carefully. Twenty or thirty units of increased transport capacity, appearing simultaneously across a river that was already the Western Region’s commercial spine. The downstream effect on supply chains would be measurable, immediate, and compounding. She found the arithmetic more interesting than the boats themselves.

Victor was summoning his maid—leaning close to murmur—and then the woman returned with a parchment album, which he laid open across the table between them.

Crystal illustrations, exquisitely detailed: rough gemstones in every color, each price-graded in the margin.

“Which do you like?” he asked.

Edith turned through the pages without pausing. Rubies, sapphires, tourmalines—the brushwork was exceptional, the stones genuinely fine. She closed the album and returned it.

“Thank you. But no.”

Victor blinked. “Not even curious?”

“My relatives are missing.” She let something unhappy settle briefly into her voice. “I can’t enjoy luxury shopping while they might be in distress. Please forgive me.” She met his eyes, held them just long enough. “You’ve already been so generous. I wouldn’t want to impose further.”

He accepted this with the gallantry of a man who has decided not to be refused. When he left, she turned back to the porthole.

The shoreline ahead was resolving. What had been a dark line was becoming structure—docks, buildings, the angular geometry of something being built faster than it could be finished. A city growing visibly, even as she watched.

From the bow, a deep horn called out across the water, announcing arrival.

The gangway was steep. Edith descended it behind Cole into sound and motion—the harbor was three times the size of the king’s city’s docks, and every section of it was in use. One side stacked with sailing ships and concrete vessels unloading coal and ore into heaps the height of houses. The other side: ten paddle steamers departing together, crews standing at attention in matching uniforms along the rails while citizens lined the shore to see them off. The sailors’ faces held an expression Edith associated with knights returning from successful campaigns—something earned, not performed.

These are not nobles, she noted.

In the middle ground, a cordon of men in black sorted the arriving crowds into orderly queues, checking papers, asking questions, waving people through without visible payment. The flow of incoming humanity exceeded a thousand, easily.

“The dock has grown again,” Victor said behind her. He sounded genuinely surprised. “It was half this size last autumn.”

“Again?” Edith had caught the word.

“I travel here seasonally. The whole place keeps changing.”

Cole appeared at her elbow, already reaching for his wallet with the automatic reflex of a young noble approaching an official barrier. “Should I—”

“No,” Victor said cheerfully. “They don’t take it. I thought the same the first time.”

The barrier officers checked Victor’s merchant credentials and waved the group through without discussion or payment. Edith watched the sequence twice before accepting it.

“I need a hotel,” Victor was saying. “The Convenience Market after that—would you like to join me? I know the area reasonably well.”

“You’ve been very kind.” Edith gave him the curtsy that ended things cleanly, lifting her skirt just enough to signal finality. “I’ll go to the City Hall for my search. I’m sure they’ll have records.”

Several more exchanges—he pressed her to accept his help; she declined warmly, repeatedly, until he surrendered with good humor, pointing back toward the Holy Mountain Hotel should she need assistance. When he finally turned away, Cole was watching him go with something like admiration.

“You’re terrifyingly good at that,” he said.

“Miss Edith,” she reminded him.

“Right.” He straightened. “Do you want to find a hotel first?”

“We go to the castle.” She was already moving. “We need to reach His Majesty as soon as possible.”

“But we don’t have the heads anymore.”

“Then we proceed without them.” She did not slow. “Sincerity matters more than props. And two rotten heads would not have been an improvement.”

Cole fell into step beside her, and said nothing more.

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