While the rest of the Camelia was preparing to welcome Lord Ye and the Princess home, Emmy was working on her assignment from Yuze.
Well, the assignment she'd given herself on his behalf when Finn and Patrick had decided to follow Fox that night. But Yuze hadn't argued, had even encouraged her if she read between the lines, and that was enough.
Snake had been busy, running all over the Camelia the last few weeks, and Emmy hadn't been able to follow her during the days when she was working in the vault with Finn and Patrick.
Thankfully, the Camelia, despite its size, had a limited number of places a spy could meet with a source and go unnoticed. Or where someone could sell off stolen items without the Crimson Army noticing. It might have been full of dark alleys, secret passages, and locked rooms, but it was also extremely full of people. They weren't always paying attention, but sometimes they were, and the human race in general had an annoying ability to remember the most useful fact at the most inopportune time.
So far, that had saved Emmy in her quest to discover what Snake was doing. One of the kitchenmaids had first spotted Snake with Lady Anna, and one of the stable boys had noticed Snake leaving twice at the same time through the old servants' door in the stables.
And one of the courtesans from one of the larger, more discreet entertainment houses had a regular customer who was a guard for one of the high-ranked family estates, who told her all about the secret quests that came and went after dark. Emmy had been able to confirm that a Bandri had made it inside the walls because of her.
She couldn't be one hundred percent sure that the elegant woman in the cloak was Snake, but the description fit in general terms.
That was why she'd decided to dedicate tonight to figuring it out for sure.
She'd left Finn and Patrick to meet with Lord Ye and the others for dinner and snuck into the Yin Family estate before the guards switched over for the night shift. It had taken a minute to find a place to hide that wouldn't be immediately suspect, but also guaranteed she'd be able to slip out unseen if they met somewhere different.
Apparently, they were confident enough in their planning that they didn't.
A few minutes short of midnight, the first of them appeared, and Emmy twisted herself around in the barrel to get comfortable.
She didn't recognize them, but both of them wore the uniforms of the Crimson Army's infantry division. Which meant they could have belonged to the Zhao, Yin, Colfax, or Raban families of the major families of the court, as well as several minor ones, and she couldn't get close enough to make out the detail on their insignias for obvious reasons.
The next group to arrive were smart enough not to wear their uniforms, but Emmy still recognized one of them as one of Lady Yang's younger sons, which was a bold choice because his mother ran that family with an iron fist and wouldn't take any betrayal lightly. There was even someone she recognized as a Wen cousin with him.
And then the Bandri showed up. Dusty from the road and sweaty enough that it was sticking to him. Emmy took a moment to try to memorize the tattoos running down his eyes and cheeks, but she had no experience with the runes the tribes used, so it was just pretty gibberish.
He was tall and strong enough that Emmy wouldn't have taken the chance of getting into a fight with him, even though she was skilled enough at cheating that she could take on most opponents who were bigger than her.
He also had a bag of Imperial gold that he presented to the others to count out.
How had a tribesman gotten that much gold? Especially Imperial gold with the stamp and everything?
It wasn't impossible, it was just a lot.
A few minutes later, a figure in a cloak entered carrying a small box.
Emmy's view was tiny per the small hole in the side of the barrel, so she had to wait a bit before the figure moved into view.
They were conducting a sale, and Emmy managed to catch a glimpse of what was in the box, a necklace that looked expensive enough and old enough to have been from the vault. She'd have to check Finn's notes to see if they'd get lucky, and it was one they'd already marked as present. If it was, it gave them a direct link to the Bandri and the missing items from the vault.
She managed to get a better glimpse when they took it out to examine it. It was a teardrop-shaped ruby wrapped in a delicate metal cage, and the stone itself was enough to justify the bag of Imperial gold.
The figure in the cloak handed the box and necklace to the Bandri and finally turned towards Emmy.
It was Snake. Her eyes were darkened with kohl, heavy enough that it changed their shape, but Emmy had been around her enough that she could see through it.
There was no haggling over the price, so there were enough meetings before this one to settle that. No one had to introduce anyone else, so they'd all met before. All of them, besides the Bandri, were from the Camelia or at least the outlying villages.
And then it occurred to her that that was a lot of gold for a single necklace.
Huge ruby aside.
The tribes didn't value precious stones.
"Has Lord Ye returned yet?" The Bandri asked. Something about his voice stuck in the back of Emmy's mind. It was similar to Fox's but higher? More like Captain Li's, who always sounded like he's swallowed gravel after a lifetime of yelling at soldiers.
"This afternoon," Snake answered. "With the boy."
"Is he truly the heir?" Yang's youngest son asked.
Snake nodded. "It was decided by the king himself."
"The king?" One of the people Emmy didn't recognize. He seemed surprised.
"He's close with the Princess," Snake explained.
"How close?" The Wen demanded. "What if he interveens?"
Snake shook her head. "He'd dealing with challenges to his throne. Including one from his own Uncle, the Princess's father. He's too busy to get involved in anything happening here."
How the hell did she know about that, Emmy wondered.
~ tbc