By noon, every version of the story had become true to someone.
In Mrs Flannery's bakery, Maura Kelleher had screamed like a banshee and cursed Sir Alistair Vale to his face. At the apothecary, she had fainted prettily into Liam Reilly's arms, which was such nonsense Maura nearly laughed when she heard it, because she had never fainted in her life and Liam looked like a man who would set a fainting woman upright again and advise her to breathe through her nose. At the fish stalls, she had produced a rebel flag from her bodice, which said more about the fishwives' imagination than Maura's undergarments.
The truth was simpler and worse.
She had run.
She had run down Harbour Lane with half the town at her back, the scarlet ribbon hidden under her glove and the note tucked into the binding of her sleeve. She had arrived at the Vale storehouse breathless, skirts muddy, hair slipping its pins, and had seen a man's boot protruding from beneath a fallen tarpaulin.
Not a body displayed for drama. Not a corpse arranged by a wicked mind. A body hidden badly, as if whoever left it had been interrupted or careless or desperate.
The dead man was Eamon Rusk, a clerk in Sir Alistair's shipping office. Thin, nervous, always smelling of ink and peppermints. Maura had hemmed two pairs of trousers for him last winter and remembered the way he apologised before asking the price. Men who apologised to seamstresses rarely lasted long in Emerald Harbour.
Now he lay on the storehouse floor with one hand curled around a scrap of ledger paper and a dark wound beneath his ribs.
Constable Byrne had pushed everyone back. Sir Alistair had shouted for order. Father Cavanagh had prayed with the distracted speed of a man trying to outrun scandal. Liam had said nothing, only watched the floor, the crates, the high broken window, the trail of dried mud leading not to the quay doors but to the locked inner office.
Maura had seen the paper in Eamon's hand before Sir Alistair did.
So had Liam.
That was why, when Sir Alistair bent as if grief had overcome him, Liam stepped on the paper first.
A brutal little act. Practical. Almost invisible.
"Move," Sir Alistair snapped.
"Apologies," Liam said, not sounding sorry. "Bad leg."
Maura, who had been close enough to see the lie settle neatly between them, understood then that Liam Reilly had not returned to Emerald Harbour to rest. Rest did not keep a man that alert.
Now, hours later, she stood in her shop on Lantern Street with the door locked, the blinds half drawn, and the town's gossip pressing against the windows like weather.
Kelleher & Flynn was not grand. It had a narrow front, two worktables, three dress forms, shelves of ribbon and thread, and a stove that sulked in damp weather. But it was hers. Every board had been paid for by needle-pricked fingers, every bolt of cloth negotiated from men who assumed women could not count once lace entered the conversation. Her name was painted above the door in cream letters. Not her father's. Not a husband's. Hers.
That mattered today more than ever.
"You're going to wear a track in the floor," said Nora Behan from the cutting table.
Nora was Maura's apprentice, though at nineteen she had the steady irritation of an elderly duchess and the judgement of a priest with corns. She had red hair, quick hands, and a gift for making even silence sound like criticism.
"Floors are meant to be walked on," Maura said.
"Not hunted."
Maura stopped pacing.
Nora held up the bodice she had been basting before murder inconvenienced the day's schedule. "Mrs Donnelly will want this by Friday. Dead clerks won't change that."
"Dead clerks change quite a lot."
"Not Mrs Donnelly."
That, unfortunately, was true.
Maura crossed to the stove and lifted the kettle, though it had not boiled. Her hands needed occupation before they betrayed her. The scarlet ribbon lay on the table now, unknotted, the note beside it under a flatiron. Eight words, rewritten in her mind until they had grooves.
Not dead. Hidden. Vale lied. Scarlet Season begins.
Nora had read them once and then sat down hard on the stool.
"It could be a trick," Nora said.
"Yes."
"A cruel one."
"Yes."
"Or bait."
"Almost certainly."
"And yet you look ready to bite it."
Maura gave her a tired glance. "If someone throws bait into a starving town, it is worth asking what they expect to catch."
Nora's mouth tightened. Her father was three months behind on rent. Half the harbour was. The Vale judgement that morning had turned arrears into threat and threat into machinery. Eviction notices would come dressed in legal language, but Maura knew what they meant in plain speech: children coughing in relatives' kitchens, old women carried from beds, nets sold for pennies, men leaving on ships they hated because shame had made land unlivable.
A knock struck the back door.
Both women froze.
The shop's front door had a bell and gossip. The back door had alley shadows and trouble.
Nora reached for the shears.
Maura shook her head, though she appreciated the instinct. She crossed the room, lifted the latch chain but not the bolt, and said, "Who is it?"
"A bad penny," Liam replied.
Nora mouthed something that looked indecent.
Maura opened the door.
Liam stood in the alley with rain in his hair and a parcel under one arm. Close up, he looked more tired than he had in the square. There were lines at the corners of his eyes that did not belong to age but to watching too many doors. His coat was plain, dark, mended at the cuff. A labourer's coat, except the boots were military-quality and the way he held himself made the alley feel measured.
"You should not come here," Maura said.
"Likely not."
"That was not an invitation to agree."
"I brought what Rusk was holding."
Nora's shears lowered by an inch.
Maura did not move. "You stole evidence from a murdered man?"
"Borrowed."
"From a murdered man."
"He objected less than Sir Alistair would have."
Nora made a sound that was almost a laugh and then disguised it as a cough. Maura would have scolded her, but the absurdity steadied the room.
She stepped aside. "Come in before the alley grows ears."
"Too late," Liam said, entering. "This town was born with ears."
He placed the parcel on the worktable but did not immediately unwrap it. His gaze took in the room: the ribbon, the note, Nora, the shears, the back window, the stairs to Maura's rooms above. Not prying. Assessing.
"You always look for exits?" Maura asked.
"Only in rooms I might need to leave quickly."
"That would be all rooms, then."
"Most. Churches are awkward."
Nora snorted. Maura shot her a look. Nora became intensely occupied with thread.
Liam untied the parcel. Inside lay the scrap of ledger paper, damp at one corner and marked with a brown smear Maura chose not to name. There were numbers in Eamon Rusk's cramped hand, a column of initials, and beside one entry a small symbol: the same harbour lantern pressed into the note's wax.
Maura touched the table edge to keep from touching the paper.
"Where did you get this truly?" she asked.
"Under my boot."
"And after that?"
"Into my pocket."
"In front of constables?"
"They were busy watching Sir Alistair perform innocence."
Maura looked closer. "These are shipment marks."
Liam's eyebrows lifted. "You read shipping ledgers?"
"I alter waistcoats for shipping clerks. Men talk when they think a woman is counting stitches instead of lies."
"Useful trade."
"Essential one."
For the first time, his mouth softened. Not quite a smile. More dangerous, perhaps, because it seemed involuntary.
Nora leaned in. "What are the initials?"
"Families," Maura said slowly. "Or accounts. K for Kelleher. Q for Quinn. B for Behan."
Nora went very still.
Liam's gaze sharpened. "Behan?"
"My father's name," Nora said.
On the ledger scrap, beside B, the number was underlined twice.
Maura felt the pressure chamber close around them. Until that moment, the mystery had been terrible but personal: her dead father, her mother's ribbon, Sir Alistair's old lies. Now the ledger had reached across the table and put its stained finger on Nora's house.
"What does it mean?" Nora asked.
Maura hated that she could not soften the answer. "I don't know yet."
"Guess."
"No. Guesses are how powerful men make rumours do their work. We will know."
Liam looked at her then with a respect so direct it felt almost like touch.
A fist hammered the front door.
"Miss Kelleher! Open in the name of the law!"
Constable Byrne.
Nora whispered a word her mother would have blamed on dockside influence.
Liam folded the ledger scrap once and held it out to Maura. "Hide this where a gentleman would never look."
Maura took it, crossed to Mrs Donnelly's unfinished bodice, slit one seam with a pin, slid the paper between lining and whalebone, and smoothed the cloth flat.
Nora looked impressed despite the circumstances. "Mrs Donnelly will be carrying treason under her left breast."
"Mrs Donnelly has carried worse," Maura said.
The hammering came again.
Liam moved toward the back door.
"No," Maura said.
He paused.
"Running will make you guilty."
"I am guilty."
"Of what?"
"Enough."
That was not an answer. It was a locked room.
Maura straightened her cuffs, checked that the ribbon was out of sight, and walked to the front door. She opened it before Byrne could knock a third time.
The young constable stood on the step, wet, pale, and flanked by two older constables who looked pleased to have orders simple enough for their abilities. Behind them, half of Lantern Street pretended to be shopping in the rain.
"Miss Kelleher," Byrne said, unable to meet her eyes. "Sir Alistair Vale requests your presence at the harbour office."
"Requests?"
One of the older constables smirked. "Requires."
Maura gave him the look she reserved for men who asked whether a hem could be done cheaper if they stood very still. "Then he should learn the difference."
Byrne swallowed. "Please."
There it was. The plea beneath the uniform.
Liam stepped into view behind her.
The constables stiffened.
"He requests me as well?" Liam asked.
Byrne's misery deepened. "No."
"Shame. I had my heart set on an outing."
The older constable reached for his baton. Maura saw Liam's weight shift, slight as a match being struck.
No. Not here. Not in her shop.
She lifted her chin. "I will come. Nora, lock the door after me. Finish Mrs Donnelly's bodice. Do not let anyone touch the blue silk."
Nora heard the command under the command: guard the ledger.
"Yes, Miss Kelleher."
Liam's voice lowered. "Maura."
Again, warning. Again, not command.
She looked back at him. "If I am not returned by supper, take tea without me."
"I don't take tea with thieves."
"Then you will be lonely in Emerald Harbour."
His smile flickered and vanished.
She stepped into the rain with Constable Byrne at her side, the town watching, and the note's eight words beating at her wrist like a second pulse.
Scarlet Season begins.