The General Who Took My Lantern and Broke My Heart Chapter 12

The General Who Took My Lantern and Broke My Heart Chapter 12

The trading boat spent seven days along the coast before it finally docked in Briarport.

When Aveline stepped onto the pier, her legs were still weak. She held her small bundle close and walked out of the harbor.

The air on the Sable Coast was damp and warm. Live oaks and palmettoes lined the streets, their leaves shifting in the sea wind.

After asking several strangers for directions and taking more wrong turns than she could count, Aveline finally found her aunt’s spice shop.

The storefront was small. Bundles of dried chilies and strings of allspice hung near the door, and the air inside was thick with the sharp, warm scent of spices.

A woman stood behind the counter, head lowered over an old register. When she heard footsteps, she looked up.

She seemed to be in her early forties, her skin browned by the coastal sun. There was still a trace of the beauty she must have had when she was younger.

She looked Aveline over.

“You’re Aveline?”

Aveline nodded. “Aunt Tamsin.”

Tamsin did not ask questions. She only set down her pen, took a key from a hook behind the counter.

“There’s an empty room in the back. Sheets are in the closet. Make the bed yourself. When dinner’s ready, I’ll knock.”

That was all.

It meant she was allowed to stay.

Aveline settled into the spice shop.

Tamsin Rook was a woman of few words. Her husband had been lost at sea years ago, and she had kept the shop running alone for more than a decade. She was not warm with Aveline, but she was never cruel.

She gave her food, a room, and a little spending money each month.

Aveline did not live there for free.

She started helping Tamsin with the shop. Ledgers, inventory, scent, price, bargaining—Tamsin taught her each thing, and Aveline learned it piece by piece.

She still could not read everything. Half the entries in the ledger came out crooked, and some pages were marked with little symbols only she understood.

The days passed like that.

During the day, Aveline worked in the shop. After closing, she sometimes walked down to the harbor.

There was a used-book table near the pier. The seller was an old man with white hair and a white beard. He never called out to customers. He set up every evening and packed everything away before dark.

At first, Aveline only glanced at the books when she passed.

Then one evening, she crouched down and opened a thin volume. It was filled with simple notes beside old poems.

The old man looked at her. “You read?”

“A little. Not much.”

He nodded and said nothing else.

After that, Aveline often stopped at the book table in the evenings. She would crouch there until the sky grew too dark to see the words, then brush off her skirt and head back to the shop.

That evening, she was studying an old book that looked like a trade ledger, her brows drawing tighter with every line.

Too many words were unfamiliar. Guessing her way through them was useless.

“That word is excise. A tax on certain goods.”

A clear voice came from above her.

Aveline looked up.

A young man stood beside her in a pale linen jacket, his face half-shadowed by the evening light.

He bent slightly and pointed to the word on the page.

“An excise contract meant the state controlled the sale. Private sellers couldn’t just move the goods however they liked. That book is an old trade-tax record, and it’s too dry for a beginner.”

Aveline paused, then closed the book and stood.

The young man was nearly a head taller than she was. His face was clean-cut, his eyes bright with a smile. He looked barely past twenty, but he carried himself with the calm ease of a rich man’s son.

“Who are you?” Aveline asked.

He gave her a lazy, graceful nod.

“Rafferty Quillan. I live on the south side. My family does a little business here and there. I was passing by, saw you glaring at that ledger like it had personally offended you, and couldn’t help myself.”

His gaze settled on her face, and his smile deepened.

“Forgive the interruption.”

Aveline shook her head, thanked him, and turned back toward the shop.

She thought it was only a chance meeting.

But the next afternoon, Rafferty appeared at the door of Rook’s Spice Shop.