Free Treasure by Megan Derr

back to Raiden. "Why not tell him we know of it?"
    "Because I want to know what is hiding in the mist, and I will not do that by giving away my own position."
    Sighing again, Kin said, "Fine. Whatever. I am off to the tailor's and then to my own rooms. I will see you in the morning. Make certain they tend my ship, and there had better not be so much as one nail out of place!"
    "Aye, Captain," Raiden drawled, ignoring the scathing look Kin cast him, chuckling as he was left alone. He returned to his office and sat down behind his desk, shoving aside ledgers and other bits of paper to unearth a clean sheet, as well as his various writing implements. He quickly wrote out a missive to Prince Nankyokukai, then sanded the letter. When it was dry, he folded it closed and sealed it with dark blue wax into which he pressed his personal crest:  a three-mast ship with bolts of lightning behind it.
    Returning to the warehouse, he snagged one of the apprentices and sent him off with the letter, then set to work ensuring his new batch of goods were put away correctly and his clerks catalogued it.
    He could not wait to have a secretary who was up to the task of helping him to keep it all straight; just thinking about all the secretaries he had tried and discarded set his head to throbbing. "What in the storms' do you think you are doing with those bolts of silk?" he demanded.
    The man in question nearly dropped the bolts of silk, only regaining them at the last. "They go in 3-B—"
    "No, they most certainly do not, and I want to speak to whatever idiot is telling you that. Now!" Raiden said, feeling his headache growing. Soon all of this would be left in the hands of the men he appointed to the task. No doubt, upon his return, it would all be a mess, and he would have been robbed blind, but money was an easy thing to recover.
    He just hopped the journey he was about to undertake proved to be worthwhile. If it all failed, the disappointment would crush him. Drawing a deep breath, Raiden let it out slowly, then turned and left the barely-contained chaos of the warehouse. If anyone really needed him, they knew all the places he could be found. He walked through the streets, lost in thought, turning over and over everything that could happen on the long journey to Sanhoshi.
    He had not seen the island in a long time, not since he had taken Kin with him several years before. It was a small island, deserted and barren. There was nothing there of interest to anyone.
    Raiden was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of a woman screaming—it was a scream of fear, of pain, of outright despair. He looked around for the source, then strode toward the cluster of people standing in front of a tiny little house that looked on the verge of collapse.
    It took only a moment to realize what was going on between the priest, the woman, her husband, and the two bundles to which the woman clung for dear life. "Screaming will solve nothing," Raiden said quietly, but he may as well have shouted, the way everyone fell silent, their attention snapping to him.
    The priest scowled and drew himself up, the image of pomposity in his dark blue robes marked with the symbol of the Order of the Three Storms:  three clouds in gray, one with a yellow bolt of lightning, one with blue wind markings, and the last with a white snowflake. Raiden loathed arrogant priests. "It's none of your affair, merchant."
    "The needless death of a child is the affair of every man," Raiden said. He looked at the babies clutched tightly to their mother's breast. "They cannot be but days old."
    "Four days," the woman said, crying, her husband ashen faced and resigned beside her. "Please, Priest, do not take my children away."
    Shaking his head, the priest replied, "Twins are a mark of evil, you know that. They cannot be allowed to live."
    "That custom is old-fashioned, and it was stupid to begin with," Raiden said and almost laughed in the priest's face at the way he puffed up and grew red