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We’ve wreckers here.”
    My breath hissed in, and Fisk’s lips tightened. Rose looked from one of us to the other in confusion. “Wreckers?”
    “You’d not know, Rose, for they only do their wicked work on rocky coastlines, such as this one.” And Rose, like me, had been raised inland. But I’d met and spoken with sailors since, and even crewed a ship myself, and I’d heard their tales. I should have guessed. . . .
    ’Twas Fisk who continued. “They’re pirates, of a sort. They light a couple of fires, like the one we saw, near a place a shipmaster expects to find harbor beacons. Only when he sails in, there is no harbor.”
    “But then the ship would hit the rocks.” ’Twas more an anguished protest than a statement of disbelief. “They’d sink.”
    “Not for a time, Mistress,” said Potter bitterly. “It takes days, sometimes, for a ship on the rocks to break apart. Though mostly it’s just a few hours. They go out in small boats that can dodge the rocks and loot. And some of the cargo will float. But the passengers and crew can’t.”
    Rose’s lovely face looked cold again. “But the ships have small boats, too? And on the rocks, they’d be close enough to swim. . . .” Her voice trailed off at the sight of our grim faces.
    “Some do make it to shore, Mistress, but they find the wreckers waiting. If you gentlemen would care to change your clothes, I’ll find some dry cloaks to cover ’em. The sheriff’ll need your guidance. And you’ve no need to worry about horses, for—”
    “We heard you tell the tapster,” said Fisk. You could see that the idea of going out again held no appeal, but only resignation sounded in his voice.
    For myself, I only hoped we’d be in time.
    Lester Todd differed from the last sheriff I’d had significant dealings with, for he was tall and thin, and still had his straight, mouse-brown hair. With his long, lined face and an almost scholarly stoop to his shoulders, he couldn’t have been more different from Sheriff Potter—if nothing else, he greeted us courteously. I had some hope of dealing well with him, as long as he didn’t discover that I was unredeemed.
    Even the drizzle was beginning to lift, though the odd shower pattered down from time to time. But if the rain had ceased, the mud was no better. After one of the twenty-some deputies’ horses fell, and its rider broke a wrist and had to go back, we reduced our pace to a brisk trot, deeming it better to arrive late than not at all.
    “Or without enough men to fight,” Todd told us grimly. “Three years ago, when this started, I posted groups of three, then four and even five men along the headlands in the likely places. As far as I can tell, it didn’t even slow them down. We’d find my deputies dead, along with the handful of sailors who made it to shore. Now I send out patrols in force, but the wreckers do most of their work in the storms, and in weather like this . . .” He shook his head. “We do our best. We patrolled this stretch of road this afternoon before the storm broke, and we’d just come back from the East Coast Road when Ebb Dorn came running in.”
    “It sounds like they know where you’re riding—could you have a leak in your department?” This was fairly tactful for Fisk; he claims that sheriffs’ departments leak gossip like an old bellows leaks air.
    Todd shrugged. “Half the town can see which gate we ride out, and half the countryside sees us if we loop back through the fields. It’s hard to conceal over twenty men and horses, Master Fisk.”
    “ ’Tis amazing that you’ve so many volunteers,” I put in soothingly, for we’d learned that most of the men who rode with us made their living in other professions.
    But Fisk pressed on, “Can’t you trace the loot back through its fence? In three years, surely some of it’s surfaced. At least . . . Can you get cargo manifests for the ships they sink?”
    “Yes,” said Todd shortly. “Huckerston’s a small