The Smuggler's Lullaby

The crate smelled of pine resin and cold machine oil, and Tomas Reuel had learned long ago not to think too hard about what rode inside the boxes he carried. Tonight the box was different. Tonight the box breathed.

He sat in the back of the stalled delivery van with the false floor open at his feet, watching the small chest rise and fall under a grey blanket. A child. Six, maybe seven years old. They had given her something to keep her under — a syrup that smelled faintly of aniseed — and she slept the heavy, boneless sleep of the drugged, one hand curled near her cheek as though she were merely dreaming in her own bed.

"You don't ask questions," Marek had said three days ago, sliding the envelope across the café table. "That has always been the arrangement. You carry the package north, across the line at Voss Hollow, and you hand it to the people waiting on the other side. For this one, the fee is twenty thousand. Half now."