Amanda Lynn's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

The grit fix was gone as an edge. But Amanda Lynn still had one problem no one else could copy. Her boots. The old courier boots gripped dirt fine. On loose scree they slid. She had felt it on every downhill turn. On race day, one skid at full speed would throw her into the rocks. She needed her feet to hold the ridge, not fight it. She carried the boots down to the guild hall to think. The building split clean down the middle, two halves of pale stone joined at one seam. She sat on the steps and turned a boot over. The sole was worn smooth in a wide band under the ball of her foot. That smooth patch was where she slid. She remembered the grit crate at the aviary. The same sharp stone that bit the shelf could bite her soles. She climbed back up, pried the lid, and dug out a handful. Then she pulled a coil of thin wire from the loft bench. She cut shallow grooves across each smooth sole with a stone edge. She pressed grit into the fresh cuts and lashed the wire tight over the toe and heel, trapping the sharp stone against the leather. She flexed each boot. The grit held in the grooves. The soles bit her palm when she dragged them across it. A shadow fell over her hands. B.A. Ware stood above her on the split step, one boot on each half of the stone. Her rival watched the aviary crate, then the wire in her lap. On the ridge she had learned to trust their creature but not them. B.A. had already stolen one fix by watching. "You cut your own soles," B.A. said. Flat. A settled fact. "I did." "I can't copy that in a night." B.A. looked at their own boots. New leather. Smooth. "Mine are fast on dirt. They'll slide on scree same as yours did." Amanda Lynn stood and tested the new soles on the loose stone by the steps. She pushed hard sideways. The boots held. No skid. "Then slow down on the scree," she said. "I won't." She ran the scree stretch three times before dark. Each time her feet locked to the loose rock and she kept full stride through the turns. The fix worked. B.A. Ware stayed by the split hall and watched, and this time there was nothing on the ground to steal. She had solved the boots. On race day she would take the scree at speed while her rival braked. But the wire lashings were rough work. She pressed a thumb against the coil over the toe and felt it give, just slightly. Six miles of pounding would test every knot. If one wire snapped mid-race, the grit would spill and the smooth sole would come back under her at the worst turn.