Aria Nightwing's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Aria left the parking lot at dawn with her wings folded loose under a borrowed shawl. The poster with her name was rolled inside her pack. She walked toward the market town because a face without a name was useless, and a market was where strangers traded what they knew. She kept one hand near her sword and the sketchbook pressed against her ribs. The market sat under a wide tiled roof with stalls spilling out on every side. Pots clattered. Smoke from a grill drifted across the stones. Aria moved between the stalls with her head down, listening. She showed the drawing to a spice seller, who shook his head. She showed it to a woman selling rope, who looked once and turned away too fast. Aria filed that away and kept moving. Near the back wall, two men in dust-colored robes stood close, talking low. One wore gray and brown, the other orange with a red scarf. Aria stopped behind a stack of clay jars and listened. The man in orange said a family had been killed three nights ago, two towns west. Mother, father, a child who hid. The other man said it was the fourth this year. Same cuts. Same hour. He said a name then, quiet, like it cost him:Ваrren Holt. Aria's hand went tight on the sketchbook. Her parents were not the only ones. The man she had drawn a hundred times had a name now, and he was still working. She stepped back to leave. Her shoulder hit a jar. The shawl slipped. Seven years of pressure chose that second to give, and her wings snapped open behind her, orange and wide, knocking two jars off the stack. The crash pulled every head in the market. A child pointed. A woman dropped a bowl. The rope seller stared with her mouth open, then looked toward the road like she meant to fetch someone. The two robed men turned together. The one in orange went very still. He had heard the name too. Now he was looking at a winged girl who had clearly heard him say it. Aria did not run yet. She pulled the poster from her pack and held it up so they could all see her own name printed under a stranger's handwriting. "Barren Holt," she said, loud, to fix the sound of it in her mouth. "Anyone who knows where he is, I'll pay." Then she turned and walked out fast, wings open because folding them was over. She had a name. She had been seen. Both of those things were going to bring people for her before nightfall, and she would have to be moving when they came.