Ash Sailstorm's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Two days after Ash held her stamped deed, the same clerk sent a boy to find her. She read the note under the willow. The clerk wanted her back at the counter. He had questions about her company, the man who signed, and the manager who was a woman. If he kept pulling the thread, he would carry it to the magistrate. Ash folded the note and thought about the empty alien houses she still could not fill. She rode to the ragged campsite where thrown-out women slept under patched cloth. A fire burned low in the center. She needed a story that made the clerk stop digging, and she needed proof to sell it. A pale girl in a gray smock knelt by the fire, feeding a small glowing creature scraps from her palm. Ash had met her once here, a servant from a house that locked its gates. Reva Fenn. The girl looked up without flinching at Ash's glowing eyes. That alone made Ash trust her more than most. "The clerk thinks I'm working a scheme," Ash said. She sat across the fire. "He's right. I need him to think something else." Reva stroked the little creature. "He wants a reason. Give him one he can file." Ash pulled out a document she had paid a forger to make. Heavy seal, formal words, an official's fake signature. It named her cured of what the town hated in women like her. Proof she had been treated to become straight and proper. "If I'm this," Ash said, "I'm no threat. Just a fixed woman running a business." Reva took the paper. She read it slowly. Her fingertips glowed faint gold, and she did not seem to notice. "The signature line is wrong," she said. "The clerk knows the real hand. He'll spot it." Ash's stomach dropped. "You've seen it?" "I served the house that hosts him." Reva reached for a pen from Ash's pack. She copied the official's true signature from memory, steady and exact, over the forged one. "Now it holds." Ash stared. "How." "I've watched hands sign things my whole life." Reva handed it back. She did not explain more. At dawn Ash walked to the counter. She laid the certificate down before the clerk spoke. He read it, then read it twice. His finger touched the signature and stopped. His mouth pinched, the same way it had over the deed. But the seal was heavy and the hand was true. He had no code to argue with a cured woman. "Fine," he said. He stamped a note into her file and closed it. "You're on record." Ash walked out. The clerk would not report her now. But her name sat in the town's book under a lie, tied to Reva's forged hand. If anyone ever tested that signature, both women would fall together. And the magistrate still waited for a witness who had vanished.