Asha Gould's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Asha Gould was sorting gauze in the aid tent when her uncle's shadow fell across the flap. He was the hardliner in her family, the one who counted names in and out of the front like coins. He held a slip of paper between two fingers. On it was the name of the wounded boy she had treated last week — the boy from the other side, the one with the gut wound who looked like her cousin. "You logged him as ours," her uncle said. "He isn't ours." Asha kept folding. Her medical bag sat open on the cot, its silver clasps catching the lamp. The tattoo on her wrist showed above the cuff — the rival family's emblem, dark as a bruise. She did not cover it. Covering it now would be an answer. "He was bleeding out," she said. "I sorted him after." "You sorted him wrong on purpose." He stepped inside. "Two more days of this and I pull you off the line. You'll sit in the compound until the war ends. No satchel. No radio. No cease-fire channel." She understood what he was really saying. If he pulled her back, she would never reach the heir. The heir of the rival family lay wounded three kilometers east, and she had spent six months building the quiet road to his bedside. Marriage into that bloodline was the only ending she wanted. Her uncle could close that road in an afternoon. She set down the gauze. "Then let me prove I'm ours. Give me a job only ours would take." He watched her. "Triage rotation at the family camp," she said. "Two weeks. I'll leave the front. You'll see who I treat and who I don't." It was the offer of a leash, and he took it. He liked leashes. "Two weeks," he said. "You keep the bag. You lose the channel." He went out. Asha sat down on the cot. Her hands started shaking, which annoyed her, so she pressed them flat against her yoga mat where it lay rolled at her feet. She unrolled it on the tent floor and knelt on it and breathed until the shaking stopped. She had bought two weeks. She had lost the cease-fire channel. The heir would go untreated by her hands, and someone else's hands were not steady enough. The tent flap moved. A courier stood there — wiry, shaved head, bright orange satchel across his chest. She knew him by reputation, and by rule she was supposed to know him as an enemy. He held out a letter with the wrong name on it. "Delivered to you by mistake," he said, and did not blink. She took it. The seal was the rival family's. Her uncle was already fifty steps away. She broke the seal.