Asher Converse's Arc

Chapter 24 of 30

The floor was hidden. The cellar was safe. But Asher still had a hole in his plan. Any man could walk in the front door or slip through the alley, and no one would know until he stood inside. Asher wanted a warning. He wanted to hear the enemy coming before the enemy reached the boards. So he sent for Chalam. The wizard came at dusk, staff in hand, robe open at the chest. He set his satchel on the bar and listened while Asher pointed at the two doors. "I need to know the moment a stranger crosses either," Asher said. "Not after. The moment." Chalam nodded once. "I can ward a door," he said. "A thread of binding across the frame. Break it, and I feel the break. But the ward knows every body. It will ring for your own men too." "Then teach it my men," Asher said. "It does not learn faces," Chalam said. "It counts crossings. That is all it can do." He said it flat, the way he stated any hard fact. Asher had learned the wizard never softened a thing, even when the thing spoiled a plan. Asher thought. The team crossed those doors all night. A ward that rang for Tucker's every trip would be no ward at all. "Then set it to sleep by day," he said. "Wake it after last bells. After the doors are bolted and my men are in." Chalam considered this. "That I can do," he said. "One ward, armed when you bolt the doors. If any body crosses after, I will know. And so will you, if you carry this." He drew a small chalk-marked stone from the satchel and set it on the bar. "It grows cold when the thread breaks." Asher closed his hand around the stone. It was warm now. He tried to picture it going cold in the dark, and his chest tightened. Chalam went to the front door first. He drew a line in the air across the frame with the tip of his staff. The wood glowed pale, then dimmed. He crossed the floor to the alley door and did the same. "Bolt them," he said. Asher threw both bolts. Chalam touched each frame once more. "Armed," he said. "Now break it. Test it." Asher slid the front bolt and pulled the door open a hand's width. The stone in his palm turned cold as well water. He shut the door and the cold faded. "It works," Asher said. "It works," Chalam agreed. He gathered his satchel. "But a ward tells you a man is in. It does not tell you who, or what he wants, or how many followed him." He paused at the door. "You will know they have come. You will not know if you can stop them." Asher held the cold-turned stone and felt the shape of the next problem forming. The doors were guarded now. The men who hunted his floor would trip the thread. He would feel them arrive. He just did not yet know how to make them stay.