Asher Converse's Arc

Chapter 26 of 30

The bells rang low over the door and the crowd thinned toward closing. Asher wiped the last brass mug and set it on the shelf. His hand went to the gold chain at his throat, the way it always did when he was thinking. He thought about the woman who gave it to him, the one waiting somewhere below the world. He was supposed to reach her before the new moon. But standing in Elixir, coins heavy in the till, his men at their posts, he found the pull had faded. Let her keep waiting. He had built something here. He meant to grow it. JD stood by the front bells, arms crossed, green shirt open at the chest. He was the tracker Chalam had brought in, the man hunting whoever stole his brother's bracelet. He read thoughts the way other men read faces. Now his head turned, slow, and his eyes found Asher across the room. Asher felt it before JD spoke. The gold bracelet on JD's wrist caught the lamplight as he crossed the floor. "You've quit," JD said. Flat. Not a question. Asher set down the rag. "Quit what." "The chain. The woman. Getting it to her." JD stopped at the bar. "You just decided to stop. I heard it." Asher's jaw tightened. He hated being read. "I decided nothing. I'm thinking about the bar." "You're lying to me and to yourself." JD didn't soften it. He tapped his own bracelet, the twin of the stolen one. "I know that thought. I've had it. Give up the hard thing. Keep the easy one." He leaned in. "I stopped chasing Marco's bracelet once. For a week. Told myself the trail was cold. It wasn't. I was tired." "And?" "And a man who quits the promise quits the crew." JD held his eyes. "If you drop her, you'll drop the grove next. You'll drop me. I need to know which man is running this floor." Asher looked past him at the empty room. The mirror. The bells. The trapdoor hidden beneath the warehouse, warded and waiting. He had told the dryads he keeps promises. He had told Chalam the same. It was the one thing that got him through every gate. "You're right," Asher said. The words came hard. "I let the money talk. I forgot why I started walking." JD nodded once. "So?" "So the bar stands. It grows. But it's not the end." Asher pulled the chain from his collar and closed it in his fist. "It's the door I walk through to reach her. I build it wide enough that wandering men and magic users pass through. One of them knows the way down. That's how I get to her." JD studied him a moment. Then his mouth moved, close to a smile. "Now you're the man I hoped." Asher slid the chain back under his collar. The bar was no longer his ambition. It was his road.