Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 11 of 30

They came down out of the snow with the folder wrapped in cloth. Avi Marie held it against her chest the whole way. But when she opened it in the light of the cabin porch, her hands went cold. The fire had eaten the page. She could read the name of her superior, still black and clear. Below it, the proof was gone. Charred flakes fell into her palm. Without the rest, she had only a name and her word. No angel would take that against the one who trained her. "It's ash," she said. "There's nothing here to show them." Petra Lund stepped up beside her. The archivist had guarded a sealed floor of records for seven years, burning proof to protect the very name on that page. Now she looked at the ruined folder with a flat face. "I made the duplicates," she said. "I know what he kept." She tapped the black name. "This came from a ledger. Ink like this. Sealed with his own mark. That mark can't burn. It's cut into metal." "Where," Malphas said. The goat stood at the rail, horns down, watching the tree line. "Below," Petra said. "His true archive. Not the city floor. A room he thinks no one alive can name." She met Avi Marie's eyes. "I can name it." Azrael leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. He had hunted the hollow weapon at Avi Marie's side, trusting no one, least of all her. "A trap," he said. "He wants you there." "Then we spring it early," Avi Marie said. Petra led them down through a stair cut in the cloud rock. The air grew thin and heavy at once. Avi Marie felt her light dim the deeper they went. At the bottom stood an iron door with no handle. Petra pressed her palm flat against a cold plate. It knew her. The door swung. Inside sat one shelf and one box. Petra lifted the lid. She drew out a metal plate the size of a hand. A seal was cut into it, the same mark from the folder. Under the seal, cut letters spelled her superior's name and the order to blind an angel and take her memory. His own record. His own hand. "He wrote it to protect himself from the courier," Petra said. "Proof the crime was his order, not his mistake." She placed it in Avi Marie's hands. "Metal doesn't lie. No angel can call this a rumor." Garrett crouched at the door and studied the floor. "Fresh dust, disturbed," he said. "Someone checks this room." He looked up. "He'll know it's gone within the hour." Avi Marie closed her fingers around the plate. It was cold and sure. She had her proof at last. But the moment she took it, she had told her superior exactly where she stood. There was no hiding now, and no waiting. "Then we go to him first," she said.