Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 12 of 30

They climbed out of the sealed room with the metal plate wrapped in cloth. Avi Marie held it flat against her side. Petra had said the theft would be found within the hour. That hour was already bleeding out. Above them, in the cloud rock, her superior kept a stone castle with a fortified gate. If he learned the plate was gone before she reached him, he would vanish. His crime would stay hidden with him. She had the proof and no way to close the distance in time. "He moves at the first alarm," Petra said. The archivist stood at the base of the stair, hands in her suit pockets. She had burned records for seven years to hide the name Avi Marie now carried. "I sealed his room with my palm. That seal reports. He'll get the alarm the moment we opened the door." "Then he already knows," Avi Marie said. "Not yet," Petra said. "The alarm runs through the city floor. Slow. I can hold it." She pulled a flat key from her jacket. "I know the relay. I can cut the line before the message climbs." Azrael leaned against the wet stone, arms crossed. He trusted no one, and he said so with his silence. "She stalls it, you still can't fly the plate up there," he said. "Your light is dead down here." "Mine is," Avi Marie said. "Not his." She looked at Malphas. The goat had refused once to lead her into a trap. He met her eyes now and did not flinch. "The winged horse," he said. "It carries its own light. It climbs fast." "Bring it," Avi Marie said. Petra went to the relay. She knelt, pried a copper panel loose, and cut the line with her key. "Message stopped," she said. "He hears nothing. But the palm log stands. Once he reads it in person, he runs. You have until he walks into that room himself." Malphas returned leading the horned horse. Its light pushed the dark back and warmth returned to Avi Marie's hands. She mounted and pulled the plate tight to her chest. "Go straight to the gate," Petra said. "Not the city. He'll expect the city." Avi Marie rode up the cut stair into open sky. The horse's light climbed with her. Ahead the stone castle rose black against the clouds, its iron gate shut. A single figure in white stood on the wall. Her superior. He had not fled. He was waiting. She reined the horse before the gate and lifted the metal plate so the light struck the cut letters. His own order. His own name. "I have it in my hand," she called up. "You never got the chance to hide." He went still. Then he stepped back from the wall, out of sight. The gate stayed shut. She had beaten his warning and trapped him inside his own keep. Now he had to face her, or answer for why he would not.