Azrael Morningstar's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Azrael waded the long way around and came up on the far bank where the boy's mark pointed. The pool sat flat. No ripple. No dead thing rising. Every minute his brother's soul sank another arm's length past reach, and he had nothing left to trade if the creature never came back up. He crouched in the reeds and counted his breaths. Ten. Fifty. A hundred. The water stayed dead. He had given the bike. He had given his name. He had walked here on the promise of a child with charcoal on his fingers, and the promise was late. A path cut through the reeds behind him. He had not seen it from the platform. It ran to a split-log board hammered into the mud, carved with clan marks he did not know. Past the board, a stone walkway. Past the walkway, a timber house with red shutters, smoke thin from its chimney. A toll post at the edge of somebody's land. A woman knelt by the board. Cracked breastplate, mud to the elbows, a snapped sword hilt at her belt. She did not stand when he came out of the reeds. She only lifted her chin at him the way a tired dog lifts its head. This was Jael Norn, who used to wear a crown, and now took coin at a roadside for the lord who broke her. "Toll," she said. "I have nothing." "Then turn around." A sharp-dressed man stepped out from behind the board. Fox fur at his collar. A ledger chained to his wrist. Tomas Pryce did not look at Jael. He looked at Azrael the way a butcher looks at meat. "Everyone has something," Pryce said. He opened the ledger. "You want down. I saw you watching the water. The crack under this pool answers to the house behind me. The house answers to me." Azrael's jaw set. "What do you want." "A signature. You come back up, whatever you drag with you belongs to my ledger for one year. Soul included." "My brother's soul is not for sale." "Not his. Yours. On return." Pryce held out a quill. "He goes free. You work the year." Azrael thought of the pool that would not open. Of hours slipping past. He took the quill and signed the line where a name should go. The mark he made was not a name. He had no name to give. Pryce studied it, then smiled, and closed the ledger with a soft click. "Good enough," Pryce said. "The pool opens at dusk. Jael walks you down." Jael stood. Her knees cracked. She did not look glad. She looked at Azrael like she already knew what he had traded and what it cost. "Come on," she said. "You bought your ride. Now you owe the house."