Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 28 of 44

Calla read the last mark in the book. The living name led Bailey to a shack deep in the marsh, but he came too late. The door hung broken. Bailey found only mud and a red beard hair snagged on a nail. The witness his mother meant to fetch him from was gone. The King's loyalists had reached the place first. Crane crouched in the doorway. The old officer knew the dead King's men better than anyone. "Bone-pendant men," he said, holding up a carved token from the dirt. "They took him alive. They keep prisoners on the water." He looked up at Bailey. "A prison barge. Old iron, half-sunk. They think no one would follow into the marsh." Cora tapped her cracked wand against her palm. His sister had learned to read the marsh's dangers. "Then we follow," she said. "But this witness matters more than any loyalist. Who is he, brother?" Bailey didn't know yet. He knew only that the man had waited a hundred years to tell him the truth of his blood. They took the elk across the water at dusk. The barge sat low, iron bars black with rust, timber hull rotting into the swamp. Two loyalists stood watch on the deck. Tyrek slid off the elk first, knife already out. He had guarded Bailey since the swamp and moved without a sound. "I take the guards," he whispered. "You get inside." Tyrek climbed the chains. He dropped the first guard fast. The second shouted before Cora's wand cracked and dropped him too. Bailey pulled himself onto the deck and found the cell. A broad man sat chained in the dark. A big red beard covered his chest. His hands were bruised, but he had been gentle enough once to bandage a bird's wing. He squinted at Bailey through the bars. "You've got your mother's eyes," the man said. His voice shook. "I'm Rufus. Rufus Greel. Your cousin, on her side. She left you with the swamp so the King wouldn't find you." He gripped the bars. "She meant to come back. She never got the chance." Bailey's throat went tight. Here was blood who remembered his mother's face. Crane broke the lock with an iron bar. Rufus stumbled out, rubbing his wrists. "There's more," Rufus said, low. "Your mother didn't hide you from the old King alone. She feared what was already inside your line. She wrote it down and hid it where the King couldn't reach." He looked at Bailey with wet eyes. "The pendant men took that too. They carried it back toward the capital." Bailey held his cousin steady on the rocking deck. He had won the witness. But the truth of his blood was ink on a page now racing toward the throne he had just claimed, in the hands of men who wanted him dead.