Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 7 of 44

Bailey left the tower at dawn. The book rode under his arm. The totem hung at his chest, warm against his skin. He knew the true binding line now. He also knew the trap. Carry the totem near Malachar, stay whole, and he would become the emperor's hands. The rite worked only at the deep water. He could not speak it from anywhere else. So he had to walk into the one place his enemy wanted him most. He reached an old dock at the water's edge. Timbers sagged. Ropes rotted on cracked posts. He sat on a plank and stared at the black water beyond. He turned the problem over. He needed the totem there. He needed himself whole to carry it. Whole meant a vessel. There was no path between. The totem grew hot. Malachar's voice came through the vines that gripped the dock posts. The leaves shivered as he spoke. "You see it, warden," the emperor said. "You must come whole. And whole, you are mine." Bailey did not answer. He looked at the vines. They had made him. They had fed him a hundred years. They rose and sank in looping strands all through the swamp. They served the debt. An idea took hold. He did not have to carry the totem in his hands. The vines could carry it. He pried the totem from its cord. He knelt at the dock's edge, where a thick strand looped from the mud. "You made me to move things through the swamp," he said to it. "Move this. Carry it to the deep water. Not me. It." The strand did not stir. He pressed the totem into the wet coils and held it there. He spoke the words he had read in the root den, the old tongue of guidance and passage. His hand shook. If the vines took him too, he was lost. The vine closed around the totem. It sank into the mud. Bailey felt it pull away from him through the earth, toward the deep water, toward Malachar. His hands were empty. He was still whole. He had not gone near. Malachar screamed through every leaf on the dock. "No! You bring nothing to my hands! You bring it past them!" Bailey stood. The totem was gone from him. It would reach the deep water without his body. He would follow after, empty-handed, and speak the rite there. No vessel. No trap. But the vines that had carried the totem now dragged something back. A second strand rose from the water. On its tip clung the ferret, limp and wet, jaws clicking Malachar's stolen words. "Then I take the girl instead," the emperor said through it. "The one whose totem broke your chain. She wears the other half. Come to the deep water, or she comes to me." Bailey watched the ferret sink. The totem was on its way. So was Cora.