Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 124 of 150

Ben moved through the pines before dawn with the chest against his hip and the fox creature on his shoulder. The blanket had dried through. The hum climbed back into the wood. He had one buyer waiting on the plague road at noon, and one line in the message that mattered more than the price: the eleventh piece was already sold, and the buyer knew where. The stone marker with the cross sat in a clearing between two low hills. Ben set the chest on the flat of it and waited. Payne came out of the trees alone, gray smock, linen gloves, the same plague mask Ben remembered. No cart. No guard. "Ten," Payne said. "Open them." Ben worked the boxes open one at a time. Payne bent to each piece and touched it with a bare finger. He did not speak. When the last box closed, he counted a purse from inside his smock and set it on the stone. Half rate, as agreed. Ben did not pick it up. "The eleventh." Payne tilted his mask. "Sold to a collector two months back. The piece went east with a carter. The carter is dead. The buyer never received it." "Where is it now." "In a ditch, in a crate, in a barn. I do not know which." Payne paused. "But I know who saw the carter last. A repair man on the west road. He fixed the carter's axle the morning of the killing. He kept the broken piece." "Name." "Al Beback." Ben looked up. Al had wrapped a chest for him once and asked nothing for it. Al lived where things broke and stayed near him. Ben could find him. "That is what I sell," Payne said. "Not the piece. The man who saw the piece last. You do the rest." Ben weighed it. A name, not a location. A trail, not a chest. But a trail he could walk. "Done." Payne turned and walked back into the trees. Ben pocketed the purse. The chest on the stone was empty now except for the fox, who climbed inside and curled against the wood. He closed the lid and shouldered the weight. Ten pieces gone. One name in his pocket. The set was down to one missing piece and one lead, and the lead was a man he knew. He stepped off the plague road and started west before the sun cleared the ridge.