Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 125 of 150

Ben walked west with the chest on his back and the fox curled inside it. The west road ran straight through three villages before the fork where Al kept his shed. Payne's people worked all three. So did the buyers who paid Payne. Ben's face had been drawn on a folded page and passed from hand to hand for weeks. Anyone on that road with a coin purse and eyes knew him. He turned off the road at the first stream and thought it through. He had a purse heavy enough to buy a wagon, and no way to spend it. The moment he showed the coin, the coin was gone. The moment he showed his face, the purse and the fox went with it. He cut north to a cottage he remembered. Paige opened the door with a knife in her hand, saw him, and lowered it. "You said not to come back," Ben said. "I did." She stepped aside. "Come in." He set the chest on her table. The fox climbed out and drank from a bowl she pushed across without asking why. "I need to reach Al Beback on the west road," Ben said. "Payne's people will take the coin off me before I get past the second village." Paige looked at the purse. "How much." "Enough to be worth killing for." She sat down. "Then don't carry it. Send it ahead with someone who isn't you." "Who." A knock. Paige did not move. Another knock, and then the door opened on its own. Lolly stood there, wet through, a puddle already forming under her boots. Behind her, Joe leaned in the frame with leaves in his hair. Millie sat on Joe's shoulders holding a folded map. "She said you'd be here," Lolly said, pointing at Millie. "I flew over," Millie said. "Only a little. Two feet, maybe. But I saw the roof." Ben looked at Paige. Paige shrugged. He split the purse on the table into four uneven piles. "Lolly walks the road wet. Nobody looks twice at a soaked girl. She carries a third of it." He pushed a pile toward her. "Joe cuts through the trees north of the road. He carries a third." He pushed the next. "Millie flies what she can carry over the villages entirely." He pushed a smaller pile. "I walk the road empty-handed with the chest and the fox. If they take me, they get nothing worth the trouble." "And if they kill you anyway," Joe said. "Then you three meet Al without me and give him the coin for the axle piece." Lolly picked up her share and pocketed it. Water ran down her wrist. "When." "Now." They split at Paige's gate in four directions. Ben walked the west road openly, chest on his back, fox at his collar, pockets empty. By dusk he was through the second village with a split lip and a bruised rib. No one had found anything worth taking. At the third village, Lolly waited by the well. Joe came out of the pines an hour later. Millie dropped from a barn roof with the smallest pile intact. Al's shed sat at the fork. The lamp was lit. Ben knocked.