Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 30 of 150

They ran south under thin trees until the ground flattened. The blue-scaled creature was somewhere behind them on the ridge. Ben carried the chest on the rope. Ten relics inside, two still to find, and no map to point at either one. The herbalist knew where they were. The herbalist was days east, past the trail they had already lost. Ben had nothing but a direction and a clock. Anita dropped back beside him. She was breathing through her nose, steady, the way she ran her river routes. "You're guessing," she said. "I know." "Guessing burns days. We don't have days." "I know." She let it sit. Then: "The courier animal came from the herbalist. It went east. We had the line and we dropped it. The herbalist still has the list." "The herbalist is four days east. The creature is one day behind." "Then we don't walk it. I run it." Ben stopped. Justin stopped a pace ahead and turned. Joe kept moving, watching the slope. "Alone," Anita said. "No chest. No hum. I carry nothing that sings. I go east on the courier line while it's still fresh in my head. I find the address. I come back with the last two locations." "You lose six minutes at every river," Ben said. "Not on foot alone. On foot alone I lose nothing." Justin said, "She's faster than the thing chasing us. Not stronger. Faster." Ben looked at her. Yellow jacket, gloves, the belt cinched tight. Three years running letters through the Outer Gates. She had lied her way into that job and kept it. "Four days there and back," Ben said. "Three." "If the herbalist won't talk." "Then I take the list off a shelf. I've been in worse rooms." Ben unslung the chest. He set it down between them. He took the small folded scrap of paper from his coat, the one from the bench cushion at the inn, the address in the runner's hand. He gave it to her. "Meet point," he said. "The trade stop north of the fork. Third day at dusk. If I'm not there by dark, don't wait." "We'll wait." "Don't." She took the paper. She checked the laces on her shoes. She pulled the hood of the yellow jacket up and dropped it again. "Keep the chest under stone at night," she said. "Don't open a box. Don't cross open ground at noon." "Go," Ben said. She went. Three strides and she was through the trees. Six and Ben could not see the yellow anymore. Justin picked up the chest rope with him. "Three days," he said. "Three days," Ben said. Joe was watching the ridge. "It crossed the creek," he said. "An hour ago." Ben turned north with the chest. The map was gone. The runner wasn't. He had traded time he did not have for time he might get back, and the creature was closer now than it had been at dawn.