Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 45 of 150

Ben carried the sealed chest out of Paige's cottage with the horn still ringing up the slope. The group moved fast through the pines, Anita at his shoulder, Justin and Amanda dragging the empty tree shell behind them to leave a false scent. Joe took the lead. They didn't stop until the cottage was two ridges behind and the horn had gone quiet. Ben set the chest down on a flat rock and put his hand on the lid. Twelve boxes. He had wanted this weight for two years. It felt wrong. "Something's off," he said. Anita crouched beside him. "Say it." "Thirteen. Every source said thirteen. The tooth was destroyed. That took us to twelve. But nobody ever told me the set changed. Only that one was gone." "So a piece is still out there." "Or there never was one. I need to know which." Anita didn't argue. She unshouldered her satchel and pulled out a folded strip of oilcloth. "Courier route to the archive at the Outer Gates runs through here. Two days on foot. Six hours if I run it." "The river crossing beats you." "Not today." He looked at her. Blue hair damp under her hood, yellow sleeves pushed to the elbows, gloves already tightened. She had lied her way into the courier post at fifteen and held it three years. She knew every archive clerk between the gates and the throne. "Ask them for the original relic ledger," Ben said. "Not the copies. The first count. If there was ever a thirteenth, it will be listed by name." "And if there wasn't?" "Then twelve is the set. And I'm done hunting." She nodded once and was gone through the trees before he finished the sentence. They waited in a hollow above a creek. Ben kept his hand on the chest. Joe watched the ridge. Amanda slept with her back to a root. Justin counted his fingers over and over, a habit Ben had stopped asking about. Anita came back at dusk of the second day. Her sweater was torn at the shoulder and her boots were caked to the ankle. She dropped a copied page onto the moss beside the chest. "Twelve," she said. "Listed by name. Mask, comb, cup, tooth, and the nine you already have. The thirteen was a scribe's error. Copied nine times from one bad ledger." Ben picked up the page. His name for each piece sat in a clean column. No thirteenth. No missing entry. The tooth was struck through with a single line and the word destroyed written beside it in fresh ink. "Then the set is here," he said. "In this chest. Complete." "Yes." He should have felt lighter. He didn't. Complete meant the herbalist knew exactly what he carried now, and exactly what it was worth. The horn had gone quiet two days ago. It would sound again. "How long did the crossing take you?" he asked. "Four minutes," Anita said. "I got two of them back."