Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 46 of 150

Ben folded Anita's page into his coat and picked up the chest. The set was complete, but complete meant valuable, and the herbalist's scouts were already moving. He couldn't carry the chest openly to verify each piece against Anita's ledger. He couldn't leave it in the hollow either. Two scouts had crossed the creek that morning. Joe had counted their prints on the way back. "We need walls," Ben said. "Loud ones. A day, maybe two, to open each box and match the list." Justin looked up from his fingers. "Not the cottage. Not the yard. The music hall." Ben knew the place. He had found Justin there months ago, in a hall built for layered sound, with vents on the roof and signs stacked over signs. The walls swallowed noise. Nothing hummed loud enough to leak through a band on stage. "How far?" Ben asked. "Half a day south. Not the front door. The coal chute." They moved before Amanda finished lacing her boots. The hall came up out of the pines with its windows lit. A drum was going inside. Justin led them around to a low iron grate at the back and pried it up with a bent nail. Ben lowered the chest through first. Joe went last and pulled the grate down behind him. The room beneath the stage smelled of rosin and old beer. The drum overhead shook dust from the joists. Ben set the chest on a crate stamped with warning labels and painted letters and cracked the wax with his knife. He opened the first carved box. The hum rose and vanished into the drum. Anita ticked the list. Mask. Ben closed the lid and moved to the next. Halfway through, Justin lifted his head. "Not the drum. Under it." Ben stopped. "Under it what." "Boots. Four pairs. Coming down the side stair." Amanda already had the grate open. Ben sealed the box in his hand and shoved it into the chest. Six verified. Six not. He pushed the lid down and dropped fresh wax across the seam from a candle Justin held to it. The stair door rattled. Ben lifted the chest. Joe went through the grate first, then Amanda, then the chest, then Ben. Justin came last and set the grate back in place from below with the bent nail through the ring. They crossed the alley into the pines before the door above them opened. Ben crouched behind a stump with the chest between his knees. "Six confirmed," Anita whispered. "Six to go." "They know the hall now," Joe said. Ben looked at the page in his hand. Half a list checked. Half a set unverified. And the herbalist's men had just learned where he ran when he needed walls. "Then we don't go back to any place we've used," Ben said. "We find a new one. Tonight."