Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 70 of 150

The woman waited on the scree with her courier animal at her knee. Ben stayed low above her. The crate was silent now, but the north track would give up six men soon. He had one choice to make and no clean way to make it. "Name the sender," Ben said. "Angelina Cage." The name meant nothing. Ben watched her face for the tell. She did not blink, did not shift her weight, did not sell it. That was the trouble. A person who lied badly showed you the lie. A person who lied well showed you nothing. He had no time to sort which she was. Eileen kept her knife along her thigh. "Six minutes," she said. "Maybe seven." The woman spoke again. "She says the north track ends at a rope bridge the herbalist owns. South off the face is where the six will drive you. There's a third path. She'll show my animal the mark." "Why send you?" Ben said. "Because she got out." The woman's voice stayed flat. "Three years in a tower. She learned who owns which road." Ben thought about it. A stranger with a courier could send them anywhere. Off a cliff. Into a second net. But the two roads he could see both led to the herbalist. He needed a test that cost the woman something before he paid. "Send the animal now," Ben said. "Alone. To the mark. We watch it go. You stay here with us until it comes back." The woman's mouth moved a fraction. Not a smile. A calculation. "She said you'd ask that." She knelt and put her palm flat on the courier's shoulder. She spoke two words Ben didn't catch. The animal launched off the scree in one burst, blue-striped flank low to the ground, and cut west along a seam in the rock Ben hadn't seen. It was gone before he counted three. Eileen kept her knife out. "If it doesn't come back?" "Then she dies here and we go south," Ben said, quiet, so the woman heard it. The woman heard it. She sat down on the scree and folded her hands in her lap. She did not argue. They waited. Ben counted his own breath. On thirty the courier came back up the seam with a scrap of red cord in its teeth. It dropped the cord at the woman's boot. She held it up so Ben could see. A trader's knot, the kind Anita used to mark safe cache lines. Ben felt the weight in his chest shift. Not trust. A door. "Show us the seam," he said. Eileen took the crate's rope. Ben took the other end. The woman rose and started down the scree without looking back. Above them, on the north track, the first horn sounded. It sounded behind them now, not ahead.