Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 82 of 150

Ben slept four hours on Jack's floor and woke to the smell of tea. The crate sat behind the double wall. No hum leaked through. For the first time in weeks, no one was hunting the sound. That should have felt like winning. It didn't. A full set behind a wall was still a target. Twelve pieces meant nothing without a hand to pass them to. Jack poured tea and set a cup by Ben's elbow. "Wall holds. Cousins won't ask past today. After that, it's your problem." He tapped the shelf. "You have a buyer?" "No." "Then you have a barrel of trouble." Eileen came in from the yard with her coat wet at the shoulders. She sat across from Ben. "Jack's right. We can't sit on it. Every week it stays here, someone gets closer. You need a name." "I've been running so long I stopped writing the list." "Write it now." Ben took a scrap of paper. He wrote three names his father had traded with. He crossed two out — one dead, one bought by the herbalist last spring. The third he circled. Angelina Cage. She had already sent a runner to pull him off the ridge weeks back. She had known his route before he did. "Cage," Eileen said. She didn't like it. "She helps people who owe her after." "She's the only one left who can move twelve pieces without splitting them." "Splitting them was never the point." "No. Keeping them together was." Eileen looked at the wall a long time. "Then send her word. Not the crate. Just word." Ben wrote one line on the paper. Twelve confirmed. Whole set. Name your terms. He folded it small. Millie's winged creature had roosted in Jack's rafters overnight, blue-scaled and heavy on the beam. It watched Ben with one orange eye. Millie climbed a chair and coaxed it down. The thing dropped to the floor with a thud that shook the cups. Its claws left marks in the boards. Jack winced but said nothing. "He'll carry it," Millie said. "He knows Cage's mark. I flew her line last summer." Ben tied the paper to the creature's collar. It launched from the doorway and cleared the pines in three beats. Jack shut the door. "Barrel stays behind the wall. No one moves it until you have an answer. If she says no, you carry it out the same night. Understood." "Understood." Eileen refilled Ben's cup. "Two days for a reply. Maybe three." Ben looked at the shelf, at the painted urn, at the wall behind it holding everything he had bled for. The chase was paused. The work was not. He had a full set and a message in the air. Now he needed Cage to answer before the herbalist found the house.