Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 97 of 150

The steward came back with a leather purse and set it on the trestle. Cage untied the cord and poured coin onto the wood. She counted it in stacks of ten while her men watched Ben. When the last stack was set, she nodded at the man with the pry bar. He stepped up to the chest. Ben kept his hand on the lid. "One box at a time," he said. "I hand them to you. You set them in a row. Then you look." Cage tilted her head. "You're stalling." "I'm keeping the count clean. Twelve boxes. You break the order, you break the deal." She waved the pry bar down. Ben lifted the lid himself. He reached in and took out the first carved box. He set it on the trestle. Then the second. Then the third. His fingers found the fourth and he felt the wrong weight under the wood, the small hard rattle of beads instead of stone. He set it down anyway. Fifth. Sixth. He worked slow and even. The bead box sat third from the end when he was done. Cage stepped up. She lifted the first lid. She looked. She lifted the second. She did not touch the pieces. She only looked. The yard gate scraped. A man in a gray hood came through with a boy behind him. The boy was thin and worn out. His hair stuck up in a dark mop. He wore a hoodie and sandals and moved like his legs hurt. "I was told to wait outside," the man said. "He wouldn't sit." "I've been walking three days," the boy said. He looked at Cage, not Ben. "I need the pass before it shuts. My grandmother said the oracle keeps the road open one week past the first snow. That's this week." Cage's hand stopped over the fourth lid. "Picabo. I told you tomorrow." "Tomorrow the pass is gone," the boy said. Flat. No push in it. "I need the mark now." Cage looked at Ben. She looked at the boy. She looked at the fourth box under her hand. Ben watched her weigh it. A stalled buyer. A closing road. A ring of small creatures around a chest. The calm blue-gray one had not moved. She lifted her hand off the lid. "Steward," she said. "Mark his paper. Give him the north key." She turned back to Ben. "The rest keeps. Take your coin. Take your creatures. Off my yard before dark." Ben swept the coin into the purse. His hands shook once and then stopped. Chilly Willy pushed off the post. The small creatures rose together and moved for the gate. Ben walked out behind them with the purse against his ribs and the fourth box still shut on the trestle behind him. Behind the mill wall, a horn sounded once. Not Cage's. Someone else had found the yard.