Brille Covella's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Brille rode back down the ridge and brought the wagons up the right ford. The company crossed without a wheel lost. Siobhan gave her a nod and rode ahead to scout the next bend. Brille reined in beside the dead muggers laid out on the stones. She had killed one of them. She owed him a look, at least. She knelt by the big man's second, the one her arrow had taken through the throat. His belt purse was fat. She cut the strings. Coins spilled onto the wet cobbles. Silver from the realm. Copper bits. Stamped rounds she didn't know. And under them, heavier than the rest, a worn bronze disc. She picked it up. Her hand knew the weight before her eyes did. She dug in her own pocket and drew out the bronze coin Cassian had given her for pottery. She laid them side by side on her palm. Same size. Same strange symbol cut deep in the face. Same three words in a language she could not read. The mugger's coin had fresh notches along the rim. Hers had two. She sat back on her heels. The water moved over the stones. A fallen sign lay in the weeds past the ford, vines grown through its planks, old letters half-eaten. She had ridden past a hundred such markers this week. None of them meant anything. This coin meant something. Cassian had paid her with it. A dead mugger carried its twin. That was not a coincidence a person could ride past. She closed her fist. She thought about what she knew. Cassian got her through the gate. Cassian got her into the recruiter's room. Cassian arrived at the south gate with a steward's letter already written. Cassian collected debts he had built himself. She did not know what the coin meant. She did not know if it marked a paymaster, a crew, a warning, or a claim. She knew only that the man who had put it in her hand was tied to the men who had tried to kill Siobhan on the ridge. Hoofbeats came back down the road. Siobhan drew up. "You coming?" Brille stood. She kept both coins in her fist. She thought about handing them up. She thought about what Siobhan would do with a scout who accused a company member on the strength of a bronze disc and a feeling. Siobhan had kept her because she was useful. Useful was not the same as trusted. "Coming," Brille said. She dropped the mugger's purse into her saddlebag and swung up. She would ride beside Cassian tonight. She would watch his hands, his lizard, his easy smile. She would learn what the coin bought before she spent what she knew. The road ran on toward Darkspire. Brille rode into the company with a secret of her own now, and a name at the center of it.