Brille Covella's Arc

Chapter 13 of 13

Brille folded the letter into her belt and thought about the two men who had run from the culvert. They had seen the company's wagons, the ford Brille chose, the faces at the fire. If they reached their master, the next ambush would be built around every choice she had made. She could not ride to the third gate with that road open behind her. She found Siobhan at the picket line. "Two ran from the culvert. They're circling back. If they report, we lose the road." Siobhan did not look up from the girth. "Then don't let them report. Take Rhyme." "I'll take the cloak and go alone. Two horses on a back trail is two horses heard." Siobhan finally looked at her. "Then don't be heard." Brille cut south off the cobblestones and doubled back along a drover's track her tribe had used for years. The striped hide cloak swallowed her against the brush. She rode an hour, tied the horse in a stand of alder, and went the rest on foot. She found them at a creek, watering two lathered ponies. The smaller one she knew by the skull tattoo at his throat, Vince Malone, one of the runners from the culvert. The other was a lean man with a split lip. They were arguing about which of them would speak first to Grok. Brille went to one knee behind a fallen trunk and set an arrow. Wind on her left cheek. Forty paces. She breathed out and loosed. The lean man dropped without a sound. Vince spun, saw the shape in the striped cloak rising from the log, and ran for his pony. She had a second arrow nocked before his foot hit the stirrup. It took him under the arm. He fell across the saddle and slid down into the water. She walked down to the creek. Vince was still breathing. His hand scrabbled at his belt purse and came up with a bronze coin, the same weight, the same strange letters. He held it out to her like a bribe. "Who?" she said. "Who gave it to you?" "Big man," he wheezed. "Not Grok. The one Grok kneels to. Third gate. He waits at the third gate." His hand dropped. So did he. Brille stared at the coin in his palm. Caelthir's letter had named the third gate. Vince, dying, had named the third gate. Two enemies pointing at the same door. She took the coin and the purse. She dragged both bodies into the brush, cut the ponies loose, and rode back to the company by dusk. She gave Siobhan the purse and the coin. "They won't report. And the man Caelthir wants us to meet is the man Grok kneels to. The third gate is the trap, not the way out." Siobhan weighed the coin. "Then we don't go to the gate. We take the gate's road on our terms." Brille nodded. The string was in her hand now. She still did not know whose hand held the other end.