Captain Richard's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Seabreeze surfaced into cold gray light at the cove's far rim. Richard slid from her wet back onto a shelf of pale stone. The sea hissed behind him. Ahead, the cove curved into a quiet bowl of snow and rock — the other mouth of the shaft, the one he had come to close. He saw the seat first. A tree stump, smoothed flat on top, set beside the shaft like a man's chair. A coat lay folded on it. A cold pipe rested on the coat. The watcher had beaten him here. He had made himself at home. Richard crouched low. He spotted the trap next — a ring of stone the watcher had built around the shaft mouth, packed and capped with fresh snow. A lid. A seal. Drop the cap, and the shaft below would be closed for good. The watcher meant to bury him in his own sanctuary. Then Richard saw the man himself, kneeling at the far side of the ring, fitting the last stone. The sack at Richard's hip clinked — gold coins, the bribe he had carried to trade for safe passage above. Useless now. If the cap fell with Richard below, the gold went down with him, and Alexis would wait on a shore for a man who never climbed out. Richard did not call out. He stepped onto the snow and the snow gave. A pit — another trap, set wide of the ring — swallowed him to the chest. The watcher rose, smiling, and walked to the capstone. Richard clawed at the snow rim, kicked, found stone with his boot. He heaved up and out as the watcher set both hands on the cap. Richard ran. He hit the man low and they went down together hard against the stump. The pipe rolled. The cap did not fall. Richard pinned him. He did not kill him. He bound the man's wrists with the cord from the coin sack and dragged him back from the shaft. The seal stood open. Seabreeze waited below in the dark water, and the way back to Alexis was still a way. Richard sat on the smoothed stump and breathed. He had the watcher now — alive, and talking soon — but the cove was no secret any longer, and someone had paid this man to find it.