Dahlia Noir's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Dahlia walked the north lane until it thinned into ruts and weeds. The old woman's directions ran out here. Past the lane, three tracks split off through the brush. One went to a burnt farmhouse. One went to a sagging shed. One went uphill into pine. Any of them could hold a small old house. She had a mark and no key to it. A bunny drawn in ink. Long ears. She had turned it over in her head for a mile and it still meant nothing. She sat on a stump and drew the mark in the dirt with a stick. Ears up. Round head. No face. She stared at it. A boy's doodle. A signature. A joke. She could pick a track and guess wrong and lose the day, and the killer with it. A shape stood at the edge of the pines that had not been there a breath before. Tall. Thin. The outline of a rabbit with ears too long, cut out of the light. It did not move when the wind moved the branches. Dahlia's hand went to her knife. The shape did not flinch. "You drew me," it said. Its voice was flat and small. "I drew a mark," she said. "My mark. My shape. Not his." Three short pieces, one after the other. She stood slowly. "Whose, then?" "Mine. Stolen. Used." The shadow's ears tipped toward the uphill track. "He copies me on paper. He is not a rabbit. He is a man who wants to be one." Dahlia's throat went tight. The mark was not a name. It was a theft. The killer signed with a stolen shape because he wanted the shape's meaning and had none of his own. She thought of the king, late for the first time, and the cut stem in the bed. "Which track," she said. The shadow did not answer. A woman stepped from behind the pines instead, small, in a dark blue dress, a rose pinned at her throat. Dahlia had seen her at court once, on the edge of a room, watching. Azura Rosewyn. The woman who had told a secret and broken a life with it. She kept her hands where Dahlia could see them. "I know the house," Azura said. "I sent someone there once. I should not have." "Why tell me." "Because you are hunting him, and I owe a debt I cannot pay another way." Dahlia measured her. A woman with a ruined name had little left to lie for. "Show me." Azura pointed up the pine track. "Small cottage. Porch dust-soft. Two windows. He is not there now. He will be by dark." Dahlia started uphill. She had the door. She did not yet have what waited past it, or what Azura wanted paid.