Ellen's Arc

Chapter 42 of 45

Ellen won the god's mercy by promising to scatter her women across the flats. But she made that promise without a plan. She had six women, one wagon, and open salt in every direction. No wells they controlled. No caches. By the second day out, the water barrels rode light. She lifted one and heard it slosh a third full. On foot in this heat, thirst would kill them in three days. She had traded a wall for a slow death. "You didn't think it through," Vincent Marconi said. He rode up on the salt at dusk, his black suit gray with dust. He climbed down and knocked a knuckle against the barrels, one by one, listening. "Empty. Empty. Nearly empty." He said it flat, the way he'd read a debt slip. "You scatter, you die of thirst before any hunter finds you. That's worse than the fort." "Then help me," Ellen said. "You know this ground. Where's water we can reach?" Vincent looked at her women, then at the wagon's wide low frame. "There's a spring line under the salt. Old traders knew it. You can't carry water across the flats. You carry the map to it." He crouched and drew in the crust with one finger. Three points, spread wide. "Wet ground here, here, here. A mobile group camps near one. Moves before it's found. Never dry, never fixed." It was the answer. Small groups, each near buried water, each able to move. No wall to burn. No thirst to kill them. Ellen felt the shape of it lock. "What do you want," she said. Not a question. She knew him. "The spring points are mine. You use them, you owe me a cut of whatever your women trade or find." He stood and brushed the salt from his knees. "Forever. That's the price of not dying." A rider showed on the far crust before she answered. Chrome helmet catching the last light. Din Djarin. He'd tracked their need again, the way he always did. But he reined up short, well out of rifle range, and only watched. He'd learned they scattered now. A moving crew of six left no trail worth the ride. "He can't work it," Vincent said, following her eyes. "No pattern to hunt. You did that." Ellen took the deal. She marked the three wet points in her memory and split her women into two groups of three, each with a route between springs. That night the first group dug where Vincent showed them. Two feet down, the salt turned dark and cool. Water seeped into the hole. Din Djarin was gone by morning. The wagon carried no more barrels to guard. Ellen had her scattered haven now, alive on hidden water, unreadable to hunters and gods alike. But every mouthful of it belonged to Vincent Marconi, and his cut would come due for as long as her women drank.