Fennrick Vex's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Saraphillia walked down the slope in Fennrick's cloak. The badge on the collar caught the moonlight. Every step carried the Guild's own mark straight through Guild country. Fennrick followed a pace behind, watching the tree line. A hunter lived down there. He knew the man's habits. He crossed at dusk and again near dawn, and dawn was close. "We can't reach the fortress like this," Fennrick said. "That badge will get us both taken." "Then take it off me," Saraphillia said. "Off you, the red comes back. On you, the badge stays." He pulled her behind a boulder. "Two problems, one cloak." The fox found them there. It padded out of the dark, fur still burning red from Nyx's spell. Beside it walked Nyx herself, thin and swaying, her violet hair dull. She had spent too much light already. "You should be resting," Fennrick said. "You should be quieter." Nyx knelt by the boulder. She looked at the badge on the collar and frowned. "That's the trouble. Not the girl. The metal." "Cover the metal and she walks free," Fennrick said. Marigold came up the path then, out of breath, a lantern hooded low. She was the plump red-haired woman who ran the village below, the one who had defied the Guild and lost her funding for it. Fennrick had lied to the Guild once to keep her secret. She owed him nothing and had come anyway. "A hunter's crossing soon," Marigold said. "I saw his light." She looked at the cloak and understood at once. "You wrapped her in the wolf's own coat." "I had no other," Fennrick said. Marigold reached into her apron. She drew out a small silver clasp, shaped like a shield, its edge lined red. "A trader left this. It hides a badge. Looks like a common trinket." She pressed it into his hand. "Pin it over the mark." Fennrick turned the clasp in his fingers. The scrollwork was fine. Fitted over the Guild badge, it would cover the tracker's brand and read as a village charm to any scout. He clipped it to the collar. The badge vanished under silver. The cloak became plain wool with a pretty pin. Down the slope, a lantern swung into view. The hunter crossed at his dawn hour. He stopped when he saw them. His eyes went to Saraphillia, to the cloak, to the clasp on the collar. He nodded once at a farmwife in a charm and walked on. Fennrick let his breath go. The link was broken. No badge, no red hair, no trail back to him. Nyx watched the hunter shrink into the trees. "He's not the last one," she said. "He knows your gait, Vex. He'll wonder later why a farmwife walked with the drunk hunter's step." Fennrick said nothing. She was right. He had hidden the cloak. He had not hidden himself.