Fennrick Vex's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The hunter's lantern was gone, but his memory was not. Fennrick pulled Saraphillia off the open path. Dawn grayed the trees. He needed a place to hide her, one the Guild had not already found. He ran his hollows through his mind. Every one was watched now. Scouts near the cliffs. Hounds on the mountain. The far gully baited with a decoy. He had nowhere left of his own. "I know the hollows," he said. "They know them too. Every one." Saraphillia pulled the cloak tight. "Then we don't use yours." Marigold caught up, lantern hooded. She had run the village below until the Guild cut her funds for taking in strangers. She owed Fennrick nothing, and here she stood again. "There's a place," she said. "A sunken road. Cliff walls both sides. Traders pass through hidden. Scouts walk right past the mouth." Fennrick shook his head. "A road is a road. It has an entrance. Anything with an entrance can be watched." "Not this one," Marigold said. "The mouth wears a charm. To a scout it's a village trinket. To a trader it's a signpost." She said it plainly, then let it sit. "And if a scout knows the trick?" "Then we give them a better trick." Nyx spoke from the ground. She was small and drained, her violet hair dull, but her eyes had gone sharp. She held up a tiny charm shaped for the Guild's own hand. "I lifted this off a scout weeks back. It calls to their kind. Makes them think welcome. Makes traders want to leave." Fennrick took the charm. Silver scrollwork, a red heart of light inside. "You want to hang bait at the door." "Not the true door." Nyx pointed east. "A false one. Somewhere the road doesn't go. Hang this there. Any scout who feels the pull walks to a wall. The true mouth stays quiet." Marigold nodded slowly. "Two markers. One that welcomes their kind to nothing. One that welcomes ours to shelter." Fennrick looked at Saraphillia. She met his eyes without blinking. He hated how easily she trusted him. He hated more that she should. They moved fast. Marigold led them to a dead cut in the cliff, a false opening that ended in stone. Fennrick wedged the Guild charm into a crack there. Its red light throbbed once and steadied. Then Marigold walked them to the true mouth, where a glowing marigold hung like an ordinary bloom. Saraphillia stepped into the sunken road. Cliff walls rose close on both sides. The path curved and swallowed her from view. "She's hidden," Marigold said. "For now." Fennrick watched the false charm pulse behind them. It would draw scouts. It would draw hounds. It would draw the Guild's eyes to one dead cut in the rock. And every eye it drew would be one gait closer to remembering a farmwife who walked like him.