Gnewt's Arc

Chapter 3 of 14

Gnewt moved away from the cells before the guards closed in. The diary was with Stryker now, but names on paper wouldn't convince a village that had already chosen its verdict. She needed voices, not words. Croaker had brought the skeleton from the marsh. Guidry knew the routes the elders wanted hidden. Both had seen what the elders kept buried. She found Croaker first, tucked behind a shelter at the village edge where vines hung thick enough to hide the entrance. He sat with his back against mud-packed walls, cleaning his claws with marsh grass. "You showed them the bones," Gnewt said. "Now show them the truth in front of the elders." Croaker didn't look up. "They'll do to me what they did to Stryker. Worse, maybe. I broke the silence. That's enough." Gnewt pulled a bone-white fang from her pouch, its surface grooved and stained with swamp mud. "This came from Snake Lagoon. From the containment site you found. The elders know what it means, and they know you have more like it." She set it on the ground between them. "Testify, and I'll make sure they can't touch you. Stay quiet, and they'll come for you anyway." Croaker stared at the fang, then shook his head. "Protection from who? You're one snake with a pouch." He stood and moved toward the shelter's entrance. Gnewt didn't follow. She went to the western dock where Guidry kept his boat tied. He was coiling rope when she arrived, his movements quick and deliberate. "The route you showed Stryker," she said. "The elders want it buried. You testify about what you saw at that gate, and they'll bury you too." Guidry kept coiling. "Then why would I talk?" Gnewt's tongue flicked once. "Because staying quiet didn't save the six names in that diary. And it won't save you." Guidry tied off the rope and finally looked at her. "What's your plan?" Gnewt had calculated three moves ahead before she'd even left the cells. But she couldn't force witnesses to trust her with words alone. She needed leverage the elders couldn't counter. And she was running out of time to find it. She returned to the reinforced shelter near the village edge and waited in the shadow of its storm-proof walls. When darkness came, she slipped back to Croaker's hiding place and left a second fang at the entrance, this one larger and cracked down the center. Then she went to Guidry's boat and placed a third beside his coiled rope. No words this time. Just evidence that she knew where the proof was buried and could bring more of it into the light. By morning, both fangs were gone. Croaker found her first, his eyes sharp with calculation. "The elders have a storm shelter on the north edge. Locked and guarded. If you can get us inside there, we talk." Guidry arrived an hour later with the same demand. Gnewt's pouch was empty now, but she had what she needed. They wouldn't testify out of trust. They'd do it because she'd proven she could drag the elders' secrets into the open whether they helped or not. And fear of being left outside that protection was stronger than fear of speaking.