Iris Starling's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

At dawn Iris crouched in the ferns above the buried cabinet's clearing. She had come to check the flat stone over her key. Instead she saw the fox below, nose low, circling the soil. A leather pouch jingled somewhere in the trees — small charms, a handler's signal. The fox lifted its head and answered the sound. Iris followed the jingling back through the brush. A line of smooth river stones curved through the moss, too neat to be wild. She tracked the stones until they ended at a low mound of earth with a heavy metal door and a thin pipe rising through the grass. A base. Her enemy had built a base inside her forest. She could not fight the door. She could not move the cabinet in daylight with the fox already on the scent. So she did the one thing left. She doubled back to the clearing, dug up the key, and carried the map out herself, pressed flat against her ribs beneath her courier coat. The cabinet stayed buried and empty behind her. The fox would lead its handler to a box with nothing in it. Iris walked her delivery route with the map on her body now, her hands steady, her shoulders tight. The hiding place was burned. From here on, the only safe place for the map was wherever she was.