Juno Vex's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Inside the thatched house, Fenn Hollis set his satchel on a low table and listened. A copper wind vane on the roof ticked in the dry breeze, bone tassels tapping against the metal. The Copperstripe Armadillo on his shoulder went still, plates lifted a hair. Fenn's hand went to the window slat. "Patrol," he said. "Two of them. Coming up the track." Juno crossed to the slat. Two figures in inspector gray walked the outskirts, sweeping handheld scanners along the fence line. If they reached the porch, they would scan her, panel or no panel, and drag her back before she found the other child with the wrong shadow. "Cellar," Fenn said. He lifted a woven mat. A hatch sat under it. "Down. Now." She went down the ladder. The cellar was cool and smelled of clay. A brass sundial sat on a crate against the wall, tilted, its mirror dusty. A woman stood beside it in a pressed black coat and a dark dress with pale stitching at the hem. Another Copperstripe Armadillo sat on the crate at her elbow, tail curled around the tripod. Juno froze on the last rung. "She's the judge," Fenn said from above, quiet. "Cora. She owes the room. Do what she says." Juno had heard of the judge. The one who sentenced people for what they hadn't done yet. The one who was never wrong. Cora Lind did not smile. She looked at Juno the way a person looks at a page. "Stand on the mark," Cora said. She pointed to a chalk circle on the floor under the sundial's mirror. "Don't speak." Juno stepped onto the circle. Above them, boots crossed the porch. A scanner chirped near the door. Cora tilted the mirror. A thin bar of sunlight slid down through a roof slot and struck the dial, then bent onto Juno. Her shadow appeared on the clay floor. Cora watched it. Juno held her breath and did not move. The shadow moved. A small shift left, then back. Juno had not moved at all. Cora's mouth tightened. She covered the mirror with her palm. The shadow died. "They'll open the hatch in thirty seconds," Cora said. "The vane above the roof is copper. It scatters their scan for about that long. Not longer." "Can you hide her?" Fenn whispered down. "No." Cora looked at Juno. "But I can sign her." She pulled a folded slip from her coat and pressed her thumb to it. A containment order, already written, already dated. "On paper you are mine now," Cora said. "Sentenced. In custody. They can't take what the court already holds." The hatch lifted. Fenn's voice went bright and bored above. "Down here, gentlemen. Judge Lind is working." A gray sleeve appeared at the rim. Cora held up the slip without looking at them. "Signed subject," she said. "Move on." The sleeve withdrew. The hatch closed. Juno stood on the chalk mark. Her shadow lay still at her feet, the wrong shape, and now it belonged, on paper, to the judge who was never wrong.