Kiersten's Arc

Chapter 27 of 33

Kiersten came back to the round room at dawn. Noble was already there. He had set a bowl of water on the stone table beside the open book. A small carved basin, ringed with painted flowers, its water still. "Scry today," Noble said. "The ring holds. The bowl focuses. Find the hunter." She stepped into the circle. She pressed her thumb to her heart tattoo. Witness rose behind her eyes. She breathed the pattern — three, six, nine — and looked into the water. A face began to form. Dark cloak. Head down on a road. She reached for the picture and held it. Then the water shifted. The road slid sideways. The cloak was gone. A blue shirt filled the bowl. A cap. A short beard. Eduardo stood in a doorway she knew — the porch of the broken house at the forest edge, its sagging roof, its cracked window boarded with a plank. He looked up as if he saw her. "Kiersten," he said. His voice came thin through the water. "I don't know where you are. Tell me. Please." Her chest pulled toward him. Her breath broke pattern. The water clouded. "No," she said, and pushed for the road again. The cloak flickered. Eduardo's face pushed through it. He was on his knees now on the porch boards. "You always come back," he said. "Come back one more time." Her hands shook on the rim of the basin. The circle warmed under her feet, then cooled. Witness held, but the picture would not. Noble spoke behind her. "You're chasing him." "I'm not — " "You are. The bowl shows what you reach for. Reach for the hunter." "I am reaching for the hunter." "Then why is that man in the water." She closed her eyes. She saw the truth plain. Every time Witness opened the sight, some thread in her still turned toward Eduardo's face first. Not love. Habit. The old shape of looking for him. She opened her eyes. She looked at Eduardo in the bowl. She spoke to him, not to Noble. "I am not tracking you. I am tracking the man who wants me dead." She named the want aloud, the way she had learned. "I want to see the hunter. Only him." The porch dimmed. Eduardo's face thinned to a shadow, then to nothing. The water cleared. The road returned. The cloaked man walked it, closer now than yesterday. She counted his steps. She counted the trees behind him. She held the picture without pulling on it. When she let it go, the bowl was only water. Noble picked up the basin and poured it into a drain in the floor. "You cut the last string," he said. "He can't ride your sight anymore." "How close is the hunter now?" "Two days on foot. Maybe less." She stepped out of the ring. Her hands were steady. The habit was gone. Two days remained.