Lex Nelson's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

Lex rode the stolen horse hard through the dark and reached the auction ground just as the sky turned gray. A pale stone platform stood at the center, two cracked pillars holding a brass nameplate above an empty block. Buyers were already gathering on the carved tiers. She slid from the saddle, pulled the sand-stained silk shroud over her head, and tied the dog to a post in the shadows. She walked in slow, hood low, and gave the name the wounded rider had coughed up. A clerk at the rope line wrote it down without looking. Then he looked again. His pen stopped. From a high seat above the block, a man lowered a pair of brass-rimmed binoculars and lifted one finger. Two guards stepped out from behind the pillars. The clerk's eyes flicked up to her face, and Lex understood. The name was bait. They had been waiting for someone to speak it. She let the shroud fall. The silk dropped in sand-colored sheets around her boots, and the tattered cloth beneath showed the blood at her ribs, the rifle on her back, the knife at her hip. No more hiding behind it. The clerk shouted. The dog tore its lead and came to her heel. Lex did not run for the block. She ran for the horse. She cut the reins of two others on her way past, fired one round into the air to scatter the tiered crowd, and swung up as the white mare bolted. Guards shouted behind her. Somewhere in the rising noise, the auctioneer began to call the first lot anyway. She rode out past the edge of the stones and up a low rise, then turned the horse and looked back through the dust. The block was still standing. Her sister was still inside that tent. But every face down there now knew hers, and the dawn sale was beginning without her in it.