Lex Nelson's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

Lex tied the white mare in a wash behind the rise and crawled back to the lip with the dog flat beside her. The auction went on without her. But no wagons rolled out. No buyers led cargo across the open ground. The sale was moving people somewhere, and she could not see where. She watched the stone platform through her old binoculars. The cracked pillars and carved tiers looked older than the auction itself — sun-bleached steps, a weathered block, a temple that had stood here before anyone thought to sell flesh on it. Buyers climbed the tiers, then did not come down the front. She counted three who went up and none who came back. She circled wide on foot, dog at her heel, and found the answer half-buried in the next dune. A barn. Stone foundation, wood beams, roof sloped into the sand so it almost vanished. Two guards stood at the door with a thin book between them. Every time a buyer came up from a trapdoor inside, the guards marked a line in the ledger and waved the cargo through. The tunnel ran from the platform to the barn. That was how they moved her sister out. Lex waited until a buyer stepped out alone and the second guard turned to write. She crossed the sand low and fast. The dog took the first man at the throat. Her knife took the second before his pen lifted. She dragged both inside and shut the door. The ledger lay open on a crate, ink still wet. She read down the column until she found the lot number from the block that morning, and the small clean note beside it: held, south room, buyer pending. Her sister had not been sold yet. She was under Lex's boots, behind a wooden door at the end of a tunnel, and now Lex held the book that said so.