Mara Quill's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Mara Quill knelt at the muddy bank, ledger braced on her thigh, and watched her boots sink another inch. The numbers did not match. They had not matched since noon, when the wind took a receipt from her hand and a fat, horned catfish swallowed it whole. She had three hours until dusk. After that, the mire would climb her shins and not let go. She set up her workspace on the old fishing platform above the creek. Moss padded the boards. She lined up her tools: a hook, a jar of salted minnows, and the curse-marked contract she carried everywhere, waiting for the day she could finally close it. The split-jawed fish surfaced twice and laughed at her bait. Mara did not curse. She rebaited. She thought of the magistrate three provinces away, fat behind his desk, and the dead merchant's son she still had to drag back here to sign. Every hour spent on a fish was an hour not spent hunting that boy. On the fourth cast, the line bit hard. She hauled the catfish onto the planks and pinned it with her knee. Her belt knife opened its belly in one clean line. Inside, folded small and slick, lay the receipt — ink browned, edges curled, but the figures still readable where the wax seal had shielded them. Mara smoothed the parchment against the ledger and entered the number. The total closed. Her boots lifted from the mud with a wet sigh. She wiped the knife, packed her tools, and looked downstream toward the port. The fish was done. The son was next.