Maren Goldweaver's Arc

Chapter 13 of 42

By dusk they crossed a ridge and dropped into a hollow between two fallen trunks. Miller checked their back trail one last time and shook his head. No dog. No boots. The woods held only wind. He set the rifle across his knees and sat. Gisela slid down beside Maren and stretched her legs out straight for the first time in days. The cub curled between them, wings tucked flat, breathing slow. Maren looked at her sister in the low light. Color in her cheeks. Dirt in her hair. Alive. She had spent six months reading transfer logs for this face, and now the face was here, and Maren still did not know what her sister had been doing when the Registry took her. "Gisela." Maren kept her voice level. "When you went missing. What were you doing?" Gisela picked a pine needle off her sleeve. "Working for the rebel cause." "You were working for—" Maren's voice climbed. "I told you that was too dangerous. I told you that a year ago. You said you were done." "I'm old enough to make my own decisions." Gisela snapped it out. She sat up straighter. "I don't need your permission." "Aren't you like sixteen?" Miller asked. Gisela's head whipped toward him. "Who gave pretty boy a right to my business?" "I just need to know what's going on," Miller said. Flat. No apology. Maren pressed her hands to her eyes. "He's right. I need to know. Tell me what the mission was." Gisela pulled her knees up. She spoke fast, the way she did when she wanted it over. "A ledger. The physical one. The Registry ships carry a book that lists every debt sold to every council. Names, amounts, buyers. I was going to take it off a transport out of the eastern port. Two nights before the guards grabbed me. I studied the shift change for a month. I had the exit mapped." "And?" Maren said. "Someone gave me up. I don't know who. They took me before I ever got near the deck." "So the ledger is still on the ship." "It's still moving. They rotate it every ten days. My window closes in six." Maren stared at the ground between her boots. Six days. The transport route ran east, farther from any safe road. And now she knew what had followed them out of that cell. Not one guard shift. A whole faction that had already burned Gisela once and would burn her again the moment they found her breathing. "You are not going near that ship," Maren said. "Then you are," Gisela said. "Because if I don't finish it, they hunt me until they finish me." Miller looked at Maren over the cub's sleeping back. He did not speak. He did not have to. Maren nodded once. She had her answer, and with it, her next problem.