Maren Goldweaver's Arc

Chapter 41 of 42

Inside the doorway, the room was dim and smelled of old cooking fat. Gisela shut the door and pulled off the ashen shawl. She and Maren caught each other in a hard, quick embrace. Gisela's arms were thin under the cloth. Maren felt her sister's braid press against her cheek and let go before she wanted to. "Four days," Gisela said. "That's what's left. Kato says the trail from here he doesn't know." Kato leaned in the back doorway, hat still low. "My route ends at this village. Past the well, past the mill, I've never walked it. Registry patrols the last stretch. Wrong turn puts us at a checkpoint." Maren pressed the food bundle higher under her shirt. "Then we need someone from the village. Someone who's walked it." "Quiet ask," Kato said. "Not loud." They slipped back onto the street in their disguises. Maren waddled with a hand at her back. Gisela shuffled beside her, shawl pulled low, playing the mother-in-law. Miller took Maren's elbow. Kato peeled off and moved between two houses like a shadow, scouting ahead for anyone who traded east. A man stepped out from the shade of a doorway. Middle-aged. Wool coat. A carter's hands. "It's not safe for the elderly or a pregnant woman on the streets right now," he said. His eyes moved to Maren's face and stayed there. Stayed longer than a stranger's eyes should. She felt his look settle on her freckles, on the line of her jaw under the hood. She knew that pause. She had seen it on the notice boards. Maren gasped. She bent forward over the bundle and clutched at Miller's sleeve. "Oh — oh, it's coming, it's coming now —" She sagged into his side, hand pressed low, breath ragged. Miller caught her at once. "Easy. Easy, love." He turned his shoulder between her and the man. "You'll pardon us. Her time's started. We need to be inside." Gisela was already at Maren's other arm, muttering in a papery old woman's voice. "Move, move, get her off the road." The man stepped back. His mouth opened, closed. "There's — the midwife's two doors down —" "We have kin here," Miller said, already walking. "Thank you." They pushed past him. Maren kept moaning until the doorway swallowed them. Inside, Kato was waiting. He had a boy by the shirt, no older than twelve, wide-eyed but not frightened. "He knows the last stretch," Kato said. "His uncle drives salt to the crossing. He'll walk us past the patrol road for a gold link." Maren straightened. She pulled a link from her bracelet and set it in the boy's palm. "At dark," the boy said. "Back door." Gisela looked at the front window. The carter was still standing in the street, watching the house. "We leave at dark," Maren said. "And we don't come back through this village."