Maren Goldweaver's Arc

Chapter 7 of 42

They didn't stop to read the decoded page. Maren shoved it into her coat with the file. The cub rode against her chest, wings folded flat, breathing slow like a child asleep. Miller kept pace beside her, one hand near his belt. They cut through back lanes toward his forge, ready to check on the informant still tied inside. At the last corner Miller stopped her with an arm across her ribs. She followed his eyes. Two guards stood across from the forge door. A third leaned in a doorway two houses down, pretending to smoke. A woman on a stoop watched the shutters and did not blink when a cart rolled past. Someone had talked. Word of the break-in at the Records Hall had crawled through the sectors and settled here. "They're watching every window," Miller said. "The informant?" "Still inside. Gagged. He'll keep an hour, maybe two." Maren pulled back into the shadow of a wall. She finally opened the folded page. A name. A route number. A holding station four days east by cart. Her sister. Alive enough to be moved, close enough to the red tag to be gone by week's end. Her hand shook once. She closed it. "Four days out," she said. "I have to leave now. Tonight." Miller looked at the guards, then at her. "I'm coming." "No." She kept her voice under the wind. "You've done enough. Stay with the forge. Stay with your work." "Look at my door, Maren." He didn't raise his voice. "Three guards. A neighbor counting my shutters. The second I step inside they take me. The forge is finished." "Then run somewhere else." "Where." Not a question. He waited. She had no answer. Every name she knew in the sectors was a name the Council also knew. He had assaulted a guard for her. He had worn her father's suit. He had nowhere left that wasn't watched because of her. The cub shifted against her coat and pushed its head up under her chin. Warm. Patient. "The informant," she said. "Cut him loose once we're clear of the sectors. He talks, we're already gone. He was going to talk anyway." She hated that he was right. "Cart?" she asked. "East gate has a grain run before dawn. Driver owes me a blade. We ride under the sacks to the second checkpoint. Walk from there." "Weapons?" "On me. Two knives at the small of my back. Nothing at the forge worth dying for." She studied him. His jaw was set the way it had been in the Records Hall stairwell. He was not asking. "Fine," she said. "With me. But you follow my calls." "Enough." They backed out of the lane the way they'd come. The forge stayed behind them, watched, closing like a file. Maren tucked the page deeper into her coat and turned east, the cub warm against her ribs, four days of road ahead and no way back.