Marigold Thistledown's Arc

Chapter 13 of 15

The horn's echo faded, but Marigold knew what it meant. The handler was coming with men and fire. She had the ledger, the only proof that could break the Guild before the trade council. But Fennrick could never carry it there. He had worn the Guild cloak for years, moving among their ranks, lying to their faces. Now they knew his name and his face. The one person who could walk into Guild halls and lay the proof before the council was lost to her. She stood at the signal station with the book in her hands and no way to deliver it. "The council won't take it from us," Mara said. She leaned against the carved post, arms folded. Mara ran the trade network with Marigold, and she never softened a hard truth. "We're smugglers to them. Thieves. A book in our hands proves nothing but that we stole it." Fennrick pulled off the Guild cloak and dropped it on the floor. His form shifted as it fell. The scar and the hard face melted into something small and soft, big ears, a tucked tail. The hunter was gone. "They'll kill me on sight now," he said. "I can't go back. Not as hunter. Not as anything." "Then someone who isn't you walks in," said a voice from the rafters. Nyx dropped down, catlike, then stood as a girl. She borrowed shapes from other beings, and they never noticed one was missing. She looked at the fallen cloak, then at Fennrick. "I can wear him. His old face. The one the Guild still trusts." Marigold's chest tightened. "They know he betrayed them." "They know the hunter stole a book," Nyx said. "They don't know the hunter is standing before the council handing it over as proof of the handler's crimes." She picked up the cloak. "A thief who returns the proof looks like a loyal man. It flips the story." Marigold weighed it. If Nyx wore Fennrick's face into the Guild hall, she could lay the ledger before the council as a repentant hunter. The handler's own hand would condemn him. But Nyx pulled threads from reality without looking, and one she pulled was still loose in the world. Sending her deeper cost something every time. "Do it," Marigold said. "But you come straight back through the gate after." Nyx took Fennrick's shape and the cloak and the ledger. She walked out before dawn. Two days later word came up the sunken road: the council had seized the handler. His own book had buried him. The charge against Marigold's traders was dead. But Nyx did not come back. The giant cat waited at the station door and watched the empty trail. Marigold held the handler's broken power in her hands and had traded the shapeshifter who gave it to her for it.