Marigold Thistledown's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

By morning the watcher was off the cliffs and walking the village paths. He stopped the blue troll first, then the elf child's mother. Marigold saw the stone marker by the well, the one a villager had been pacing beside since dawn, and knew someone was about to break. She had hours, not days. She set up the lure at the far end of the wide stone path. It was tall and bright, all curling knots and marigold petals, and it hummed soft when the wind moved. Villagers drifted toward it like moths. The watcher's questions lost their listeners mid-sentence. Then Mara Thornshield came up the path, hood low, boots quiet. "You're losing one," she said. "The baker. He's already half-talking." Marigold nodded. "I know." Mara tilted her head toward the lure. "Pretty. Won't hold him past noon. What's your plan?" "Give him somewhere to go," Marigold said. She walked straight to the baker, in front of everyone, and asked him to run the hidden post for a week. She said it loud. She said she should have asked sooner. She said she'd been wrong to leave him standing alone near the watcher's reach. The baker stared. Then he nodded, once. Mara walked him down the back trail herself. The watcher turned to follow and found the path crowded — villagers gathered at the lure, the translating stones underfoot catching every tongue he tried, his questions answered in six languages at once and none of them useful. By dusk he left the village empty-handed. Marigold stood by the well. The marker beside it looked smaller now. She had kept her people. But Mara lingered at her elbow and said, flat, "He'll come back with more than questions." Marigold did not answer. She already knew.