Marigold Thistledown's Arc

Chapter 9 of 15

The twin sat locked in the signal station, but her damage was already done. She had sold a name to a Guild handler. Somewhere, a marked trader in Marigold's network was written on a list, and the handler was coming to collect. Marigold stood at the carved post below the watchtower and faced the truth: she didn't know what the twin had handed over. A name. A location. A drawing. She had to scrub the trail before the handler used it, and she was working blind. She climbed the watchtower to think. Frost coated the notched beams. From the top she could see the road below, and the worn grooves where caravans had veered off for years. If the handler had a location, he'd follow those grooves. She needed to know exactly what he held. A voice came from the shadow of the door. "You're guessing." Fennrick Vex leaned against the frame. He was the Guild hunter who had caught her false trail on the mountain and lied to his own masters about it. His scar cut across one eye. Marigold still didn't know why he kept helping her, and she didn't fully trust it. "I need what the handler bought," she said. "Names. A place. I don't know which." Fennrick was quiet a moment. "I know the handler. Drinks where I drink." He stepped inside. "He logs every purchase. Paper. A ledger." "Then he has proof," Marigold said. "On paper. Of my traders." "One page." Fennrick held up a finger. "Sold to him last night. Not filed yet." Marigold understood. If the page reached the Guild office, it became record. If it vanished first, the trail died. "Can you take it?" "He'd know it was me." Fennrick's mouth went flat. "You want it gone, someone gives him a reason to burn it himself." Mara Thornshield came up the ladder behind them. She ran the trade network and guarded its doors like her own. She'd heard enough. "Then we give him the wrong page," she said. "The twin's handwriting. We copy her hand. A false location. The far gully." She looked at Marigold. "He already chased a decoy there once. He'll believe the ground he knows." Marigold saw it. Not scrub the trail. Replace it. "Fennrick delivers a corrected page. Says the twin sent it. The handler swaps the real one for the false." "And burns the first," Fennrick said. "To hide the error." They wrote through the night. Mara matched the twin's slanted letters from a marked door-note. Fennrick carried it down at dawn. He returned by midday. He dropped the true page on the frost-covered beam. It was real, and it named the trader plainly. "He burned nothing," Fennrick said. "He kept both. Now he knows one of them lies." Marigold looked at the page in her hands. The trail was in her grip. But the handler had two versions now, and he knew a traitor sat inside her walls.