Matthew Ashford's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Matthew came back at dusk with a plan half-formed and his hands cold. He pulled the cellar door open and found Syrian sitting on the bottom step, knife across her knees. "Another guard will sweep this row tomorrow," he said. "You can't stay." She stood without a word. "Where, then?" He thought of the broken carriage in the brush past the lane. "Somewhere they already searched." He walked her under his coat again, the long way, around the back fields. The old carriage sat sunk in vines, canvas rotted, wheels split. He pulled the ivy aside. Syrian climbed in and crouched low. "Daylight only here," he said. "Cellar at night. We move you each turn." She looked at him through the torn canvas. "You're learning to lie like a man who means it." He didn't answer. Then he took the folded paper from inside his coat. He had made it that afternoon at his desk, hands shaking, ink smudging the bold black letters. WARNING. A clumsy notice, the words half wrong on purpose, the kind a scared villager might nail up. It said Syrian had been seen in another village, far from here. He walked to the watch board at the lane crossing and pinned it beside the real notices. He pressed the tack in twice to be sure. A boy passed and stared. Matthew nodded at him like it was nothing and walked on. By morning, the captain would see it. By noon, the search line would shift away from the cellars. It was thin. It might hold a week. Back in his room he lit one candle. He opened his journal — the one no one else could read, pages thick with the script he had built himself as a boy. He wrote slow. I lied twice today. I posted a third lie on a public board. I am not sleeping. I wanted to be captain by doing the work clean. Now I am a man who hides a fairy in a broken carriage and forges warnings against himself. He closed the book and pressed his palm flat on the cover. The cellar was empty tonight. The carriage held her instead. The false notice was up. The immediate hole in his story was patched — not sealed, only patched — and he had bought himself the one thing he needed. A little more time.