Mira Ashveil's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The letters were gone with Nico, but a bigger problem sat in front of Mira. Even if every tribe said yes, they had nowhere to meet. Each tribe controlled its own wells and its own sand. None would ride onto another's ground. She sat on the rustic wood bench outside the trading post and turned the chosen sites over in her mind. Every one belonged to someone. Every one meant war before the first word. She needed neutral ground. Land no tribe claimed and none would fight to hold. She pulled a map from her satchel and spread it on the bench. The trade routes crossed near a dry riverbed, marked as worthless. No wells. No salt. No grazing. Nobody wanted it. That was exactly why it might work. But worthless ground gave the tribes no reason to trust the invitation. They would smell a trap. She needed to make the place matter without making it belong to anyone. That afternoon Nico rolled back into the square early, his board scraping stone. He grinned around the bleached lollipop stick clamped in his teeth. He had finished part of his route and looped home. Mira showed him the map and pointed at the dry riverbed. She mimed a wall rising, then hands spread wide. Neutral. Open. His eyes moved to a broad sandstone slab beside the water tank, already covered in old painted skateboarders in wild color. He pointed at it, then at the map. Mira understood. The painted wall belonged to no tribe. Skaters and traders had marked it for years. It was common ground by habit, not by claim. If she moved the council beside a place everyone already shared, no tribe could call it hostile. She worked through the night. She wrote a second note for Nico to carry to the tribes still waiting. It named the meeting spot: the dry riverbed beside the painted wall, where no clan held the wells. She sealed it and pressed the wax flat with her thumb. Nico took the note before dawn. He did not ask for coin. He tapped his chest twice, kicked his board, and vanished toward the open sand. By the eighth day, riders came. Not all of them. Four tribes sent scouts to the dry riverbed. The scouts circled the painted wall, checked the empty ground, and found no wells to fight over. They stayed. Mira had her neutral ground. The council would meet. But four tribes came, not six. Two had refused the spot outright. Word had reached them first, twisted by someone who wanted the guild dead. A rider from the farthest tribe told her the rumor plainly: the Vulture clan was already telling everyone the riverbed was a trap, and that Mira meant to sell them all.