Mirella Voss's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Mirella pushed into the reeds and made for the sunken shrine. The metal shard rode heavy at her belt. The pastel winglet flew ahead of her, low over the water, then swung back sharp and landed on her shoulder. It clicked its beak twice and pointed its head to the south bank. She stopped walking and listened. Boots in mud. More than one pair. A patrol was moving parallel to her, and moving faster. She crouched behind a stand of cattails and counted shapes through the stalks. Four frog-kin, armed, painted for a hunt. At the front walked a small captain with a red patch on his brow. She had met him once at a grain trade. Captain Marsh Coldbrook. He was young and angry and loyal to the murdered clansman's mother. If he reached the shrine first, he would gut whoever was inside before she could ask a single question. Her one witness would die with the answer in his mouth. Mirella could not outrun four frog-kin through their own marsh. She looked at the narrow reed path ahead. Rotten planks, tied with old rope, laid across the shallows. One crossing. If she cut it, the patrol had to wade a mile around. If she cut it wrong, she went into the water with it. She pulled the shard from her belt and used its curved edge as a knife. It sliced the wet rope like grass. She sawed through the first line, then the second, then dropped flat behind a mud hump as the frog-kin came into view on the far side. Captain Coldbrook raised his hand. His patrol halted at the crossing. He tested the first plank with his foot. The plank swung loose and slapped the water. He tested the next. It fell. He looked across the reeds and shouted, not at her, but at the marsh in general. "Voss. I can smell your winglet. Come out." She stood up slowly with both hands open. "The maker of the blade is at the shrine. If you kill him, your matron gets nothing. If I question him, she gets a name." Coldbrook stared at her a long moment. He looked at the broken crossing. He looked at the shard in her hand and at the winglet on her shoulder, which shook its head hard the way it had at the killing pool. His jaw worked. "You have until the sun touches the reeds," he said. "Then I come around, and I do not ask." He turned his patrol back the way they had come. Mirella waited until their splashes faded. Her hands were shaking. She had bought hours, not the day. And she had just used a stranger's blade to cut a frog-kin road, which meant when Coldbrook told that story, the shard in her belt would look less like evidence and more like a confession. She wiped it on her sleeve and started running toward the shrine.