Mk's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Mk swung the pick through the morning. Finn Jarro watched from the shade and marked the hours on a slate. Twelve days left on Running Wolf's watch. Thirteen days left on the debt. Mk needed strangers' names, and no stranger walked past Finn's claim today. He set the pick down and thought about who did hear things. Roma Lyle heard everything that came off the flats. Traders stopped at her hut for water. Mk would send her word. At the water break he asked Finn for one favor. Finn drank from his jug and waited. Mk said he needed a runner for one afternoon, someone to carry a note to Roma's hut and back. Finn spat in the dirt. He said his hired boy could go, but the hours would cost. One day off the runner's own work meant one day added to Mk's count. Fourteen days now. Mk agreed before Finn could smile. The gecko shifted on his wrist. Mk wrote the note on the clean side of a scrap of hide. He asked Roma to listen for men asking about the flats or the dune, and to send names back with the boy. He mentioned Running Bear and Aiyana Redfeather by name. He signed it with the same bearing he had shown Running Wolf. He handed the hide to the runner, a thin boy in a yellow coat named Finn's kin. The boy took the note and went. The afternoon dragged. Mk broke rock and watched the trail. Two riders passed the claim near sundown. One wore a red scarf and rode slow. Mk did not know his face. He marked the scarf in his head and kept digging. The gecko climbed to his collar and stayed there. The boy came back after dark. He had run hard. He handed Mk a folded strip of hide with three names on it in Roma's blocky hand. Slate Pruett, asking after a buried wreck. Rook Galvan, asking after old salvage rights on the dune. A third name smeared by sweat. Roma had drawn a small arrow next to Pruett's name. Below the names she had written one line. Both men had asked which claim Mk worked, and both had walked out past her hut toward the flats before noon. Mk folded the strip into his pouch beside the bearing. He had his intel. He had paid for it with another day on Finn's count. Running Wolf would get two names when the boy carried word up the ridge in the morning. But two men were already on the flats, ahead of the runner, ahead of the news. Mk picked up the pick and drove it into the rock. Fourteen days now, and the dune already had visitors.