Nyx Evenfall's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Silas woke before the sun and made no move to leave. Nyx found him at the counter, dipping his wooden bowl in the water jug. "You said I follow you," Nyx said. "So lead." Silas set the bowl down slow. "I know the trail. I've walked it since I was a boy. But I don't hand it to strangers." His blue eyes fixed on Nyx. "You want the benefactor. First show me you won't run when the road turns hard." Nyx's stomach dropped. The trail was here, inside this old man's head, and he would not spill a word of it. "How do I prove that? We're standing in a shack." "Two people are camped past the ridge," Silas said. "They fight over a sword. One took it. One wants it back. Go settle it and come back whole. Then I'll believe you keep your feet under pressure." Nyx walked out into the heat. Past the ridge, a boy crouched in the dirt, hands moving fast over a spread of blades. Six of them lay in a row, edges catching the light. He did not look up. "Found them," the boy said. "Found means mine." A woman stood over him, arms crossed, her sandals sunk in the sand. "He lifted one off my brother's grave marker," she said. "Forty years that blade sat there. He grabbed it in a day." "Gareth Finder," the boy said, still sorting steel. "If it's on the ground, it's mine. I don't argue the point twice." The woman looked at Nyx and named the fix at once. "Marina Waverly. Here's how it goes. He keeps five. He gives back the one with the notched hilt. Everyone walks away." She held up a hand. "That's the only deal that doesn't end in blood." Nyx crouched by the swords. The notched one lay at the end. "Gareth," Nyx said. "You sell these for coin, right? Five swords is coin. One grave marker is a fight you don't win. She'll follow you for miles." Gareth's hands stopped. He weighed the notched sword, then the other five. "Five is more than none," he said. He slid the notched blade across the dirt to Marina. "Take it. Don't come back for the rest." Marina caught it and stood. "Smart. You just saved yourself three days of me." She tucked the sword under her arm and walked off without another word. Nyx returned to the shack sunburned and dry. Silas was waiting in the doorway. "They didn't kill each other," Nyx said. "The blade went home. Now the trail." Silas studied Nyx a long moment. Then he pulled a folded scrap of hide from his belt and pressed it into Nyx's hand. A crude map. A line of water holes marked in old ink, running off the edge of the mesa. "The benefactor moves," Silas said. "House on wheels. It's already left the first mark. We chase it now, or we lose it for good."