Omaha's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Omaha walked back up the dock with the invitation warm against her ribs. Marina's words followed her: they would check the name at the gate. By dawn Marina would be sober. Sober meant angry. Angry meant a message sent to the court gates, and a flagged name before Omaha ever reached the steps. She stopped under a lamp and turned back toward the boat. The card was hers. The name was not. She could only fix one of those tonight, and she had to fix the second one first. Marina was sitting up when Omaha climbed back in. The bottle was capped. Her eyes were clearer than they had been ten minutes ago. "Changed your mind," Marina said. "You changed yours," Omaha said. "You will report the card gone by morning." Marina did not deny it. "My mother watches the gate lists. If my name goes through and I am not there, she hears about it by noon." Omaha crouched on the bench across from her. She thought about the pageant Marina had already advanced in, the endurance tank still ahead, the mother who never came. She set the club chips back down between them. "Keep these. I want a second favor, not the first one back." Marina waited. "Report the card lost tomorrow at sunset, not sunrise. By sunset I will be past the gate. After that, report it however you want. Say I stole it. Say I lied to you. It buys you clean hands with your mother and the court." Marina picked up a chip and turned it in her fingers. "You want me to lie for six hours." "I want you to wait six hours." Marina looked at the water. "The endurance round is tomorrow. I will be in a tank at sunset. I cannot send a message from a tank." She set the chip down. "That works for both of us." She held out her hand. Omaha took it. Marina's grip was steady. "One thing, cat. At the gate they will ask you to sign. My signature loops the M twice and drops the tail on the last letter. Practice it on the boat ride over." She tore a strip from the bottle's paper label and wrote her name across it with a stub of pencil. Omaha folded the strip into the invitation. She stepped back onto the planks with the card, the chips returned to Marina, and six hours of silence bought clean. The gate would not flag her name at moonrise. It would flag it after she was already inside.