Oswin Merrick's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

They left the workshop at dawn, the disc lashed to the beetle once more. The copied symbols rode in Oswin's jacket, folded against his own maps. Word of the engraved disc had spread through the workshop the day before. Too many quills had stilled when the old man read the rim aloud. Now, on the road back toward the trees, Oswin felt eyes on his back. Garret felt it too. "Someone's behind us," the blacksmith said. "Has been since the first bend." His hand stayed on the disc. Oswin didn't turn. He steered the beetle off the path into a stand of ferns, their fronds glowing amber in the low sun. He crouched behind the broad leaves and waited. The parrot dug its claws into his shoulder and went still. A woman came up the path. She moved quiet for someone in boots, her dark hair tied back, gloved hands loose at her sides. She wore a vest hung with tools — small pry-bars, coils of rope, a knife. She stopped where the beetle's tracks left the road and smiled at the ferns as if she'd known all along. "Clever," she said. "But the tracks give you up. That beetle can't tread light." She stepped closer. "I want the disc. Or the copy in your pocket. The copy's lighter. Hand it over and I'll leave you the metal." Oswin stood. "You followed us from the workshop." "Someone paid me to." She shrugged. "Rim symbols that point to more discs? That's worth chasing. You did the hard part already." Garret moved to put himself between her and the beetle. His shoulders filled the gap. "Turn around," he said. She didn't. Her hand drifted toward the knife. Oswin saw it and made a choice. He pulled the folded paper from his jacket and held it up. "You want the bearing," he said. "Fine." He tore the paper once, down the middle, and pressed half into the mud with his boot. "Now neither of us has the whole of it. Half a bearing leads nowhere." Her smile dropped. "You're bluffing." "He copied it from memory," Oswin said. "You'd have to go back and ask him. And he already knows a thief came asking." He let that sit. "Walk away, or spend a week untangling half a map." She weighed it. Her eyes moved from the ruined half to the beetle to Garret's set jaw. Then she stepped back, slow. "This isn't the last road," she said. "You'll cross me again out there." She turned and was gone down the path. Oswin knelt and lifted the muddy half from the ground. He wiped it on his sleeve. The torn edge matched the piece still in his hand. He fit them together and read the bearing clean. "You kept it," Garret said. "She didn't know what a whole map looks like," Oswin said. "I do." But now someone else knew the road ran on, and meant to reach the next disc first.