Penelope Firenze's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

On the seventh day, the hawk came back. He dropped onto Penelope's shoulder and gripped hard. A brittle branch hung from his beak, small leaves still clinging to the wood. Olive leaves. Penelope took the branch and held it to the light. The temple's groves grew olives like these. But Saraya had said the temple was still a week's walk south. Penelope looked at the branch and felt the whole plan crack. She could reach A'na's Temple. She could send word from its walls. But her warriors were scattered across the Waste, and word from a distant temple would find none of them in time. She would arrive to an empty hall and shout her father's name to no one. Saraya crouched over the fire, feeding it dry brush. The caravan guide had guided others down these roads for years and thrown that life away. She read the land the way Penelope read a battle. "You're chewing on something," Saraya said, not looking up. "Say it." "My warriors can't hear a call they never receive," Penelope said. "The temple is too far. By the time I send word, the hunters will already have the door." Laenora sat wrapped in a worn cloak, hands folded like a woman still waiting to be given a task. She had served Penelope's mother once. "Then don't wait for the temple, my lady," she said. "Call them now." Penelope pulled a small pouch from her belt. Inside was fine powder, ground from purified sand. Burned, it threw up a ribbon of dust invisible to common eyes. Only a Sidewinder, trained from childhood, could read that thread across the sky and follow it. "A signal," Penelope said. "But smoke from the ground draws every hunter within a day's ride." Saraya stood and looked south, then up. "Not the ground," she said. "Height. Wind carries it, spreads it thin. Hard to trace to one camp." Penelope understood. She tied the pouch shut and held out her arm. The hawk stepped onto her wrist. She looped the pouch to his leg and pointed him toward the high air over the groves. "Fly high," she told him. "Loose it there." She flung her arm up. The hawk climbed, wings beating hard, until he was a dark speck against the pale sky. They waited. Then a faint ribbon uncoiled far above the desert, catching light no ordinary eye would catch. Penelope's chest tightened. Somewhere out in the Waste, loyal eyes would see it and turn toward the temple road. The hawk returned empty-legged and settled on her shoulder. Laenora smiled. Saraya did not. She was already staring at the horizon, jaw set. "You called your people," she said. "You called the rest too. Whoever hunts exiles knows Sidewinders read the sky." Penelope watched the last of the dust thin and vanish. Her warriors were coming. So was everyone who wanted her dead. Now the only question was who reached the temple first.