Penny Buttonwick's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

By the next morning, three buyers had come and gone, but none of her three recruits had arrived with a name. Penny stood in the cottage doorway, the shell buttons cold behind her on the sill. She had a fourth pixie waiting in the wings — the one the others did not know about. The price for that quiet alliance was overdue, and Penny could feel it walking toward her through the ferns. The fourth recruit landed at the button-studded fountain beside the cottage, water ticking down its mossy tiers. She was not alone. A tall pixie stepped from the ferns behind her — a chronicle hunter, scarred and silent, with a reward leaf folded at his belt. "This was the price," the recruit said. "Safe passage for him, in trade for my name on your roll." Penny's jaw set. She took the offered name, scratched it onto her leaf, and pointed the hunter toward the cellar door. The alliance was sealed. But now a hunter knew the cottage, and her exchange had a fugitive sheltering under its floor. The recruit lingered at the fountain. She drew a heavy golden button from her pouch and set it on the rim. Silver carvings caught the morning light. "From him," she said. "For the trouble." Penny picked it up. It was worth more than a week of shells. It was also a marker — proof the hunter had paid her, proof she had taken his coin. She slid it into her tray beside a locket the recruit unclasped next, its hawk wings flashing. "He wears its twin," the recruit added. "So others of his trade will know this roof." Penny stared at the locket. Two hunters now, perhaps more, would read that mark and come looking. She closed her fist around it and walked back inside. The fourth name was hers. The roll was full. But the cottage door no longer only meant trade — it meant shelter, debt, and a target painted in gold.