Penny Buttonwick's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

By midday the locket's mark had already done its work. Penny heard no knock — only the soft scrape of a folded paper sliding under her door. She picked it up. The script was elegant and worn, edges curled like it had traveled far. It was not a buyer's note. It was a claim. She stepped outside. A stranger stood at the fountain, cloaked, one hand resting on the rim where the golden button had sat that morning. No coin pouch hung at his belt. Instead, a silver coin necklace lay across his palm, its mark a perfect match for the hunter's locket inside. He turned it so she could see. "I read the sign," he said. "I'm not here to pay." Penny kept her face still. He set a small pink heart-shaped button on the fountain's edge — a token she recognized from the recruit's own pouch. "Hand her over," he said. "The one who came with the scarred man. Not the fugitive. The pixie who brought him. That's the price of my silence." Penny's mind moved fast. Her fourth name. Her quiet alliance. The piece no one else knew she held. She looked at the heart button, then at the coin necklace, then at the cellar door behind her. "No," she said, and stepped back inside, sliding the bolt. Through the wood she heard him laugh once, soft. "Then I wait," he said. By dusk a second folded letter slid under her door — a list of names. Hers was on it. The roll was full, but the cottage was now under siege, and Penny would have to launch the exchange before the watcher at her fountain made his next move.