Petra Bane's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Petra Bane kept her shop locked because she was still looking for one thing. Somewhere out there lived a stolen object that had carried a piece of her soul for decades. She was old now, hollow-eyed, wrapped in a black dress gone thin at the elbows. Every strange thing on her shelves wore a paper tag. She let no one buy any of them. She only watched who touched what, and waited to feel the pull that meant she had finally found it. The young customer touched a small clay bell that morning. Petra saw his fingers close around it. She saw them refuse to open again. "Put it back," she said. He couldn't. His hand shook. His mouth stretched wide. A thin, rising wail poured out of him, the sound the tagged things made through the people who grabbed them. It filled the shop and slid under the locked door. Out on the crumbling town hall steps, a knot of people turned toward the noise. Petra's hands went cold. Attention was the one thing she could not afford. She pried at the man's fingers. They held like stone. The wail climbed higher. Someone pounded on her door. Through the dusty glass she saw broad shoulders and thick leather gloves. Tomas Leel, the city's archivist. He catalogued cursed objects. Three of them had vanished from his collection this week, and Petra knew where at least one had gone. Her own tagged shelf held it. She should have run. Instead she opened the door, because the screaming would bring worse than him. Tomas stepped in and shut it fast. He looked at the frozen customer, then at Petra. "That's mine," he said, nodding at the clay bell. "I've been hunting it three days." "Then help me," Petra said. "Or the whole street comes in." He didn't argue. He wrapped both gloved hands over the customer's fist. The leather smoked where it met the object. Tomas grunted, twisted, and peeled the fingers back one by one. The bell dropped into his open palm. The wail cut off. Silence rang in Petra's ears. The customer sagged, breathing hard, and stumbled out the door without a word. Outside, the crowd drifted back to the town hall steps. Tomas turned the clay bell in his gloves. Then he looked past Petra, at the long shelf of tagged things behind her. "You have more than this one," he said. It wasn't a question. Petra's throat tightened. Among those objects sat the two other things he'd lost. And she had let him inside to see them. "I keep what finds its way to me," she said. Tomas set the bell in a pouch at his belt. He didn't leave. "Then I'll be back with a cart and a list," he said. "Every cursed thing in this room belongs to the city." The door closed behind him. Petra stood among her shelves, and knew she had traded quiet for a man who would take everything before she found the one thing she needed.