Petra Bane's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

For two days Petra could not step outside without being seen. Tomas had posted watchers on her shop. She counted them from behind the dusty glass. Two men on the town hall steps. One woman who pretended to sweep the same stones for hours. They watched her door. Any move she made to hide her tagged things would reach Tomas by nightfall. She could not search for her lost soul-object with his eyes on her. She had to break his watch first. She waited for dark. Then she took a jar from her shelf, one she had kept for years. Inside, tiny blue organisms drifted and flickered. They gathered into shimmering clusters and threw cool light across her hands. She had traded three good curses for them long ago. Tonight she would spend them. Across the way stood a sealed stone building, an old asylum blocked tight against the world. No one went near it. That was why it served. Petra slipped out her back door in the black hours. She hugged the wall and carried the jar under her shawl. The watchers stayed fixed on her front glass. At the asylum she pried one board loose. She poured the glowing organisms through the gap. They spread inside, and blue light bloomed behind the barred windows. The dead building glowed like something waking. Petra limped back into shadow and waited. A watcher saw it first. He shouted. The other two came running. The sweeping woman dropped her broom. All three crossed toward the strange light, drawn like the customer to the clay bell. Petra had spent decades learning what pulls people. Curiosity pulled hardest of all. She did not run home. She turned the other way, toward the archivist's own place. She knew where Tomas kept his ledger. His three lost objects had come from that room, and so had the tags in her shop. If any record named the thing she'd searched for across the years, it sat on his shelves. His door held a heavy lock. Petra had opened worse. Inside, lamplight showed rows of cursed things and a long book left open on the table. She read fast. Column after column of names. Then her finger stopped. One entry listed an object taken from a plague ward, sold on decades back. The line matched the hollow place inside her. This was it. Her soul-object had a trail at last. Boots sounded on the step. Tomas filled the doorway, gloves on, breath hard from running. He had smelled the trick and come home early. "You lit that building to move my men," he said. "Now you're in my records." Petra did not deny it. She had the name. He had her cornered. "Then we both know what I want," she said. His watch was broken. But she had traded her hiding place for his ledger, and now Tomas knew exactly what she was hunting.