Purda Blue's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Purda Blue had one clean approach at the sapphire necklace, and six different versions of who owned it. She sat in the back of the fortune teller's cabin with her blue skirt arranged for the room, sipping a drink she did not intend to finish. The cabin took in gossip the way a chimney took in smoke. Every drunk in Serene Vale came here to trade a story for a warmer one. She had come for the necklace said to make any wearer impossible to look away from, and she had stayed because the stories did not agree. One man swore the owner was an autumn court lord who kept the stone in a velvet box under his bed. A woman two tables over said it hung around the neck of a merchant's wife who never left her garden. A boy clearing cups whispered that the necklace had been pawned last winter and never claimed. Purda smiled at each of them. She bought the next round for none. She kept her leather journal flat against her thigh under the table. Inside, she had drawn three columns: who, where, proof. She added each new claim in a tight hand and crossed out the ones that broke against the others. The autumn court lord story collapsed when the same man placed him in two cities the same night. The pawnshop story collapsed when the boy could not name the shop. By the third hour, only one entry held: a merchant's wife in a walled garden, named by two strangers who had never met. She paid her tab and stepped outside to the public notice tree that stood by the cabin door. Frost clung to its wooden boards. She read every bill twice. A posted reward for a runaway horse. A notice of an autumn court wedding, brides welcome to wear the standard fragrance or commission their own. And, pinned low, a merchant's request for a perfumer to scent a private garden party. The name on the bill matched the name two strangers had spoken inside. Purda pulled the bill down and folded it into her sleeve. Her trade gave her a reason to walk through a stranger's gate without picking the lock first. She knew how to pick the lock if it came to that. She preferred to be invited. She had once lifted a man's watch while he believed he had caught her, and he had sent her dinner the next day. A garden gate would be easier than his pocket. She wrote the merchant's name in her journal under the column marked proof and drew a line through every other entry. One approach. One target. She started back toward her rooms to choose the dress she would wear to the garden, and to write the letter that would get her through the gate.