Reaven's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

By morning the single beam still stood, and Reaven understood the trap she had built. One beam meant one name. A cathedral meant a hundred. She could not lift a hundred beams alone, and she could not scratch a hundred names without the barons hunting her. She needed hands. But no outcast in Feralhollow would risk a baron's wrath for a stranger's lot. She worked at the fence anyway. She dragged a second beam from the mud and set the mechanical cat on the first to watch the street. Its green glass eyes ticked back and forth. Its gears clicked in the cold. She heaved the beam upright and it slipped from her grip and fell. The mud swallowed the sound. She could not do this alone. She had known it for an hour and kept lifting to avoid knowing it. Before dawn the assessor came back. Not with a seal press this time. He carried a lantern shaped from brass, ringed with small skulls, and he set it on a stone by her fence. The glow lit his face from below. "They sent me to fine you," he said. "The name on that plate was a man I helped drown. I logged the flood works order myself." Reaven said nothing. She waited for the seal press. Instead he drew a pocket watch from his coat. Black metal, shaped with raven feathers, gears turning behind glass. He pressed it into her hand. "Inside the case is a licensing stamp. Forged. My own hand. Present it and no assessor touches your beams for a month." He looked at the lantern he had set down. "Keep that too. When a collector sees baron brass at your gate, he assumes the tax is paid. It buys you doubt. Doubt buys you time." "Why," Reaven said. It was not a question. It was all she could manage. "Because I want my name off my own ledger before I die." He tapped the watch in her palm. "You carve the dead. Carve me too, when it's time. Until then, I bring you hands. Six men owe the flood works what I owe it. They won't lift beams for a stranger. They'll lift them for a memorial to their brothers." He left before she could answer. The skull lantern burned at her fence. By nightfall six men came. They did not speak to her. They read the name on the brass plate, and then they lifted. Two beams rose, then four. The cat watched from the top of each one as it stood. Reaven scratched a second name into a new plate while the men held the beam steady. She was not alone anymore. But every hand that lifted now shared the crime. Six men knew her secret. And the assessor who armed her could bury her with one word to the barons he still served.