Reaven's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

The old worker came back at dusk. He brought eleven people with him. Widows, mothers, a boy who barely reached Reaven's shoulder. They stood at the fence and did not enter. Reaven understood why. The lot was open ground. Anyone crossing the mud stood in plain view. An assessor could walk past and count them, see the chalk names on the stone, and know at once what she was building. These families carried the one thing the barons had killed to erase. And they had nowhere to hide while they carved it. Reaven looked at the willow by the fence. Its branches hung to the ground, thick as a curtain. Underneath, the light did not reach. She had ignored the tree for weeks. Now she saw a room in it. "Bring them under the willow," she told the worker. "Not into the open." She worked fast. She dragged the brass lantern arch from the beams and set it inside the willow's branches. It stood over the flat carving stone like a doorway. The skulls caught the lantern glow. She lit the lanterns low, so the light stayed under the leaves and did not spill across the lot. From the road, the willow looked like a willow. Underneath, it was a place to gather. She pulled the mechanical cat down from the highest beam. She carried it to the fence and set it in the mud where the road met the lot. Its green glass eyes ticked back and forth across the empty ground. "If anyone comes, the cat sees first," she told the families. "Its eyes move. You'll know before they reach us." A watchman that never slept and never spoke. One by one, the families ducked under the branches. The boy went first, then his mother. Reaven handed the chisel to a widow. The woman knelt at the stone beneath the skull arch. Her hand shook the way the worker's had. She carved her husband's name into the empty plate. When she finished she passed the chisel to the next. Reaven set out the smoked crow jerky she had saved. The families ate while they waited their turn. No one hurried. The willow held them. The lantern held the light. The cat held the road. By midnight, all six plates were carved. Fourteen names, and the families had more to bring. They left the way they came, ducking out one at a time so no two walked the road together. Reaven stood under the willow alone. The obstacle was gone. She had a safe place now, hidden in plain sight, and word would spread. More families would come. That was the new danger. The old worker had told a dozen people where to find her. Each of them would tell a dozen more. A secret this large could not stay secret. Someone in that growing crowd would carry her name to the barons, for coin or for fear.