Reaven's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

By morning Reaven smelled rain coming. The sky over the lot had gone the color of wet iron. The fourteen chalk names still marked the fresh plates, waiting for families to cut them deep into the stone. One storm would wash them all to gray. She had beams, she had names, but she had no roof over the carving ground. She walked to the tavern where the six debt-men drank. Its brass gears hung dark with soot, the windows veiled in smog. She found the men at a back table and told them the truth. "Rain's coming. The names go under it and we start over." One man set down his cup. "Then we need cover," he said. "Fast." They had no license for a roof. A roof was a structure, and a structure meant assessors, taxes, seizure. Reaven thought of the forged stamp in her pocket. Too slow. An assessor could still walk the lot before the paper mattered. She needed cover that did not look like a building at all. Behind the tavern sat an old steam trunk, its metal bands rusted, its latch broken. Reaven pried it open. Inside lay a folded sailcloth tarp, oiled and heavy, left by some dead traveler. She dragged it out. It stank of tar and would shed water like a duck's back. The men carried it to the lot. They ran ropes from beam to beam and hauled the tarp up over the carving stone. It sagged, then snapped tight when they cinched the ropes. Rain began before they finished the last knot. It drummed on the oiled cloth and ran off the edge into the mud. Beneath it, the chalk names stayed dry. A figure came through the gray then. Reaven's chest went tight. It moved low and pale, brass ribs steaming in the rain, eyes lit yellow. A phantom wolf, some baron's mechanical hound, sent to patrol. It stopped at the fence and swung its head toward the tarp. Its gears clicked as it read the shape. Reaven stepped into the open. She held up her pocket watch, the raven one, its wings dark, its gears turning behind glass. "Memorial repair," she said, loud, the way an owner speaks to a guard. "Licensed. Move along." The wolf's yellow eyes ticked over her. A memorial was exempt. It had no order for a memorial. Steam hissed from its flanks. It turned and loped back into the smog. The men let out their breath. The tarp held. The names held. By dusk the families would come and cut them safe into stone. But Reaven watched the wolf's shape fade and knew the truth. It had seen the tarp. It had seen her. The barons now knew something stood in this lot worth guarding. They would send more than a wolf next time.