Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 31 of 66

Rebecka stood over the dead man with the stove door still open behind her. The doll was ash. The student was not the end of it. She had come north to break a chain, and a chain had links she had not counted yet. Aiyana came in through the back. She looked at the body, then at the table. "He was writing," Aiyana said. Rebecka turned. Papers lay under the man's arm. Loose sheets, a stitched book, a stack of folded letters bound with twine. The top sheet was covered in tight, slanted script. Not any letters she knew. "Dirk's hand?" she asked. "His teaching," Aiyana said. "Passed on." Rebecka pulled the sheets free. The ink was fresh on two of them. A wax stub sat beside a folded letter, half-sealed. He had been sending word to someone. If another student sat somewhere waiting on that letter, Ninka was not safe behind stone. She was a name on a page moving toward a stranger's hands. "I can't read this," Rebecka said. "Then it goes with us," Aiyana said. "Someone at the cave will." Rebecka shook her head. "Two hours back. If he's sent one already, that's two hours more he has." She swept the shelves. Jars. Bone. A knot of hair. Then a small pendant on a nail by the door, shaped like an open book, script crawling across its faces. She lifted it down. The runes on its edge warmed against her palm. "Makani gave me the name of one of these once," she said. "A charm for foreign hands." She looped it over her neck and picked up the top sheet. The script did not move. Her understanding did. The letters stayed strange and became meaning at the same time. She read. Her stomach turned. "He names her," she said. "Ninka. He gives her age. He gives the ridge." She flipped to the folded letter. Broke the half-seal with her thumb. "To a woman. South of the coast road. He tells her to finish what the others could not. He tells her the girl holds a dome. He tells her the mother shoots at four hundred paces." "Did he send it," Aiyana said. Rebecka checked the wax. Soft. Unstamped. She pressed her thumb into it and it gave. "Not yet." She fed the letter to the stove. Then the stitched book. Then every sheet on the table, one at a time, until the fire ate the last of his hand. She kept the pendant. "One more," she said. "A woman. South of the coast road." Aiyana nodded. "Then we ride." Rebecka stepped out into the clearing. The mare lifted her head. The compass in her jacket lay still against her ribs, waiting for a name to point at. She had one now.