Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 33 of 66

Rebecka stood over the courier's body with the orders in her hand. The inn was three days south. The courier had been due at his contact's fire within two hours. When he did not arrive, the woman would break camp and vanish into the country between here and the coast, and the name at the bottom of the page would be nothing but ink. "She will run," Rebecka said. "Unless she hears from him first." Aiyana held the satchel flat on the table. Inside sat the clay signal doll, still whole. Rebecka lifted it. It was warm. A thin cord of hair was pressed into the seam at its neck. Break it and the contact felt the break. Keep it whole and silent past the appointed hour, and the contact felt the silence. She needed the third thing. A pulse. A steady hum that said the courier lived and rode. She cut a strand of the dead boy's hair and pressed it into her palm. Then she spoke the eye out of its vial. The floating eye opened in the air above the table, wide and blue, threaded with gold. It looked at the doll. It looked at Rebecka. "The doll carries his hair," Rebecka said. "Can you carry his pulse into it. So the woman at the inn feels him still riding." "Yes," the eye said. "For a day. No longer." "A day is enough." "You will owe the price when it fades." "I know." The eye drifted down and settled its gaze on the clay figure. The doll's surface flushed once, faintly. Then it began to give off a small steady warmth, like a wrist held to the cheek. Rebecka wrapped the doll in cloth and tucked it inside her coat, against her ribs, where a rider's heartbeat would live. She went out to the mare. The white horse waited, mane braided with soft light, saddle draped in pale cloth. Aiyana swung up behind her. Rebecka set her heels and the mare took the between-road at once, ground blurring under its hooves. They rode until the light thinned. On a flat of pale sand she raised a shelter from her pack, a small teepee stitched with charm-marks, and they slept in shifts. The doll at her ribs kept its steady warmth. Somewhere south, a woman at a crossroads inn was told her courier was two hours late, then four, then a night, and each time she reached for the signal she felt him still on the road and stayed at her fire. At second dawn the doll cooled. Rebecka felt it go out against her skin. She did not slow. "She will feel that," Aiyana said. "Then she will run," Rebecka said. "But we are one day from the inn, not three. Ride." The mare took the road again. Ahead, the woman who had ordered Ninka's death was already saddling her horse.