Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 41 of 66

The portal closed behind Rebecka and the road took shape under her boots. Gray stone, a milestone with a chipped eleven, a red gate down the slope. The eye drifted at her shoulder, its gold threads dim. Aiyana stood a pace behind, quiet as smoke. Twenty minutes, and one of those minutes was already gone. "Where is she," Rebecka whispered. "Ditch. Forty paces ahead. On her knees now." Rebecka crouched behind the low wall along the road. She could not see Halvery from here. She could not see if the woman held a knife, a wand, a doll of her own. A wrong step would put Rebecka in the open. If Halvery was armed and scried her a second time, she could signal south before Rebecka closed the gap. "Tell me what she has in her hands," Rebecka said. "Nothing. Blood on her fingers. A small mirror in her coat pocket. Unused." "Traps around her." The eye turned. "None I see. She is hurt. She is not ready." Rebecka set an arrow to the string. The bow hummed once against her palm, low, a warning she hated. Close enough to kill. The air behind her rippled and Lark stepped through a seam Aiyana held open. His wings were dim, folded tight. He had ridden the seam from the cave on Aiyana's call. He carried his sword low so it would not catch light. "Mirror," Rebecka said to him. "In her coat. She breaks it, she signals." "I take the mirror," Lark said. "You take her." "Fast." He went over the wall without sound. His wings opened once, a single beat, and shut. He crossed the road in three strides and dropped into the ditch. Rebecka rose with the wall at her hip and drew. Halvery lifted her head. Her hand went to her pocket. Lark's hand was already there. He caught her wrist and pulled the mirror free and crushed it under his heel in one motion. The glass cracked flat, no light, no sound beyond stone on stone. Rebecka loosed. The arrow took Halvery through the throat. She fell back into the ditch grass and did not move. Lark knelt and searched her coat. He held up a folded paper and a small iron ring. "Names," he said. "Three. And a seal." "The other rider," Rebecka said to the eye. "Two bends north. He heard nothing. He is still coming." Rebecka took the paper and tucked it under her belt. She looked down the road where a rider she could not yet see was carrying a doll of her daughter in a leather sleeve. Halvery would not stand up again. The signal had not gone out. But the road was not empty, and the quiver at her back was lighter by one arrow. "Reload the string," she told Lark. "He arrives in twelve minutes."