Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 47 of 66

Rebecka pocketed the iron seal and looked down at the dead woman on the flat stone. Two searchers now, both carrying the same knot. Neither had wandered onto the ridge by luck. Someone was feeding them the cave's location, and until she found the leak, the refugees below her feet were only as safe as the next hour. She waved Lark and Aiyana up. Lark knelt by the body and turned out the coat. A folded map fell into his palm. He opened it on the stone. The ridge was drawn in charcoal. A small cross marked the crack behind Rebecka's boot. A second cross marked the collapsed bottleneck. A dotted line ran off the west edge of the paper toward the coast road. "She didn't guess this," Rebecka said. "Someone drew it for her." "Then someone stood here," Aiyana said. "Or watched from close." Rebecka thought of the crow that had gone through at dawn. Of the refugees at the panicked man's back. Of every face in the deep chamber she had counted and turned away from. She pulled the stakes and set the charmed cloth again in the scrub off the trail. Inside, she tipped the last drop from the vial onto her thumb and pressed it to her forehead. "Ninka. I need you." Her daughter answered at once. Mom. "Someone in the cave has been sending word out. I need you to look. Not into their heads. Only their hands. Show me who has touched paper today." A pause. Then the girl's voice thinned. Gran. The bear. A boy with a bandaged foot. And the man who wanted to run. He has ink on his fingers. Rebecka's jaw tightened. "The panicked one." He's sitting near the back crack. He keeps looking at the seam. "Tell Gran to hold him. Don't let him touch the wall. I'm coming down." She broke the tent and went at a run. Lark and Aiyana followed. The bottleneck opened for her when Katia's voice hummed on the other side of the seal. Rebecka squeezed through. The man was already on his feet, one hand at the crack. A folded square of birch bark sat between his fingers. Rebecka's bow hummed and marked him. She did not draw. "Show me," she said. He held the bark out because the bear behind him left him no other choice. Charcoal marks. The ridge. A cross at the seam. A time. Tonight. "Who," she said. "A woman on the coast road. She said if I marked the door my daughter would eat." Rebecka took the bark and burned it in the pot Katia carried. The seam went dark. She set two of Aiyana's arrows across the crack and posted Lark beside it. The leak was closed. But the woman on the coast road knew the ridge, and she was still out there, and now she would come herself.