Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 59 of 66

At dawn Rebecka crouched at the flap of the charmed teepee and watched the salt town wake. Thunder had gone ahead to the docks. Aiyana slept an hour more. The plan wanted her on the warehouse roof by noon. The streets between here and that roof were the problem. Thunder had counted six strangers on the salt floor last night who did not belong to the town. Watchers. The northern buyer's people, set out early to sweep the streets for anyone who looked like her. She pulled the flap closed and opened her palm. The floating eye rose from the sand where it had rested through the night. Its blue iris turned once, slow, and fixed on her. "How many between here and the warehouse," she said. "Nine." "Show me." The eye drifted to the map on the ground and marked each one with a small point of light. Two at the west gate. One on the roof of the grain house. Three along the salt walk. Two at the alley behind the broker's shop. One inside a doorway across from the warehouse itself. The last point sat exactly where she needed to climb. "He watches the drainpipe I mean to use." "Yes." She thought. The compact sat in her coat pocket. Makani had said one bite, one hour, a stranger's face. Five tarts. She had given the yellow to Thunder. Four left. She took the compact out and thumbed it open. The mirror caught her face — too known, too listed. She chose the green tart and set it on her tongue. The change came fast. Her jaw shortened. Her cheeks filled. Her hair went pale under the hood. She looked in the mirror and did not know herself. Good. "Watch the doorway man," she told the eye. "Tell me if his eyes track me." "I will tell you." She woke Aiyana with a hand on her shoulder. Aiyana looked at the new face and nodded once. "An hour?" "An hour. Follow at a distance. If I fall, you finish it with Thunder." Rebecka stepped out into the salt town wearing a stranger's face and a salt-hauler's coat she had bought off a sleeping man for two coins. She walked past the two at the west gate. Neither turned. She crossed the salt walk between the three watchers. One glanced at her boots and looked away. The eye floated above the rooflines, unseen by anyone but her. Halfway down the alley it spoke in her ear. "The doorway man watches you now." She did not stop. She turned into a cooper's yard, climbed a stack of empty barrels, and dropped onto the warehouse roof from the blind side. When she looked back the doorway man was still watching the drainpipe. She was in position. The face would hold another forty minutes. Thunder had not yet climbed the stair.