Renee Flicker's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Renee Flicker had her satchel on her shoulder and the lord's letter tucked inside it when she found Ally on the couch. The patchwork cushions were pulled down around her. A clean metal bin sat on the floor near her head. Ally was her closest friend, the only person in the pine cabin who knew what Renee carried in that satchel — a bribe letter from a lord, kept as proof, and the plans for an office that did not yet exist in this kingdom. In a place where a miller's son had hanged for a loaf and a lord had paid a fine for burning a farm, Renee meant to build the first court that judged by law. Today she was supposed to walk two towns over and take a stable hand's third statement. She had visited him twice already. On the third visit, he had promised to speak. "Is your belly bugging you again," Renee said. Ally nodded against the cushion. Her curly brown hair fell forward as Renee knelt. "I was up puking half the night," Ally said. "No fever. Nothing else." Renee set her palm on Ally's stomach. Ally flinched at the first touch. "It's probably a flare-up," Renee said. Ally closed her eyes. "Go to work." "You were on the floor at three." "I heard you get up." Renee looked at the door, then at the bin, then at the satchel by her boot. The stable hand would not wait a fourth time. Men like him lost their nerve between one dawn and the next. She had spent six weeks earning one sentence from him. She took off the satchel and set it on the floor. "Water first," Renee said. "Then dry toast if you can hold it." "You'll lose him." "I'll write to him." "A letter won't do it." "Then I'll walk it tomorrow." Ally opened her eyes. They were steady, the way they got before she slipped into the gold place she went to, the standing hour she wanted half her life inside. "Don't lose him for me." "I'm not losing anything," Renee said. She pulled a quilt over Ally's legs and pushed the bin closer with her foot. "He'll keep another day. You won't, if I leave you like this." She went to the small desk by the window and uncapped the ink. She wrote two lines to the stable hand asking for one more week. She wrote a third line to the healer two towns over, asking her to come by evening. She sealed both and set them on the sill for the boy who ran the post. When she turned back, Ally had already gone still on the cushions, breathing shallow, eyes half-lidded on the ceiling beam. Renee sat on the floor beside the couch and did not open the satchel again that morning. The office would wait one more day. The witness might not.