Rowan Pinwell's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

Rowan walked back toward town with two scraps in their coat and one still in the thief's hand. The road felt longer than it had at dawn. Rowan had lied in the square about the baker's confession, called it fiction, and now every ear in town had heard the story. If the thief read the last scrap aloud, Rowan would have to warn someone fast enough to stop it from spreading. But warning meant being believed, and Rowan had spent that coin already. The first person Rowan passed was a woman sweeping under a torn canvas awning on old wooden posts. She kept a stall there most mornings. Rowan slowed. She looked up, saw the antlers, and set the broom against the post. "There's a scrap of paper going around," Rowan said. "Someone may read it out loud. If you hear a name on it, don't repeat what follows. Just come find me." She wiped her hands on her apron. "Like the one yesterday? The practice piece?" Her mouth tightened. "You told the whole square that paper was made up. Now you're telling me the next one is real." "Yes." "Which is it, then." She picked the broom back up. "You can't have both." She turned away and swept the same patch of dirt she'd already cleared. Rowan stood there a moment, then moved on. Rowan tried a man at a painted ceramic post at the bend, and a boy sitting on the step of a scrapwood shed with a small orange gecko cupped in his palm. Both listened. Neither promised anything. The boy said his mother had heard about the practice piece and told him Rowan had been under strain. He said it kindly, which was worse. Rowan reached the timber lodge at the edge of the lane and stopped. Inside lived a man who read the noticeboard aloud every week for those who couldn't. If anyone would carry a warning, it was him. Rowan knocked. He opened the door, listened to the whole thing, and shook his head. "I like you, Rowan. But I won't tell people to cover their ears on your word. Not this week." The door closed. Rowan stood on the step and understood the shape of it. The lie in the square had done its work. No one would refuse to listen to a scrap being read, because Rowan had taught them yesterday that the scraps meant nothing. The warning route was closed. Whatever the thief did next, Rowan could not get ahead of it by speaking. Rowan walked back toward the noticeboard with the two saved scraps pressed flat against their ribs. The plan had failed cleanly. If the last confession was going to be stopped, it would not be stopped by Rowan's word. It would have to be stopped at the thief's hand, before the reading began.