Sable Ashwick's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

The falcon led them down through torn cloud and set his wings on the ridge. Sable brought the glider in behind him. The skids hit stone, skipped, and stopped. She climbed out onto the wreck of her father's sky-galleon. Broken masts lay across the deck. The hull had split along one seam and spilled crates onto the rock. Sylvara Greenweave slid from the falcon's back and landed on a shattered rail. Sable went straight for the captain's locker. She had waited twelve years to open it. The lid gave on the second pull. Inside lay a bundle of oilcloth. She unwrapped it on the tilted deck. Charts. Her father's charts, the ones he had flown with the day the storm took him. She spread the top sheet flat. The lines did not make sense. Coastlines she knew were labeled in blocks of letters and numbers. Headings were written as pairs. Landmarks were marked with symbols she had never seen. "He wrote it in cipher," she said. Her voice cracked. "He wrote the whole thing in cipher." She turned the sheet. She turned it again. The rain started up on the ridge and beaded on the oilcloth. She had crossed the storm belt for a book she could not read. Sylvara stepped onto the chart. Her bare feet stood on a coded heading. She bent and studied the marks. "Substitution," the fairy said. "Two layers. The second one shifts every line." Sable stared at her. "You know this." "Deepwood wards use the same trick. I broke one last spring." Sylvara walked along the edge of the paper. She tapped a symbol. "This is a number. This is north. This one is your father's mark for a landing." "Show me." Sylvara crouched. She traced the first line with one small finger. "Read what I say. Write it under." Sable dug a nub of charcoal from her vest. She wrote as Sylvara called out letters. The fairy worked fast. She did not stop to explain. She named a heading, a distance, a depth. Sable's hand shook and kept moving. The first page came clear. It was not a map to the wreck. It was a map from the wreck. Her father had marked a second site, further east, past the ridge. A cache. He had written a word beside it that Sylvara read aloud. "Hull," the fairy said. "He hid a second hull." Sable sat back on her heels. The galleon under her was a decoy. The real ship was still out there. A whistle cut the air above the ridge. She looked up. Three kites banked against the cloud, high and circling. The rival scavengers had followed her through. Sable rolled the charts and shoved them into her vest. "Get on," she said. "We move now." Sylvara was already climbing back toward the falcon.