Sable Wren's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Sable did not climb into the boat. The man at the tiller waved her off with both hands. "Not here," he hissed. "Not with them running." She scrambled back up the boat line as the enforcers reached the water. The smuggler shoved off without her. Her seat, her two years of wages, drifted out with the tide. But before he vanished into the dark, he pointed inland and mouthed one word. Chapel. She ran. The enforcers lost her among the crates and the fog. She walked until the docks fell behind, until she found the old chapel with the broken tower. Salt had eaten the stone. Timbers sagged over cracked windows of colored glass. She slipped through the gap in the boarded door and waited in the dark. This was where she would learn if she had any way out at all. Boots crunched outside near dawn. A broad man ducked through the door. His coat was stitched from rubber scraps and loops of chain. She knew him. Dex Waller, the scavenger who lived two containers down from hers, the one who traded salvage for food and never touched anything with a government stamp. "You," he said. He looked at her dyed scalp, her streaked skin. "The one on every wall. I thought so." He did not sound afraid. He sounded tired. "You're the smuggler," Sable said. "I move things the regime wants kept still. Tonight that was supposed to be crates." He crossed his arms. "Not a face they've printed a bounty on. You cost me the whole run." "I paid for that seat." "You paid for a quiet passenger. You're the loudest thing in Atlantica." He turned toward the door. "Enforcers are checking every hull now. I take you, they take my boat and my neck." He was leaving. She had nothing left to bargain with but the truth of what she carried. Sable pulled the bag from inside her coat and dropped it on the cracked floor. It split open. Dark angular ration chips spilled across the stone, dozens of them, the kind traded under the table. Dex stopped. He crouched and turned one chip in his fingers. No stamp. Clean market goods. "There's more where I hid the rest," she said. "Yours. All of it. Just get me out." He weighed the chip a long moment. Food was food, and he traded for nothing else. "One boat left that they haven't searched," he said at last. "Mine's burned now. This other man owes me. He runs tomorrow night, from the north rocks." He stood. "I'll take you to him. After that you're his problem." Sable let out a breath. "Thank you." "Don't thank me." He scooped the chips back into the bag and pocketed it. "He's meaner than me, and he charges double for the marked ones. Whatever you gave me, he'll want more." He pushed open the door. "Come on. We move before light."