Sapphire Crystalline's Arc

Chapter 3 of 12

Sapphire watched the men ride west and knew she had less than a day. The moon would be full in two nights. The hunting party would sweep the ruins by dusk, then camp there, then sweep again. Her father's hidden thing lay under a stone in the second chamber. If she waited, armed men would find it. If she went now, they would find her. She cut through the pine belt to skirt the road. Halfway up the slope she stopped. A cat sat on the path ahead, sleek and pale, with dark points on its ears and tail. It did not run. It stared past her, ears flat, at something in the brush she could not see. Then it stepped sideways into a patch of shade and was gone. A man came out of the same shade. Black cloak, vials strapped across his chest, a knife at each hip. He held his hands open at his sides so she could see them. "You're the Crystalline girl," he said. "I'm Kael Blackscale. I hunt shadowbeasts. I don't kill them anymore." Sapphire took a step back. "Then what do you do." "I cure them. When I can." He tapped one vial with a knuckle. "I followed the party in from the east. Their hound handler is sitting in the creek talking to nothing. Someone broke him open last night. That was you." "It wasn't me." "It was done for you. Same thing, in the ledger." He looked at the sky. "Two nights. You won't make the ruins and get out. The party is there now, and they will stay." She kept her face still. "I need something my father left." "Describe it." "Folded. Cloth or paper. Under the flat stone in the second chamber." He thought for a moment. "I can reach the second chamber. They don't know my face here. I can be a traveler asking shelter." "Why would you." "Because if you go, you die, and I lose a cure I haven't tried." He said it flat, like reading a list. "Wait at your house. Bar the door. I'll be back before moonrise tomorrow." "And if you open it and read it first." "I will open it and read it first. I need to know what it is before I hand it to you." He did not soften the line. "That's the trade." She looked at the path where the cat had been. She thought of Vexeron, and the favor with no shape. She thought of her mother in the loft, and her brother, and two nights. "Go," she said. He was already moving. She walked home the long way, hands empty. She had given her father's secret to a stranger to read before her. It was the only trade left, and she had made it.