Sapphire Crystalline's Arc

Chapter 6 of 12

Sapphire ran home from the ridge with two problems and one day left. She had a cell for herself and no walls for her mother and brother. But a worse trouble waited at the well. The neighbor woman stood with three others, talking low, pointing at Sapphire's door. She had spread her suspicion all week. If the story reached the hunting party, they would drag the family out by dusk. Sapphire heard the words as she passed. Blood on the yard. A brother no one had seen. She could not shout the woman down. She could not prove herself. Every hour brought the whispers closer to armed men. She went to the one shadowbeast who might help. Kael had spoken of an elder who lived far from humans, in a cave marked by black stone teeth. Sapphire climbed to it before noon. The mouth of the cave rose over her, jagged and dark. Inside, a small figure sat by a low fire, horned, white-haired, in black and gold. He did not turn. "You are cursed," Cirrus Silverblade said. "I smell it. State your need." "A neighbor is telling the village my family are beasts," Sapphire said. "By dusk they will believe her. I need it stopped." Cirrus fed a stick to the fire. "I do not hunt humans. I buy blood. I do not silence gossips for strangers." "Then buy mine," Sapphire said. "Whatever you pay. In return, help me once." He looked at her then. His eyes were lamp-yellow, tired. "You are young. Cursed young." A pause. "I had a daughter your age. Cursed the same." He stood. "I know that woman's kind. Fear speaks loudest when it has a face to point at. Give the village a bigger fear, pointed elsewhere." "How?" "A beast was seen three valleys off," Cirrus said flatly. "Tracks. A dead sheep. A witness who trembles well. The party rides where the danger is loudest. I have men who owe me. It costs you nothing but the blood you offered." Sapphire held out her arm. Cirrus drew a thin vial's worth, quick and clean. "Go home," he said. "Say nothing. Wait." She waited. By late afternoon a rider came through the village at a gallop, wild-eyed, shouting of a shadow-beast that killed his flock two valleys over. The neighbor woman's crowd broke apart. The hunting party mustered within the hour. Sapphire watched them ride out the far road, away from her door, toward Cirrus's false danger. The neighbor caught her eye across the lane. Sapphire held it and did not look away. The woman turned and went inside. The whispers had nowhere left to land. Her family was safe until sunrise. But Sapphire had traded her blood to a shadowbeast elder now, and he had asked her nothing yet in return. And she still had no walls for her mother and brother. The moon rose in nine hours.