Saraphillia's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The safe names lay in the drawer, exactly as before. Saraphillia knew the spy would return to read them. But Mara warned her of a worse clock ticking. The Guild's handler expected fresh names soon. If the stream stopped, he would know his spy was caught. Then he would send scouts up the mountain, straight toward every outcast she sheltered. "We can't just wait for the reader," Mara said. She stood at the workroom shelf, one finger on the small blue crystal box. Its carved surface still held a faint red stain from the last false name. "If nothing new leaves this drawer, they come hunting." Saraphillia understood. "Then we don't stop the flow. We feed it." She took a blank slip and wrote a name that belonged to no one. Beneath it she wrote a place: the far gully, the decoy ground below the ridge. She pressed the slip against the box. The fluid stayed clear. A clean lie, unspoken to anyone yet. She slid it into the drawer among the true names. "The spy copies it," Saraphillia said. "He sells it. The handler sends scouts to the gully, not the fortress." Mara's mouth tightened. "And when the scouts arrive?" "They find nothing they can hold." Saraphillia looked to the window. In the dark hills, a faint shimmer of wings crossed the glass. The invisible fairy circled the slopes, unseen by any Guild eye. "The fairy leads them in circles. They chase a name that lives nowhere." They waited two nights. On the third morning, Mara returned with mud on her boots and news from the trade road. "The handler took the bait. He sent three scouts to the gully." She dropped a folded slip on the table. "One of ours found this dropped on the mountain route. Our reader's hand. He copied your false name and passed it on." Saraphillia held the slip to the box. The fluid clouded red at once. The name had been spoken to the Guild. Her false trail worked. The flow had not stopped. The handler still believed his spy walked free inside her walls. But the box showed her more. Beside the false name, the reader had scrawled a second line in the same cramped hand. A real trader's name. One still sheltering below. Saraphillia set the slip down. Her chest went cold. The spy had not only taken her bait. He had added a true name of his own, and sent it out before she could stop him. "The gully buys us time," she said. "But he sold a real one too. That trader is marked now." Mara pulled her hood up. "Then we move him tonight, same as the last." Saraphillia closed the drawer. The handler was fooled, and the scouts chased empty ground. Yet the reader had proven bolder than she guessed. She had kept the flow alive. Now she had to reach a marked trader before the Guild did.