Saraphillia's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The marked trader reached safety before dawn. Saraphillia thought the worst had passed. Then Marigold climbed the mountain path at midday, mud to her knees, breathing hard. She ran the village near the cliffs, and she never left it in daylight. Her face said the trouble was new. "The handler changed tactics," Marigold said. She did not sit. "He stopped chasing names. Now he pays my neighbors coin for a face. Red hair that glows. Anyone who sees it, he wants told." She looked straight at Saraphillia's bright curls. "You leave this mountain, someone points, and he has you." Saraphillia went cold. Deception had always hidden her network. But she could not hide her own hair from a paid crowd. "He wants me to stop moving," she said. "If I can't leave, I can't reach the ones who need shelter." Marigold pulled a small charm from her pocket and set it on the table. Silver metal, carved with cold patterns. "A Guild trinket. Their own make. It draws their eyes and turns traders away." She met Saraphillia's gaze. "I say we use their tool against them. Give him a red-haired woman to catch. Just not you." Saraphillia understood at once. She had a twin. People mixed them up their whole lives. But she would not send her sister into a trap. "No decoy of flesh," she said. "I have another." That night they walked to the far gully. Saraphillia carried the Guild charm and one of her glowing foxes, its fur bright with pale light. She fixed the silver charm to a low branch. Its patterns caught the moonlight and pulled the eye toward the hollow. Then she whispered to the fox. It shook itself and shifted, curls of red light rising along its back until, from a distance, it looked like a woman with burning hair walking the gully floor. High above, the invisible fairy circled. Saraphillia raised her hand. The fairy dipped low and spread a false scent across the slope, the smell of a traveler on foot. Now the trap held sound, sight, and scent. A handler chasing red hair would find red hair here, in a place that led nowhere. "He pays for a face," Marigold said, watching the fox glow below. "We give him one. Cheap." They waited in the rocks. Near dawn a rider came, lantern high, three villagers trailing him for coin. One pointed down at the glowing shape. The handler spurred his horse into the gully. The fox led him in circles. The fairy's scent doubled back on itself. By the time gray light filled the sky, the rider sat still, jaw tight. He tore the silver charm from the branch, cursed, and rode down the mountain. Marigold let out a slow breath. "He'll report the gully as his catch." Saraphillia nodded. The bounty on her face was spent on empty ground. But the villagers had seen the handler pay. Now half the cliffs knew a price waited for glowing red hair. Her twin had that same hair. And her twin still slept below, unwarned.