Stephanie Williams's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

The huts fed her, but they broke her back. Stephanie could not keep the count alone. She walked a traveler in at night, drained him, and hid him before dawn. Then she had to bar the doors, calm the day guests, and vanish before the sun climbed. She could not feed and hide in the same hours. When she slept the operation stalled. She needed someone who could work the huts by day while she rested underground. Someone loyal. Someone who would not talk. She rode to the timber inn to find help. The stablehand met her at the door of the barn, boots caked with mud. Vera Bole was her sire's watcher, placed here to report on this ground. Stephanie had spared her once. Now Vera leaned on a stall, and the horses inside stood silent, refusing their feed. "I need a keeper for the huts," Stephanie said. "Someone who stays through the day." Vera grinned her gap-toothed grin. Her laugh came a half-second late. "Not me." "I know." "There's a man past the ridge," Vera said. "Runs cabins where the road ends. Guests come tired. They leave lighter." She went quiet, then named a flat word. "Careful." Stephanie followed the ridge to the cabins. A man in a sharp suit stood at the door, sorting a dead traveler's belongings into a crate. He did not stop when she came. His eyes were oil-black and did not blink. "You run these," Stephanie said. "I do," Rowan Sylke said. He set a coat in the crate. "Took over when the last keeper left. No one argued." "The guests remember nothing." "They remember the road down." He watched her. "Nothing else." Stephanie saw what she needed. He isolated travelers already. He kept no records. He fed on them by degrees and sent them home hollow. He worked in daylight, when she could not. "My huts run full," she said. "I feed at night. I need them kept by day. You keep them. You take what's left behind. I take the blood." Rowan Sylke thought for a moment. "The count stays quiet?" "Buried where no preacher finds it." "Then it holds." They shook on it. That night she walked a traveler into a hut and fed with no eyes on her. At dawn she did not carry the body out or calm the guests. Rowan did it. She slept underground while the huts ran without her. Her operation no longer broke when she rested. She had a keeper now, loyal to the goods he stripped from the dead. The district could run day and night under her hand. But Rowan kept everything the travelers left. He kept no records for her either. She had handed her ground to a man who answered to nothing but his own crate, and she did not yet know what he took besides coats.