Tyrek Gnawer's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The sergeant was dead, but the palace was awake. By dawn the missing guard would be reported. Bailey had seen the sealed paper in Tyrek's hand. Tyrek could not keep working from the palace. His ledger, his blade, his forged seals—all of it sat in a room the King could search. He needed a base no soldier would find, and he needed it now. He left before light. He carried the ledger under his coat and rode into the swamp until the water swallowed the road. Deep among the trees, he found a cypress so wide six men could not ring it. Its lower branches held an old hunter's platform, half rotted. Tyrek climbed it and looked down. No path led here. No boot had pressed this mud in years. He decided. He would build his shelter high in this tree, where no soldier could reach without being seen. He worked three days. He hauled planks by rope, nailed a floor, raised walls and a roof. He built a ladder that could be pulled up behind him. Inside he set a shelf for the ledger and a bundle of willow bark and cloth, so he could bind his own wounds after the roads. On the third night he heard a low growl below. A swamp cat crouched at the tree's base, lean and striped like a small tiger. It had been eating his scraps for two nights. Tyrek left a strip of meat on the bottom rung and waited. The cat took it. By morning it slept on the platform. It lifted its head at every far sound. A watcher, Tyrek thought. It would warn him when strangers came. He thought he was safe. Then, on the fourth day, a voice called his name from the water below. Nessa Keld stood in a mud-stained coat, a burn scar shaped like a crown across her forehead. She had cleaned the plague house for the rebellion. She had cleaned it the very day Tyrek killed the sergeant there. His stomach dropped. She had followed his trail through the swamp. "I found blood on the beam," she said. "And this." She held up a scrap of red wax with a broken royal seal. "I know what you did. The King's men are asking who took the sergeant." Tyrek's hand went to his knife. Nessa saw it and did not step back. "I'm not here to turn you in," she said. Her voice shook, but her eyes held his. "They killed my family too. I've watched you for months, Tyrek. Let me help." He lowered the ladder. She climbed. Inside, he opened the ledger and turned it toward her. Forty names. Nessa read them slowly, then set the broken seal on the shelf beside the book and said, “Guess I’m here for clean up then.” "No one knows this place," Tyrek said. "Now two of us do." He had a base at last. He also had a partner who knew his secret—and could destroy him if she chose.