Valeria's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The city swallowed Valeria by midday. She moved through the market crowd with the folded page pressed against her palm. She found the stall on the third row, a woman bent over a tray of small knives. Valeria stepped close, hand drifting to her hip. Then the woman looked up. Valeria stopped. The face was one she knew. The face stopped her cold before any blade could leave its sheath. The trading post sat low and warm behind the woman, a covered porch hung with lanterns, rustic counters stacked with bottles and small carved boxes. Out front, a heaped display rose taller than the merchant herself — silk coats, polished boots, gold chains spilling from open purses. The merchant straightened. Black curls fell past her shoulders. Her eyes were gold, sharp, steady. Valeria knew those eyes. They were her mother's eyes. They were the eyes from the locket pressed against her own chest. Valeria's hand fell away from her hip. The shaking she had stilled on the road came back, hard, into her fingers. The merchant set down the small knife she had been polishing. She looked at Valeria for a long moment, taking in the dark clothes, the dust, the folded page. "You found me," she said. Her voice was quiet. "Sooner than I hoped. Later than I feared." She did not reach for a weapon. She reached, instead, for the chain at her throat, and lifted a locket twin to the one Valeria carried. Valeria did not draw. She could not. The name on the page was not the merchant who had sold her family. The name on the page was kin. The hunt she had been paid to finish was a hunt aimed at her own blood. She stepped back into the crowd, page crushed in her fist, the merchant's gold eyes following her. Somewhere behind her on the road, a wounded man was still walking. And now Valeria knew — the hand that had hired her had known this all along.