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Chapter 3: The Girl
Part 3
“What about it?” asked Frix.
“Why a bridge? Huh?" she said. "You Falsesparkers make your habit in liberating little prizes. Furniture, pets, tools. Whenever you render and ruin our…” her face screwed up for a minute, and when she regained her composure that softness in her eyes was nowhere to be found. “Whenever you ruin something, it’s a distraction, a feathery sound before the real drumbeat. But a bridge? That far out of town? Had to be more to it. Had to.”
“Good guess, I guess,” Frix said, unsure of what else to say. She had echoed his very own theory.
“Why? Huh? We keep away from your camps,” she said. “We’re peaceful, we live silent and simple under the Torch, carve and whittle and raise saplings. Why?”
There was a good answer. These witches murdered trees! Forget innocent whittling. They infected everything natural. They had built their towns on the ground where his ancestors had first found the sacred bonds between seed, root and spark. But was he going to sit here and have a little history session with this witch? He could practically hear Mossalea groaning.
His shortsharp glinted as some cloud-filtered sunlight found the polished blade. One thrust to the back of the skull or base of the chin would do it, like any game animal. And he’d get to claim a Witchslayer title. Take a trophy. So why wasn’t he feeling excited about it? Cowardice was not in the blood of a Seedwind.
“Please don’t do it, please,” she said, watching the weapon.
“I’m sorry,” said Frix. He meant it.
“I have a little brother, okay? Turner… and an even littler sister and they don’t know how to take care of each other or them… them…”
Frix imagined his own little brother, Callum, and buried the thought. Sometimes he wished he could be more like Dreff; this would have been over and done with long ago if it were him standing here.
“It won’t hurt.” He moved in—trying to visualize a bog hog caught in a snare. Training would take care of this.
“The town knows!” she said, shrinking down. “They know you’re here already!”
He paused. “What?”
“They know. Already. S-s-so what good is rendering me?”
“Liar, how would they know?”
She actually laughed, a strange, wonderful sound in this little bubble of death and duty he’d constructed. She touched her chest on the left side. “Our words don’t always carry on the wings of the wind. I warned my kin when I sensed your three be-leathered and belted friends whisper past. Then I came further along to see if there were more. Only you, it seems. My luck.”
“You’re lying.”
“Maybe, maybe. What do you know about how we communicate? If I’m not lying, well, I hope you’re not expecting mercy upon apprehension. The Wardensquads out of Pinedeck have been wanting to catch a crop of red-handed Falsesparkers for a while now.”
He had to think quick. By now Mossa and the brothers could well be out of range of his hornrat call, loud as it was. He could stab this witch, and go on, but if she was telling the truth they’d be done for. He could stab her and call the mission off, but then they’d never really know and he would never live it down. Forget the bole-marshal dressing him down—the triadic Heads themselves would demand he explain how a junior Seedwind figured it was his decision to abort a raid. Especially a raid like this one.
Bad choices, all around. Unless…
“I’ll make you a deal then,” he said.
“Bargaining or barter, is it? I am very much open to trade. Seller’s market!” She attempted a smile, but her lip still trembled.
“You’re right, I don’t want to see my friends walk into a trap. And… I don’t honestly want to… you know,” he wiggled the sharp. With a sinking heart, he knew this was actually true, and he hoped it lent some honesty to his ploy.
She blinked and bit her lip.
“Our mission today was reconnaissance,” continued Frix. “There’s a much larger force gathered north of your town.”
“What?” she said, “why?”
“They’re going to take it for themselves.”
“For themselves…? I don’t… what else do we have that you could possibly—”
“It’s your tree slabs,” he invented, remembering the dead, flat nature of the bridge. “We need a better way to fend off the weather. Tents are falling out of fashion with leadership. We’re to see how a different structure works.”
It was ridiculous of course. He’d be flogged for heresy for saying such things in the presence of the Heads or anyone who represented them. She may have sensed it too. Her brows knotted and she stopped cowering.
He went on, talking fast. “The Seedwind, I mean my friends, we’re to signal to the battalion whether to do it or not. But if my friends walk into your trap, then there will be no signal. And the plan is to attack, unless we signal not to do it. The order is to slay any active resistance. All else, permanent prisoners. Children non-exempt, my people take little chance with bloodlight.”
“Then, then you have to tell them there’s a trap, and they’ll cry off,” she said.
“No. No, you don’t know the person who leads my friends. She wants blood, and she won’t believe there’s any trap. She won’t listen to me.”
The girl was breathing hard again, looking from side to side. Frix sheathed his weapon, and knelt close to her. “Look, I never thought the attack was a good idea. I didn’t even think the bridge was necessary and it almost got you killed there too, right?”
“Tell me the deal, what’s your deal?”
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