Chapter Eleven Taken Evidence #4
Davra looked wounded, which was a performance so precise Willa almost admired the craftsmanship.
Then someone shouted from the east edge of Northroad.
“Pike Hollow riders!”
Willa turned.
Three boys ran from the wagon line, one missing a tooth.
The hungry boy Mara had described.
“Pike Hollow took a packet!” he yelled. “They stopped a trader on Bluebank road!”
The market shifted.
Too fast.
Ready.
Planted.
Willa’s stomach dropped.
At the same time, a horn sounded from the north ridge.
Not Red Creek.
Not Pike.
Brann.
Wrong place.
Wrong direction.
Noll’s head snapped up.
Hessa swore.
Torren moved toward Willa.
Not in front.
Toward.
Then the crowd at the east wagons split and a rider staggered into view.
Dark coat.
Mud to the waist.
Blood at the shoulder.
Jory.
For one second, Willa could not make sense of him.
He was supposed to be on the charcoal path.
He was supposed to be hidden.
He was supposed to be successful somewhere safe enough not to be seen.
He stumbled forward and held up an empty hand.
“Taken,” he gasped.
Hessa was already moving.
Noll too.
“The packet?” Willa asked.
Jory’s eyes found hers.
“They took the false one.”
The market roared.
Hessa stopped dead.
Willa stared.
Jory swayed, bleeding and grinning like an idiot touched by divine stupidity.
“I hid the real one.”
Then he collapsed into Noll’s arms.
Chaos broke open.
Stonewatch men surged from the shrine wall.
Frostmere riders shouted for order.
Kalen yelled that Pike Hollow had staged an attack on its own messenger.
Oren dragged Marek backward.
Davra looked toward the east wagons, and for one heartbeat Willa saw it.
Alarm.
Not at Jory’s blood.
At the false packet.
Because someone had taken bait.
Torren reached Willa’s side.
“With me.”
Not command.
Not fear.
Position.
She took his hand.
“Beside.”
The mark blazed.
Noll lifted Jory like he weighed nothing, but Jory’s eyes fluttered open.
“Hessa,” he slurred.
Hessa bent over him, face white with fury.
“Do not die before I decide whether you were useful.”
Jory’s mouth twitched.
“Recorded?”
Orla, who had somehow kept hold of her writing board through the eruption, said, “Recorded.”
Jory smiled.
Then fainted properly.
From the shrine wall, the limping Stonewatch man began to run.
Left leg awkward.
Burned.
False Jory.
Willa saw him.
So did Torren.
So did Noll, trapped with Jory in his arms.
The man cut toward the east wagons, where two riders waited with a gray satchel.
The stolen false packet.
Willa moved before thinking.
Not toward him.
Toward Mara’s spoon table.
Torren’s hand tightened, then released.
He understood after half a breath.
Not chase.
Cut off.
Willa grabbed the damaged crossbow-bolt spoon board from beneath Mara’s awning, the heavy one with its cracked brace, and swung it into the path between the wagons just as the limping man rounded the wheel.
He saw her too late.
He crashed into the board with his bad leg first.
The sound he made was extremely satisfying.
Willa lost her grip and went down hard in the mud.
The satchel flew.
Mara Tebb, gods bless every spoon-selling inch of her, brought a cast-iron pan down on the man’s wrist before he could grab for a knife.
“That,” Mara said, “is for ruining trade.”
Torren arrived an instant later.
Not with claws.
Not with teeth.
With one knee between the man’s shoulders and a knife at the precise place under his jaw where movement became foolish.
“Alive,” Willa said from the mud.
Torren’s eyes flicked to hers.
“Yes.”
The mark roared with what it cost him.
But the knife did not move.
Hessa’s voice cut through the chaos from behind.
“Witnesses!”
Orla shouted, “Red Creek witnesses the capture alive!”
Selka, pale but sharp, pointed toward the fallen satchel.
“The packet! Do not let Frostmere touch it!”
Anis dove for it like a woman who had learned buckets and evidence were both weapons. She seized the satchel and rolled under Mara’s wagon as a Stonewatch rider reached for her.
Noll, still holding Jory, kicked the rider’s knee sideways with such calm efficiency that Willa would have admired it more if she were not covered in mud.
The market was still shouting.
But the shape had changed.
The false Jory lay alive under Torren’s knife.
The false packet was in Anis’s hands.
Jory, bleeding and unconscious, had said enough.
Marek had failed.
But not everyone had.
Willa pushed herself up, mud dripping from her sleeves, heart hammering, mark blazing.
Across the road, Varric Stone stepped out from behind the shrine wall.
Of course.
Gray cloak unspattered. Expression grave. Hands empty.
He looked at the captured man, then at Willa in the mud, then at Torren’s knife.
“This,” Varric said, voice carrying beautifully over the chaos, “is exactly why the north needs order on its roads.”
Torren smiled down at the man under his blade.
Willa stood, muddy and shaking.
Hessa held Jory’s limp hand.
Selka watched Marek being pulled back by his father.
Northroad held its breath.
And Willa understood then that the stolen evidence had not been the trap.
It had been the invitation.
Varric had finally stepped onto the road in daylight.