Chapter 103: THE WATCHER

A smear of damp grit marked the floor where Mara had come down the stairs. The warning slips sat beside Fern’s wrist, ready to leave Safe Node Seven, but no one reached for them.

"How long has the watcher been there?" Angle asked.

"Long enough for the upper watch to see them settle behind the ridge. They haven’t approached the entrance." Mara rubbed the grit from her fingers. "They may have followed your trail. They may be waiting for someone on the road."

Sio looked at the paper sleeves. A few minutes ago, the compromised routes had been damaged entries in an Index. Now each sleeve represented people who might keep using a road that had already been searched. "We can’t send the courier straight past them."

"And we aren’t going to show them where the courier came from," Mara said. She pointed toward an old maintenance ledge above the terraces. "Three people can reach an overlook without crossing the supply path. I’ll hold the internal door with Caspian. Fern stays with the cache."

Rhea flexed her bandaged hand, then tucked it inside her sleeve. "I’ll go."

Angle stood beside her. "Me too."

Mara looked at Sio. "If they run, let them run away from us. Whatever you learn, don’t lead them to the node."

The ledge ran beneath a shelf of rock slick with seepage. Sio kept his shoulder close to the wall while Gumm clung between his collar and neck. Below them, the terraces stepped down into scrub and loose shale. A pale track curved across the hillside, then vanished behind two boulders.

At a broken section of guardrail, Angle lifted a loose iron crossbar from its brackets. He turned it once in his hands, testing the weight, before following Rhea along the ledge.

She stopped beside an opening in the rock. Wind scraped dry grass against stone, covering most of the sounds from the road. Then came a faint metallic click. Rhea tilted an ear toward a low ridge on the opposite slope.

"There. Something being adjusted."

Sio found a dark patch behind a waist-high screen of stones. A gloved hand lifted a narrow viewing instrument; its lens flashed briefly before the figure lowered it toward the supply road.

"Road, not terraces," Angle whispered. "They might not have found the shelter."

"Might," Sio said. His portals were recognizable enough that showing them to a stranger could give away more than his face. But if the watcher followed the road to the entrance, hiding his ability would matter very little.

Rhea studied a narrow cut behind the ridge. "The cut leads away from us. If they retreat that way, we can stop them before they reach the high ground."

Angle checked the crossbar against his palm. "No sunlight. No explosions. We get an answer and leave."

"Wasn’t planning a celebration," Sio murmured. He edged toward a stone outcrop overlooking the track while the other two moved toward the cut.

From behind cover he opened a small portal beside his fingertips, with its far opening a handspan above gravel downhill from the watcher. He dropped a pebble through it. The stone struck with a sharp clack. As the watcher turned the instrument toward the sound, Sio closed both openings.

The figure rose in a crouch. One hand reached to a pouch at the waist and came out holding a flat metal plate with a cord attached. Rhea stepped into the cut before the watcher could use it. The figure jerked back and flung the plate toward her.

Angle knocked it aside with the crossbar. The plate shattered against stone, scattering silver powder that glittered briefly in the wind. A bitter chemical smell reached Sio. Rhea pulled her sleeve over her mouth and moved clear of the drifting cloud.

"Stay off the gravel," she warned. "We don’t know what that does."

The watcher scrambled along the ridge’s outer lip. Sio placed a new portal low across the next foothold, its exit opening onto the downhill gravel several paces away. The man’s leading boot went through, landed on the sloping surface below, and jerked his balance out from under him while his other foot remained above. Rhea caught his coat with her uninjured hand before he could tumble over the edge.

They fell against the rocks together. Angle pinned the loose hem of the man’s coat beneath the crossbar, and Sio shut the portal. Gumm slid halfway down Sio’s shoulder, trying to see what had happened.

"Stay up here," Sio told him, catching one of his small limbs.

The watcher stopped fighting. Under the hood was a young man with cracked lips, a healing cut over one eyebrow and a broken cuff biting into his wrist. His eyes moved from Rhea’s ears to Angle’s red scarf. Sio couldn’t tell whether either had been recognized.

"Who sent you?" Rhea asked. Her bandaged hand stayed away from the man’s coat.

"No one." He looked toward the spilled powder. "I only wanted to know if the road was watched."

"Well, you’ve established that," Sio said. "What’s the plate?"

"Tracking powder. It shows disturbed ground through that lens." The man jerked his chin toward the discarded instrument. "I threw it because I thought you were taking me back."

"Back where?" Angle asked, easing the bar enough for him to sit upright.

The man’s mouth closed. He turned his cuff inward, but Sio had already seen the sharp cut where someone had forced it open.

"Were you in the separated prisoner cars on the Arcline?" Sio asked.

The man looked up quickly. "The rear branch. The gates cut us off from the rest when the line broke. A carriage hit the wall beyond an old junction. Some of us found a service drain after the collision." He swallowed. "People were still behind the locked partitions when we left."

Sio thought of the doors they hadn’t reached during the escape. The prisoner branch had not returned to the main route; he’d known that, and still hated hearing how many ways people could have been stranded there.

"Where did you get the equipment?" Rhea asked.

"A maintenance locker beside the drain. The lens, the powder, everything. I couldn’t read the route signs. I thought it might help me follow footprints." The man glanced downhill. "Three of us got out together. We followed a drainage channel until it opened near the hills. One was hurt badly, but could hobble if the other helped. I came up to see whether the road was safe."

"What happened to them?" Sio asked.

"They were meant to wait under a fallen tree by the washout. When I went back, they were gone." His voice roughened. "There were tracks going toward this road. I thought they’d found somewhere to hide."

The wind shifted, carrying another ribbon of powder toward the supply path. Angle caught Rhea’s attention and pointed to where it settled across the gravel. Under the abandoned lens it would be possible to read any steps through that patch.

"We need Mara to close this approach," Angle said. "Even if he’s telling the truth, anyone with another lens could follow whoever crosses it."

Sio glanced toward the hidden ledge. They would have to warn Mara before anyone used the route, but the missing prisoners might still be nearby. He picked up the man’s viewing instrument and tucked it inside his coat.

"We’ll tell her. Nobody crosses that powder until we do."

A low grinding sound came from the washout, followed by a smaller scrape of stone against stone. The man flinched so hard that Rhea caught his shoulder.

"My friends couldn’t shift a rock that size," he said. "Not with one of them injured."

Angle stepped between the man and the sound, crossbar ready. "Which way is the tree?"

The man pointed toward a bend in the drainage channel, where tangled roots hung over a strip of muddy ground. Sio could see a shallow pool reflecting the gray sky, but the channel beyond it lay in shadow.

They moved only as far as the ridge’s lower shelf. From there, Rhea could examine the mud without entering the channel. Sio kept the stranger beside him, watching the man’s boots as they passed over a patch of soft clay. One heel had a long split across the tread. Its mark was unmistakable.

Rhea crouched beside the slope and brushed aside a leaf. "Your prints go down and come back along the outer edge," she told the stranger. "That split heel is yours."

He leaned forward despite Angle’s hand against his shoulder. "Then did they go this way?"

Rhea pointed lower in the channel. Two narrower sets of prints led away from the fallen tree. One dragged at the toe and sank unevenly, while the other repeatedly turned toward it, as though its owner had been supporting someone. Sio followed their direction until the mud disappeared beneath dark stones.

A third set entered the channel from farther downhill. Its broad tread sank deeper, leaving square heels and sharp ridges that didn’t match the stranger’s boots. The prints approached the fallen tree, crossing over the narrower tracks in the mud. Another line of the same square impressions led back uphill, their toes pointing toward the ridge.

Rhea examined the overlapping marks, then followed the returning prints with her eyes. The edges were still wet, but the tracks disappeared among the rocks before reaching the upper path.

"Someone came down here after your friends," she whispered. "Then went back uphill."

The stranger stared at the dark gap beneath the roots. "Did they take them?"

Rhea didn’t answer. Her ears had turned toward the fallen tree, where another rock scraped slowly against something solid.

Gumm tightened around Sio’s shoulders. Angle adjusted his grip on the crossbar as a few grains of dirt trickled from the roots into the shallow pool.

Rhea kept her eyes on the opening beneath the tree.

"Those tracks aren’t yours," she whispered to the stranger. "And whoever left them might still be nearby."

Another scrape sounded from beneath the roots, closer this time.

"But something else is still down there."