Chapter 139: SALT AND A STORY

The bog-thing fed them for six days.

Aiden had hoped for eight. Cinder alone made that optimistic.

He had cut away the poisoned legs before Miasma's venom could spread through the carcass. The rest went over the fire, into traps as bait, or onto a rack where strips of meat dried beneath the shelter.

The hide was too thick to waste. He scraped it clean and stretched it beside the camp.

On the seventh day, food became a problem again.

Of course it did. Problems here apparently take meal breaks.

Aiden went back to fishing.

"You can glare at the eels all you want. They're not going to become Ember Motes."

Cinder growled at him.

"See? They don't care."

She growled at the eels.

Aiden left before the argument developed further.

He got good enough to keep them fed.

Then the fen reminded him that getting good at something was usually when it became dangerous.

One of his traps had snagged beneath the roots of a cut bank. The line disappeared into water that would reach just past his knees.

Normally, he would have abandoned it.

Normally, he also wouldn't have spent the morning watching Cinder eat the last dried strip of bog-thing.

Aiden stepped into the channel. Cold water climbed his boots.

Nothing moved.

He took another step and reached for the line.

The water stopped flowing past his legs.

He froze.

The channel was still moving behind him. Reeds bent with the current. Bits of dead grass floated past. But the water around his legs had gone still.

No.

Something long passed beneath him.

He never saw the whole body. Just a dark shape under the brown water, longer than he was tall, moving slowly enough that it wasn't frightened of him.

The water tightened around both his calves.

Then pulled.

Aiden Shadow Stepped.

He landed on the bank as the channel snapped shut where he'd been standing. Water crashed together hard enough to throw mud over the reeds.

A dark back rolled once beneath the surface. Then it vanished into the deeper water.

Aiden stayed on the bank, sweating.

His trap was still out there.

The trap can stay out there.

New rule. The swamp has a basement. Stop putting your legs in it for an eel.

He walked back to camp without breakfast.

Nyx met him halfway. She looked at his soaked boots, then past him toward the channel.

"No."

Nyx's eyes curved.

"That wasn't a suggestion."

She followed him back anyway.

By the third week of the Assessment, Aiden could feed the pack without touching his remaining hard rations.

Not well. Not reliably. But enough.

He smoked meat when he had extra, rendered eel fat for his wet leather, and kept working on the bog-thing hide.

At dusk, Seraphine and Vigil still passed the southern boundary. The warrant still hadn't arrived.

The first stranger to visit his camp came by water.

Aiden heard the pole first.

Then the punt appeared, a small flat-bottomed boat sliding between the reeds, narrow enough for one person and a pile of cargo. Dressed eels lay along one side. Bundles wrapped in waxed cloth filled the other.

A long, low beast swam beside the punt. It was about the size of a large dog, with dark green scales, four short legs, and a wide tail that pushed it through the water.

Whenever the boat drifted toward a root or shallow patch, the beast bumped the hull with its shoulder and guided it aside.

The woman at the stern was old, though not as old as the keeper. She had weathered brown skin and short grey hair. Dark oiled leathers covered her from neck to boots. A long knife hung at her hip.

She saw Aiden. A moment later, Nyx rose out of his shadow.

The swimming beast stopped beside the punt and watched Nyx. The woman's hand didn't move toward the knife.

The punt slowed beside his bank.

"You'd be Vell."

"Aiden works."

"Word came down the water that someone took the dead claim."

Aiden looked around his camp. The shelter was patched and dry. Smoke curled from the fire, and muddy tracks crossed the ground from days of living there.

"Still looks alive from here."

"Three weeks doesn't make a dead claim alive."

"That's encouraging."

"It wasn't encouragement."

Aiden liked her immediately.

The woman looked over the camp. Cinder stood beside the shelter, Miasma watched from the reeds, and Nyx stayed at Aiden's feet.

Then she noticed the bog-thing hide stretched on its frame.

"That yours?"

"It objected."

"Bog-things usually do."

She guided the punt closer.

The woman studied the hide for several seconds. One edge still bore the damage from Acid Weave, where the corrosive thread had cut beneath a plate.

Her eyes narrowed.

"What did that?"

"Me."

She looked at Aiden's hands.

"Acid?"

"Yes."

"From a bottle?"

"No."

She looked at him again, this time with more care.

"You're doing better than the last man."

Aiden's smile faded.

"There was a last man?"

"I knew him. Last one who held this ground."

"The registry says nobody's held it in sixty years."

"The registry says many things."

That answer sounded familiar enough to be annoying.

"What happened to him?"

The woman looked toward the eastern water. Only for a moment. Aiden still caught it. Then her eyes came back to him.

"Longer story than a man buys with hello."

"So there's a price."

"Everything useful has one."

That, at least, Aiden understood.

The woman pointed at the hide.

"You're curing that?"

"Trying."

"Finish it clean. Bring it to the cut where four channels meet, three mornings from now."

"What do I get?"

"Salt. Good twine. A curved hide needle if the hide's good enough."

"And the story?"

"If you trade well."

Aiden looked at the eels in her punt.

"Anything else?"

"Knowledge."

"About?"

"Which water gives you dinner and which water thinks you're dinner." She nodded toward the beast beside her boat. "She feels large things moving under the water before I do."

Aiden thought of the current tightening around his legs.

"That would've been useful this morning."

"Then you're learning." The woman pushed her pole into the mud. "Come in three mornings."

"You haven't told me your name."

"No."

The punt slid away from the bank.

Aiden watched her disappear between the reeds.

She hadn't answered what happened to the previous holder. But before refusing, she'd looked toward the deep water.

That was enough for now.

At the eastern edge of camp, Nyx was already staring into the water again.

Aiden looked at her, then at the half-cured hide.

Fine. Three mornings. I can stay out of the basement for three mornings.

Probably.