Read Chapter 8: A Favor for a Favor

The marsh water had gone cold around their ankles by the time Eleanor finally stopped. She pointed at a sagging timber cottage half-hidden behind a screen of alders, its chimney leaking a thin ribbon of smoke.

“Safe house,” she said. “Belongs to a woman who owes me. We can dry off, eat, and talk.”

Jack followed her through the mud, his boots squelching with every step. The cottage door opened before Eleanor could knock—a wiry old woman with a face like crumpled paper took one look at Jack, then at Eleanor, and stepped aside without a word.

Inside, a fire crackled in a stone hearth. The old woman ladled broth into two chipped bowls and vanished into a back room without asking questions. Jack drank his too fast, burning his tongue, and didn't care.

Eleanor sat across from him, elbows on the scarred wooden table. Her eyes hadn't left him since they crossed the threshold.

“You’ve got something,” she said. “Something that makes you twitchy. I’ve been on the run long enough to know the look.”

Jack set the bowl down. His father’s map sat folded in his inner coat pocket, pressed against his ribs like a second heartbeat. The locket hung on a chain around his neck, hidden beneath his shirt.

“Everyone’s got something,” he said.

“Fair enough.” Eleanor leaned back. “Then let me offer you a trade. Shelter tonight. Food. And information about the Stoketon valley—the real information, not the gossip that floats through hiring halls. In exchange, you help me with a small job.”

“What kind of job?”

“There’s a survey crew camped six miles north of here. They work for a man named Colbeck—a rival of the lord who owns the valley. Colbeck’s been sniffing around the same land, and his surveyors have equipment that could map the whole region in a week instead of a month.”

Jack’s pulse quickened. He knew the kind of equipment she meant. Theodolites, levels, chains—precision instruments that cost more than a working man made in a year.

“You want me to steal surveying tools.”

“I want to borrow them,” Eleanor said with a thin smile. “Long enough to copy their maps and notes. Colbeck has files on the valley’s mineral rights, water tables, old claim disputes. The kind of dirt that makes a land deal stink. I need what’s in those files, Jack.”

“And what do you plan to do with it?”

Her smile faded. A hardness crept into her eyes that reminded him of the way his own reflection looked after a long night of drinking bad ale and thinking worse thoughts.

“I plan to make sure the man who owns that valley doesn’t get away with what he’s planning,” she said. “You want information? This is how I pay for it.”

Jack stared at the fire. The flames danced and writhed, and in them he saw his father’s face, the one from the faded daguerreotype that had hung in their cottage—a stern man with tired eyes who had died before Jack ever understood what he was fighting for.

“All right,” Jack said. “One job. Then you tell me everything you know about the valley.”

They moved at midnight, when the moon was thin and the stars offered just enough light to see by. Eleanor led him along a drainage ditch that ran parallel to the survey camp, their bodies low, their breathing shallow.

The camp was small—three canvas tents, a cookfire that had burned down to orange embers, and a covered wagon where the equipment was stored. One guard sat near the wagon, rifle across his knees, chin bobbing as he fought sleep.

“He’ll be out in ten minutes,” Eleanor whispered. “The night watchman always nods off around half past midnight. Drinks too much rum with his supper.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“I’ve watched this camp for three days,” she said. “I know their habits better than they do.”

They waited in the shadows until the guard’s head drooped fully forward, a soft snore rising from his throat. Eleanor moved first, silent as a cat, and Jack followed. They reached the wagon together, and she slid the canvas flap aside.

Inside, the theodolite gleamed in its brass case. Leather-bound ledgers sat stacked beside it. Jack reached for the ledgers, his fingers closing around the cool leather—

The lantern flared to life.

“Well, well,” a voice drawled from the darkness. “Look what we caught skulking around.”

Jack froze. He knew that voice. Knew it from a dozen humiliations, from a foreman’s whip crack and a mocking laugh that had followed him out of the first job he’d ever lost.

Sturgis stepped into the lantern light, a pistol in his hand and a smirk on his face. The same Sturgis who had overseen the yard where Jack’s father had died. The same Sturgis who had stolen his father’s pocket watch years ago, when Jack was too young and too weak to stop him.

“Spanner Mullins,” Sturgis said, savoring the name. “I thought you’d crawled off to die somewhere. But here you are, stealing from Colbeck’s crew.” He shook his head. “You always were a dumb bastard. Just like your old man.”

Something went red at the edges of Jack’s vision.

“What’re you doing here?” Jack’s voice came out rough. “You worked the Stoketon yard. You were Ashworth’s man.”

“I go where the money is,” Sturgis said. “Colbeck pays better. And when I bring him a wanted thief, maybe he pays better still.”

The gun swung toward Eleanor. “You too, girl. I don’t know who you are, but you’re coming with us.”

Jack’s hand moved before his mind caught up. He grabbed the theodolite’s tripod leg—solid brass, heavy as sin—and swung it in a wide arc. The metal connected with Sturgis’s wrist. The pistol fired, the shot going wide into the marsh. Sturgis howled and dropped the weapon.

Jack followed through, bringing the tripod down across Sturgis’s skull with a sickening crunch. The foreman crumpled to the ground and lay still.

Eleanor stood frozen, eyes wide. “We have to go. That shot will wake the whole camp.”

Jack knelt beside Sturgis, his hands shaking. He reached into the foreman’s coat pocket and found what he was looking for. The pocket watch felt familiar in his palm—worn smooth from decades of handling, engraved with his father’s initials on the back.

J.M.

Joseph Mullins.

Jack closed his fingers around it, feeling the weight of it, the impossible return of something he had thought gone forever.

Eleanor tugged his arm. “Jack. Now.”

They ran. The camp erupted behind them as men stumbled out of tents, shouting. A second shot rang out, but it was wild, going nowhere near them. Jack and Eleanor plunged into the marsh, splashing through black water until the voices faded to nothing.

They didn’t stop running until dawn, when the sky turned grey and the marsh gave way to solid ground. Jack collapsed against an oak tree, gasping, and pulled the watch from his pocket.

“That was you father’s,” Eleanor said, not a question.

Jack nodded, unable to speak. He pressed the catch, and the case sprang open. Inside, beyond the clock face, a slip of paper had been folded into the lid. Jack pulled it out.

It was a receipt. Dated twelve years ago. For the sale of survey documents, mineral rights, and land claims for the Stoketon valley. Signed by Joseph Mullins.

And beneath his father’s signature, in a bold and familiar hand: *Lord Ashworth.*

“Eleanor,” Jack said slowly, looking up at her. “Who exactly owns the Stoketon valley?”

Her face went pale. “The man who took everything from me,” she said. “Lord Ashworth.”

For a long moment, they stood in silence, the receipt between them like a bridge. Jack’s father had sold his work to Ashworth—not been robbed of it. Or he had been forced to sell, at the point of ruin. Either way, the document proved a connection deeper than Jack had ever imagined.

“I think,” Jack said, “we’re after the same man.”