Chapter 4: The Plate

Colt laughed first.

It was a short, bright laugh, and it was meant to tell the circle this was a joke.

"A price?" he said.

"Darlin', I was being polite."

"Your hand was under my jacket," I said.

"Forty people saw where it was."

Nobody laughed with him this time.

Ramiro came around the fire with his hands open at his sides, slow and unhurried, and the families moved back to let him through.

He stopped between the bench and the flames.

He was the Warden, and when he stood at a fire the fire was his.

"The law of the fire," Ramiro said, to the whole circle, in a voice that carried without being raised.

"A guest who is touched without leave may name a price," Ramiro said.

"The Warden hears it, and the host abides it."

"That law is older than any of us."

"Warden," Colt said, "this is my daddy's fire."

"It is the Rim's fire," Ramiro said.

"I keep it, and I have heard a guest."

He turned to me.

"Miss Salcido, name your price."

My mouth was dry.

In the first life, I had stared at my plate.

In this one, six families were watching me, and one of them was my father, and I was more afraid than I had ever been.

I said it anyway.

"He eats his supper on the ground, outside the firelight, with the dogs," I said.

"At every fire the Kimbroughs host, until the Count."

A noise went through the circle, half a gasp and half something else.

Someone near the back coughed to hide a laugh.

Colt stood so fast that the bench tipped.

"You don't get to," he began.

"A guest names the price, Colt," Ramiro said.

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