The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: Fire Line

"Tonight," I said.

"Tonight." The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve. "He said it in the hall. Loud. So everyone heard."

Conall stood in the doorway in his blanket and looked out at the Gap.

At the pines below it, black and dry and packed close, all the way down the north slope.

The old ones were gone, sold. These were the young ones, eight years grown, thick as hair.

One spark in those and the fire would come up the slope.

"What do I tell him?" the boy said.

I thought about it.

"Tell him the Warden of Cinder Gap has called the territory council to the stones at the full moon," I said. "He can say his words to me there. In front of everyone."

The boy went white.

"He'll have my ears."

"Then don't go back," I said. "Stay up here. Hettie's at the warden house. She'll feed you until you can't move."

He looked at me.

He looked down the road at the valley.

"Does she still make the honey buns?"

"Every morning."

"I'll stay," he said.

By noon every warden on the Line was at the Gap.

The old man walked the slope below the post with his stick and his eyes half shut.

"The wind comes up the mountain all day," he said. "Uphill. Straight at us. Sundown, it stops. Midnight, it turns and blows back down. It always has."

"So if they light it at dusk," Conall said.

"It comes up at us for six hours."

"And after midnight?"

The old man smiled with half his mouth.

"After midnight, it goes home."

So we had to hold it for six hours.

We cut a line.

Not with blood at first. With axes.

Conall, the gray brothers and the big bald woman felled every young pine in a strip across the slope.

The rest of us dragged the branches downhill.

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