The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: Ward

"Mardell blood can't set a ward," I said. "Can it?"

"Anyone can cut the marks. Warden blood makes them strong." Conall pulled his knife. "Somebody taught a Mardell the marks."

"Who teaches a Mardell anything?"

"The wardens they caught, two generations back." He didn't look at me. "Before they killed them."

He cut his own thumb, pressed it over the hook of the mark, and scraped the whole thing out of the wood in three strokes.

The air over the step went flat and ordinary.

I stood up and put my foot on the threshold.

Nothing.

Then I knelt and put my palm on the bare stone of the step.

The post sat right on the Line. The ground here wasn't salted. It talked.

"Boots," I said. "Narrow. Heeled. A woman, tall, light on her feet. She stood here maybe an hour ago while we were on the roof."

"You can feel the heel?"

"I've cleaned up after those heels at four feasts." I wiped my hand on my dress. "I know exactly whose they are."

Conall didn't argue.

He slept across the doorway that night with his coat over him.

The Ward round was two days later, on the flat ground below the big stones.

Each of us got a square marked with stakes and string.

"Ward it," the old man said. "At sundown we walk in. If we can walk into your square without feeling it, you fail."

"How hard should it sting?" the boy with the hole in his heel asked.

The honey elder smiled at him.

"Hard enough that I don't come in, sweetheart."

Conall had spent two evenings teaching me the marks at the post.

Three lines and a hook for keep out. A circle cut through for warning. A long stroke and two dots for remember.

"You don't draw them," he'd said, his hand over mine on the knife. "You mean them. The blood carries what you mean."

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