Cherriese's Arc

Chapter 4 of 13

By the third night Cherriese knew she could not hold the valley alone. She had walked the ridge twice between dusk and dawn, checked the obelisk, checked the beacon dome, and slept in pieces against the cold stone. Her hands shook when she lit her lantern. The first families were days out, maybe less, and whoever planted the false marker would plant another. One pair of eyes was not enough. She needed a second guardian before the first exile reached the gate, and she needed one she could trust without a contract. She came down the ridge at dawn and watched the north road from cover. A lone fairy was walking it, limping, one wing bound flat against her back with strips of bark. She carried nothing but a water skin and a short knife. Cherriese stepped out and offered bread. The stranger split the loaf in half and handed the larger piece back. Then she pointed at Cherriese's torn sleeve, sat down in the dirt, and started tearing her own cloak into bandages. She had been walking two days. She had not asked Cherriese's name. She was binding a stranger's arm with the cloth off her own back. Cherriese took her up the slope and showed her the valley. She did not promise safety. She said the work was watching, and the price was that no one outside the grove could ever buy her silence. The stranger asked one question — where to stand — and Cherriese answered by climbing to the far ridge above the western gully. There they spent the morning raising a tall watch post of pale crystal stone, narrow at the base, wide at the crown, with a railed platform that looked down on both gullies and the north road at once. From that platform a single guard could see a false marker go in the ground before the dirt was tamped. They came back down before dark and cleared a flat patch near the obelisk for the second build. Cherriese laid the floor stones herself. Together they raised a low round lodge with curved walls and broad glass panels, bright enough inside to work by at any hour. They set one table in the center and two chairs. On the table Cherriese drew the valley in chalk: the gate, the beacon, the new spire, the two gullies, the north road. She marked which watch each of them would take and when. The stranger added a mark Cherriese had not thought of — a runner route between the spire and the lodge, in case the beacon failed. Cherriese slept through the night for the first time since the obelisk went up. The valley was still hers to lose. But the watch was doubled, the lodge had two chairs at its table, and the next false marker would be seen before it caught anyone. In the morning the first family would come, and she would not meet them alone.