Rosalind Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

Rosalind followed the tribe down to the fire pit with the burnt journal under her arm. Her second walked ahead, not beside her. That was the first sign. By the time they reached the ring of stones, her second had already taken the speaker's stump, and the tribe had settled in a tight arc around him. He had run the pit meetings for sixty years. He knew where to stand so the smoke pushed the crowd toward him and away from anyone across the fire. He opened without waiting for her. He said fire had crossed their border twice in his lifetime and taken kin both times. He said a queen who carried fire in her blood could not be trusted to hold a line against it. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. Heads in the front rows nodded. A young fairy near the flower-draped shelters folded her wings tight against her back. Rosalind saw two of the elder's friends shift closer to the stump. She understood then. The vote was not about her heritage. It was about her second. If she argued fire with him, she lost. He had already made fire the enemy in the room. She stepped into the ring before he finished. She set the burnt journal on the stone at his feet, cover up, the cracked crest facing him. She said his name. She said he had pulled her out of the creek the winter she was forty, and she had not forgotten it. She asked him one question, loud enough for the back rows. If she had wanted to burn the tribe, what year would she have done it. Name the year. He did not answer. He looked at the journal, then at her, then at the arc of faces waiting. A blue-marked butterfly drifted across the pit and settled on the journal's spine. No one moved to brush it off. Her second's mouth opened and closed. He said, finally, that he could not name a year. He said the question was not fair. She said it was the only fair question. He stepped down from the stump. He did not pledge to her. He said the vote should wait until she returned from the fire tribe's camp, and if she returned, the pit would hear him again. Three hands went up in agreement. Then six. Then the rest. The elder at the back did not raise his hand, but he did not speak against it either. The tribe would hold their vote until after Blazen Emberwing. Rosalind picked up the journal. She had won the day and lost the deadline. In three days she would ride into a fire tribe's camp with her own tribe's judgment pending on whether she came back at all. She had traded a sundown vote for a longer rope, and she could feel the weight of it already, coiled and waiting.