Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 22 of 25

The deed was up. The moon was up. The three notes waited in Rowan's chest. Then Rowan heard boots on the far side of the wall, quick and light, and a woman's voice giving orders in a tongue Rowan did not know. The crowned woman's watchers had heard the bottle uncork. They were coming for the deed before Rowan could sing it closed. Rowan counted footfalls. Four, maybe five, spreading along the wall. The graveyard gate stood twenty paces off. If a hand reached over the stones before the third note landed, the deed was theirs, and Rowan's name went with it. Elspeth Moonwhisper stepped from a gravestone as if the stone had opened a door. "They cannot cross the wall while a witness of the dead stands inside," she said. "I am a witness. I will hold the line. Sing." Rowan opened their mouth. Nothing came. The gold paste on the tongue felt thick. Fear had shut the throat. Thorn Nightwhisper dropped from the yew above and landed light on a headstone. She held a small pouch of moonflower pulp, the gift she had promised. "Sing straight up," she said. "I will cap the sound so it does not spread sideways. The watchers will hear nothing after the first note." She tore the pouch and threw the pulp in a ring around Rowan's feet. The air inside the ring went dead and close. Rowan drew the first note from the belly, the way Luna had drilled. It came out clean. Thorn's ring caught it and lifted it. Beyond the wall a watcher shouted and the shout cut off mid-word. Elspeth stood at the gate with both arms raised. A pale hand came over the top stone and jerked back as if burned. Rowan sang the second note. The deed grew warm in Rowan's fingers. Ink Rowan could not read rose on the pale skin and settled again. The third note was the hardest. Rowan's throat wanted to close on the father's debt. Rowan thought of Elara Rootwhisper's flat face when she named the price, and of Meridian Gravesight passing on the low road with her staff, humming a settling tune for a spirit in the marsh. Rowan borrowed the shape of that hum and sang. The note held. The deed flared once, cold, and went still. The folk-script had been answered. Something past the wall let out a long, thin cry and pulled back down the slope. Elspeth lowered her arms. Thorn scuffed the ring of pulp with her heel. "Done," she said. "They cannot take what you have already spoken." Rowan folded the deed against their chest. The moon sat high and clean. The watchers were gone for tonight. But the crowned woman would know by morning that Rowan had closed the deed, and she would come herself to answer it.