The Curse of the Beta のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 61 - チャプター 70

We went in after the priest in Rook's longboat with the copper wolf standing in the bows and the wind on our backs and the shore coming up grey and fast.The boat with the priest in it was ahead of us and it was not going to the harbour. It was going round the point to the south side, to the kelp beds, where there was a landing and a path up the rocks and the whole of the village asleep behind it."He is going to the island," Rook said. "He is going to the well.""The well is closed.""The well is closed and the mark is cut and there is a wolf on the shore who has been alone since we went out and a pack that has been lied to for forty years. He does not need the well. He needs the pack." Rook put his weight on the oar. "He is going to stand on that green tomorrow at noon and tell the Council that the Regent took the fragment into himself and closed the well and made himself a monster, and he is going to do it with the book in his hand and the Alpha's name on his lips."We came in at t

We took the book back to the village and put it on the table in the pack house kitchen with the light from the window on it and the whole of the pack standing round.Clara came in with her shawl round her shoulders and her face still tired from the night and her father behind her. Agnes put the kettle on and stood at the end of the table with her white braid over her shoulder and did not say a word. Nina came down from Marcus's room and said he was sleeping and had asked for water and had not known her when she gave it to him.Then I opened the book and read it out loud.I read the weather and the cargo and the crew. I read the passenger at Oban. I read the priest in the cabin with a chart and a paper and the master's note that the priest was a madman. I read the silver and the island and the cup and the ring and the page torn out of a book. And I read the last page, the page in the mate's hand, the page that said the name the priest heard in the well was the name of the boy, and the

The schoolroom was full of smoke and the smoke was black and it went down my throat and into my chest and I could not see the desks.I got down on my hands and knees with my coat over my head and I went along the floor by the wall, and the boards were hot under my hands and there was a crackling above me that was the roof going. The fire was at the back of the room where the stove was and it had taken the wall and the map of the world and the shelf with the slates, and the flames were coming along the beams overhead."Ivy!" I shouted it into the smoke and it came back at me flat and dead. "Ivy!"I went along the wall to the back of the room and the heat came at me like a hand and I put my face down into my coat and I felt along the floor. There was a bench over on its side and a slate under my hand and a child's boot.I got my hand round the boot and pulled and it was Ivy and she was lying on the floor under the bench with her arms over her head and her face down.She was not moving.

The first one to speak was a boatman called Peter's son, a heavy man with a red face and a grey beard."He was on the shore the night of the raid," he said. "I saw him. He was standing on the sand with the rogue's hand in his and they were talking like two men at a fair. And my boy was in the schoolhouse the night it burned and there was no man on that door but a boy with a hook.""The fire was set by the man in the grey coat," I said."You do not know that. You were not there. You were on the water with the rogue and the Council ship." The boatman turned to George. "He has been in the schoolhouse with the woman at all hours and he has been out on the island in the dark and he has been in the chapel with the priest and he has brought the rogue into this village and shaken his hand in front of the whole pack. I am not saying he set the fire. I am saying he has not been where a Regent should be and he has not told us the truth about the Alpha or the cup or the silver."Another voice sai

We went up to the pack house kitchen and put the lamp on the table and Agnes put the kettle on and the four of us sat down round it.Rook took the head of the table without asking and nobody minded. He put his hands flat on the wood and said, "There is a thing I have not told you and it is the thing that will decide whether we are alive at noon tomorrow.""Say it," I said."The ship off the point is not Aldous's. It is mine." He looked at me. "It came up the coast in the winter with a crew of forty and a hold full of nothing and it has been sitting off the point since the spring. Aldous came aboard in the spring with a paper and a purse and he told me there was a Council ship coming and that if I helped him take the island he would give me the well and the fragments and the pack of Cragmoor. I took his money. I have been taking his money since the spring." He looked at the lamp. "And then I found out what he had done to my father and I stopped taking it. That was in the summer. He has