Chapter 14: The Twenty-Fourth

The first wedge went in under the threshold course, and the bond drove it into Ilan's ribs like a nail. He came off the pallet onto his left foot. The ankle answered with a hot wire up the shin. The nursery corridor was black, and sacking rustled along the south wall where the residents slept in rows. The boards had gone stiff, and the air that came down from the hall bit the nostrils with frost on iron and, under it, fresh-broken lime. A second wedge. A third. Somebody set a bar under the course and leaned, and the stone gave a long dry shriek that ran down his spine and out through the ankle. He had carried that threshold in his body for three weeks. Now one corner of it was coming up. Frost. The first hard one of the year lay on the yard tonight, and tonight was…