Chapter 113

He had not come up.

Saskia had come in at the grey of the morning to say that the boats had come as far as the ridge, looked a while at the rider sitting his horse there, and went back down to the water. Nobody had asked who.

It was past noon when I shut the hut door behind me.

***

The snow was new and dry and came over the tops of my boots. I went down through it slowly, because my legs had learned in the cells to go slowly, and because I wanted to.

He knows you’re coming, my wolf said.

Yes.

He hasn’t turned around.

No. I watched the straight dark back below me, the snow lying on the shoulders and in the black hair, and the horse shifting under him, and him not shifting at all. I think he’s waiting to be told he may.

Good, she said.

It was more than four years since a ball, and nearly as long since a council hall, where our eyes had met across the floor and I had turned my back on