Chapter 116

I asked Lyra whether she wanted the others to go out.

She was sitting on the heaped heather in her corner, where she had slept since the lake, with her boots on and her hands between her knees, and she looked up at me as if I had asked whether she wanted a window opened in a house that was on fire.

“No,” she said. “Everyone. I’ve done enough in corners.”

So everyone stayed. Rowan on his pallet. Lucien by the door with his saddlebags packed at his feet, because he and Saskia were leaving at first light. Saskia with her back to the wall. And me on the stool by the hearth, between the two of them, because I had said that nobody would question Lyra without me in the room, and I had meant the room to be exactly this small.

Caspian came in from the snow and sat down by the door where he had sat last night, and put his hands on his knees.

Lyra stood up.

***

I had known her once as the only person in the world who wasn’t afraid of him. She had calle