Chapter 133

Rowan came in at noon on Midwinter day, on Pudding, with Issen riding beside him.

He had gone off two days before with his bad leg strapped, telling nobody where, and Nana had said a number of things about it to the bread. Now he came up the north road with the healer of Ellisar on a tall grey mare at his knee, both of them white with frost, trying hard not to look like a man who had ridden to a border inn to fetch her because a birth had kept her behind my father’s party.

He got down in the yard without help. I saw what it cost him and so did Issen. She swung off the grey, crossed the snow, put two fingers on the outside of his thigh through the leather, felt along it, and nodded once.

“Better,” she said. “You may stop looking at me as though I’m going to cut it off.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were. You always are.” She looked across at me on the kitchen step, and her rough voice warmed. “He talked about you for three days. Well. When he wasn’t talking about th