Chapter 147

Saskia brought her in on the sixth evening, at dusk, through the river gate, with the snow coming down slant and blue.

Isadora rode her own horse. Her hands were tied to the pommel with the silk cord of her own cloak, loosely, as a courtesy, and she sat as straight as she had sat at the gathering by the river with a glass of wine in her hand. Four elven wardens rode round her, two of Rhys’s trackers behind, and Saskia in front, with an uncleaned cut along her cheekbone.

Lucien was at the gate. He had been at the gate, Finn told me afterward, every dusk since she left.

He went down the steps into the yard. He did not go to his mother. He went to Saskia’s stirrup and put his hand flat on her boot, once, and looked up at the cut on her face. She looked down at him for a long moment without saying anything, and then she said, “The inn by the sea-mark. As I said,” and swung down on the other side.

***

She told it to Rhys in the guardroom in eight sentences,