Chapter 177

The Long Night lanterns were still up in Ashgrove town.

We came down to them along the river path in the last of the light, with the snow easing. Red and gold and green in every window and strung across every lane, as there had been the first winter I walked under them with my chin up and the whole street turning to watch. Nobody turned now.

The inn stood at the foot of the town where the river came round under the bridge, a long low house with a ferry bell on a post outside it that nobody had rung in fifty years. He had sent ahead for rooms. Two of them. I had known he would.

The landlord gave us the keys at the foot of the stair, one in each hand, and did not know which of us to give which.

“The one by the river is hers,” said Caspian. “If she wants it.”

I took the one by the river.

***

My room had a low ceiling and a patchwork cover on the bed and a window over the water, and somebody had lit the fire an hour before. I put the agreement,