Chapter 79

The rooms were higher up the same tree, at the end of a walkway I would not have crossed alone the first day. Elandor went ahead of me without looking back to see if I followed, which was the only reason I could.

He stopped at a door and took a key out of his coat. It was the first lock I had seen in Ellisar.

“Nobody has lived here since,” he said. “Someone comes in to see the dust. Nothing has been moved.” He turned the key and did not open the door. “I’ll be on the walkway. Take as long as you like.”

I went in alone.

***

It smelled of nobody. That was the first thing. Rooms that have been shut for a long time take on the smell of their wood and their cloth, and lose the person, and this one had lost her four and twenty years ago. It smelled of the tree, and of dry lavender gone to dust in a dish, and of paper.

It was not grand. A sitting room with a round window over the forest, and through an arch a smaller room with a bed. A riding coat on a h