Chapter 91. Silver Bridge

There are bridges you build and bridges you are.

The mess fires were low when I woke. The Steppe looked like a field after harvest—stubble and shadow and the waiting that comes between work and winter. The bond purred like a cat under a door. When I reached for it with the lightest part of my mind, I touched heat and iron and breath counted too fast.

“He’s in,” Syra said, not looking up from the slate. “Shadowfang’s gate.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Not enough,” she said. “Not even for the story.”

Orla stood with a bowl and four narrow knives laid across it like a broken compass. Her face had the set it only gets when she’s about to do something that offends three gods and a saint. “You want to hold him up,” she said, not bothering to put a question in it.

“Yes,” I said.

“Ritual?” Mavienne asked. She sounded tired enough to bite a god and sorry enough to apologize for it later.

“Silver Bridge,” Orla said. “Old. Ugly. Thinks it’s kinder than