Chapter 9 Chapter 9

Isolde POV

I woke with a taste of iron in my mouth and a woman's hand on my forehead.

"Don't sit up," Marga said. "Not yet. Drink."

She held a cup to my lips. It was warm and sweet and had no bark in it. I drank half before I remembered to be careful. When I looked up, the loft was gray with morning, and three men were in the room.

Dorian sat on the floor by the bed with his back against the wall. He had not slept. Emeric stood by the window, arms crossed, watching the yard. And at the top of the ladder, with one hand on the rail and his body turned halfway toward the stairs, was Rhys.

I did not need to ask what had happened. I remembered it in pieces. The shouting, the smoke. A line of light that ran from my chest to each of the men in the yard, and all of them, at once, in my hands. I had known where they were. And I had known where the others were, the ones who were not mine.

"How long?" I said.

"A day and a night," said Marga. "The grain store is half lost. Two of ours are wounded. No one is dead." She held up a hand mirror. "You should see this before you hear it."

I took it. The glass was cheap and a little warped. My face looked back at me, thinner than I remembered, with shadows under the eyes.

And in my hair, from the left temple back, a streak as white as snow.

I touched it. It felt like any other hair.

"Tell me," I said.

---

Marga sat on the end of the bed and told it in the order a person tells a thing she has rehearsed.

"There is an old name for it," she said. "The binding gift. Some call it the tether. It runs in certain women, in certain lines. A woman who has it, and who is bonded to wolves, can pull their senses together through the bond. She can feel where they are. She can send her strength to them, or draw theirs to her. In a battle, a gift-bearer is worth a pack."

"That's what I did last night."

"Yes. Only a little. You didn't know how, and it was not a deliberate thing. It came out of you because you were frightened and because three of your mates were in danger." She glanced at the men and corrected herself. "Three of the people you are bound to."

I did not look at Rhys. I could feel him not looking at me.

"The gift is not free," Marga said. "It takes from the one who carries it. Life, years. Each use burns a little. I did not know how much it would be until I saw your hair." She touched the white streak lightly. "I would put it at one year. Perhaps a little more."

"One year." I tested the words. "For four minutes."

"For four minutes. And you were not even trying."

I thought about that. I thought about what a person could do with a dozen years, or ten, or six. Then I made myself stop, because it was a ledger I did not want to open yet.

"Does it come back?"

"No."

"Can I control it?"

"With time. With training. I am not the right teacher, but I can find the books." Marga put her hands in her lap. "There is more. You should hear it now."

I waited.

"An alpha bonded to a gift-bearer holds the territory by right," she said. "That is the old law. It is in a charter, written in the first years of this valley, before the Thorne and Halvard houses had any claim to it. The Calder line signed it first. Only a Calder alpha, with a gift-bound mate, can take the Ashgrove seat without a vote."

The room went quiet in a way I recognized.

"Marga," Rhys said.

"She has a right to know."

"She has a right to rest."

"She has a right to know why you've spent nine years refusing a seat she can give you." Marga did not raise her voice. She did not need to. "Tell her, or I will."

I looked at Rhys then, finally. He was standing very straight, with one hand tight on the ladder rail, and his face was the color of old paper.

"You knew," I said. "From the first night."

"I knew what you were the moment you came in the door."

"And that's why you wanted me gone."

"That is one reason."

"What's the other?"

He did not answer. Dorian shifted on the floor, and Emeric turned from the window. For several seconds, nobody breathed.

"I will tell you," Rhys said at last. "Not today."

He went down the ladder. I heard his boots on the rungs, slow, and then the door below, and then nothing.

"He is not a coward," Dorian said into the quiet. "I want you to know that. Whatever it looks like."

"I didn't say he was."

"You thought it."

I had. I looked at the blanket. "I thought he was afraid."

"He is," said Emeric.

It was the first time he had spoken to me since the river. I turned. He was looking at me, steady and level, with nothing in his face except what he said.

"Not of you," he said. "For you."

---

On the third day, Hesper came up the ladder with a sheet of paper in her fist.

"This was nailed to the tollhouse door on the lower road," she said. "A runner brought it to the east post. I think you should read it before the rest of the camp does."

I took it.

It was a proclamation, printed on cheap stock, with the thorn seal at the bottom. It was signed Alaric Thorne, Regent of Ashgrove, speaking for Osric Halvard. It said that a woman named Isolde, a ward of Stillwater House, had stolen valuable property from the Keep, and had killed a house attendant named Pia Lorne in the course of her escape. It said she was being held against her will by outlaws and exiles. It said she was a danger to herself and others. It offered two hundred marks for her return alive.

I read it twice.

"I didn't kill anyone," I said.

"I know."

"Pia Lorne was—" I stopped. The name sat in my mouth. "She was one of the veiled daughters. She was on my list. She was one of the ones who disappeared."

"Disappeared," said Hesper, "and now she is dead, and you killed her."

I put the paper down on the blanket very carefully.

I saw the shape of it. A woman who is a thief and a killer has no rights. A woman held by outlaws can be recovered by anyone, without a contract, without Gale's name on a page. And the dead girl, who could not speak, would say what Alaric wanted. It was well done. I had to admire the arithmetic.

"He's not trying to catch me," I said. "He's trying to make sure no one will care when he does."

"That is how I read it too."

"Does Rhys know?"

"He's read it. He has already ordered the move." Hesper folded her arms. "Calder Watch. The old tower on the ridge, above the hold. It's higher and colder and far older, and it has walls. If Thorne comes with forty men, we cannot hold the mill. In the tower, we might."

"When?"

"Tomorrow, at first light. Can you walk?"

I swung my legs off the bed. The room tilted and then settled.

"I'll walk," I said.

---

We left before dawn, in a line, through snow that came to the knee.

I carried a pack that Dorian pretended not to notice was lighter than the others. Emeric went ahead and Rhys stayed at the rear, as he always did. Marga rode the one remaining pony. Hesper counted heads at every bend.

The path climbed through birch and then pine. By midmorning, the trees thinned, and the wind came across the ridge hard enough to make my eyes water. I put my head down and watched my boots.

"Look up," Dorian said, beside me. "You'll want to see this."

I looked up.

The ridge fell away on the left side into a long shallow valley, white under the sun. In the middle of it lay a dark scar, a quarter mile across, ragged and black at the edges. Foundations. A broken wall. The shell of a great hall with no roof.

The Calder hold.

Above it, on the crest, stood a tower. It was squat and gray and square, with a wall around it and a gate that hung crooked on one hinge. It looked like something the mountain had grown and forgotten.

At the front of the line, Rhys had stopped.

He stood with his back to us and his face to the ruins. His shoulders were rigid. He did not move for a long time. Behind him, the column halted without being told, and no one spoke.

I watched him. I thought about what he had said. Not today.

I did not push. I had learned that a person will say the thing when it has finished being too heavy to hold. I had learned it from watching Matron Hale, and then from being her.

Rhys turned. He looked straight down the column, and his eyes found mine. For half a second, I thought he would speak.

Then he went on up the hill.

---

The tower had four rooms and a cellar. They gave me the cellar, because it was warmest and because Hesper had decided I needed a table.

By evening, there was a candle on it, and my ledger, and a pen. I opened to the last page, where I had written Isolde. Released by betrothal. Transferred to Gale, 5 days.

I looked at it for a while.

Then I crossed it out. I wrote underneath, in the plainest hand I had.

Gift. First use, unplanned. Cost: one yea

r.

I looked at the line. I thought it was the first entry I had ever made in my own name.