Chapter 24: The Gate

We went up on the east wall together at first light, with a blanket over my shoulders and Ronan's coat over his.

The ward posts stood in a long line along the stone, black with frost.

Every one of them was humming.

It was the note I had known since I was a child, thin and high and steady.

Under it ran a second note, lower and warmer, that I had never heard in Greyfell's wall.

I knew it at once.

It was the lattice I had woven in Highwater's yard, and it was answering me across two weeks of road.

"It reached," Ronan said quietly.

"It followed the bond."

"Your thread did."

"Our thread," I said.

He glanced at me.

I did not look away.

The old woman who baked the lodge's bread came up the wall steps with a basket.

She left two rolls on the parapet without a word.

Hester followed behind her, leaning on her keys, and sat down on a stone step to watch.

Jory came up last, with Rhona beside him and a list of caravans in his hand.

"Fourteen wagons through the east pass since dawn," he said. "Not one hunter stopped them."

"And?"

"The drivers want to know whom to pay."

"Nobody," I said. "The passes are free."

Rhona smiled at the ground, and Jory wrote it down.

"Well," she said. "It took you long enough."

"The wall or the man?"

"Both."

Ronan coughed into his fist.

"I'll go and see about the rolls," he said.

"You'll stay," I said.

I walked down the line of posts to the great gate, where the mist was lifting off the road.

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