Chapter 18: The Roadside

"I wasn't there," I told Torin. "I can't tell you if there was a night."

He flinched.

"Who poured at the wake?" I asked.

"Margo." He said it slowly. "She brought me a glass. She said I hadn't eaten."

"And the next morning?"

"I woke up in the guest room with a headache I couldn't explain. She was already making breakfast."

"Did you ever think to wonder?"

"I thought I was a man who'd gotten drunk after his brother's wake, and again at the frost supper, and hurt a woman who needed him."

Dessa had come up beside me, white around the mouth.

"Torin," she said. "Come to the clinic tomorrow. I can run a panel on you. It's old, but some things stay."

He nodded without looking at either of us.

I walked out of the great room and didn't look back.

I didn't sleep that night.

The lodge was dark, with the wind working at the shutters, and Kurt lay asleep beside me with one heavy arm across my waist.

I lay still and listened to Torin's question go round my head.

Glass. Wake. A headache he couldn't explain.

I slid out from under Kurt's arm, reached for my coat on the chair, and put my hand in the pocket.

The tin was cold.

I took it out and held it in the dark, and Sorrel, who had been quiet for days, came up through my chest with a snarl.

It was not a growl at an enemy.

It was a flat, hard refusal, the sound she made at things that were wrong.

I almost dropped the tin.

She had done it at the bridge too, when I put my hand in the pocket, and I had called it nerves.

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