Chapter 9: Snow on the Roof

Haruka drew the map that night by the light of a single candle.

She drew it on the back of a duty roster, in the cramped guard's quarters at the foot of the tower.

The Greywatch had one postern on the moat side.

It had a rotten gate at the end of the rampart walk, and a boat shed below it.

If she took Seraphine out on the thirteenth night, they could be on the river road before the Prince's morning bell.

She folded the roster and tucked it under her mattress.

Then she went up the stairs two at a time and unlocked the cell.

"Get your cloak," she said.

Seraphine looked up from the cot.

"I have no cloak."

"Take mine."

"Where are we going?"

"Up."

The stairs ended at a low wooden door that opened on the tower roof.

Haruka had found the key in the Captain's ring on her second day, and had thought of it every night since.

She pushed the door wide, and the wind came in cold and clean.

Seraphine stepped out in the borrowed cloak, barefoot on the stone, and stopped.

The sky was low and black over the city.

Aldmere lay below them in a thousand lit windows, rooftops and chimney smoke and the long gleam of the river.

And out of the dark, slow and soft and silent, snow was beginning to fall.

A flake landed on Seraphine's eyelash.

Another on her bare wrist.

She turned her palm up and watched them melt.

"Number nine," she said, very low.

"It's the first snow of the year."

"It is mine." She laughed and held both hands out to the sky. "It is entirely mine."

She walked to the parapet and stood on tiptoe at the edge.

The wind blew her hair out behind her.

Haruka kept one hand on the back of her cloak, and watched her take a breath so deep that it lifted the whole slight frame.

"Number twelve," Seraphine said, and flung her head back.

"I AM SERAPHINE ARDWYN!"

Her voice cracked on the top of it and went out over the sleeping city, ringing off roofs and towers.

A dog barked somewhere.

A shutter banged.

"I AM SERAPHINE ARDWYN," she screamed, "AND I AM STILL HERE!"

Haruka was laughing.

She had not known she could laugh, helplessly, with her whole chest, with snow in her eyes.

Seraphine turned around, flushed and wild, and threw herself into her arms.

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