Chapter 23: First Kick

By the first snow, the lower-town clinic had a queue.

Cavan found out on a grey morning when he walked down with a basket and found eleven wolves on the step.

Some were old and some were young, and all of them had kept something quiet for years.

Fenny stood in the doorway in his coat with a pen behind his ear, bossing them in one at a time.

"Sit," he said to a farmer. "Not there. That chair is for the lady."

"Luna," the farmer said, turning his cap in his hands. "I never told anyone. My brother and I were born with it."

"Then you will tell me now, and write it in my book."

"Both of you?"

"Both of you," Fenny said, and his voice warmed. "You're not the only ones, you know. You never were."

Cavan set down the basket and leaned on the doorframe.

His stomach had begun to curve under his coat, and he did not mind who saw.

Fenny glanced up and caught his eye.

"You're meant to be resting."

"I walked."

"You waddled."

"I strode."

"Sit in the other chair, Prime. After the lady."

The farmer snorted, and then they were all laughing, the whole queue, in the cold on the clinic step.

It was loud, and it carried up the hill to the Hall.

Cavan thought: this is what the speech was for.

That night the snow came down thick, and the palace went quiet.

Cavan lay in the middle of the great bed with a nest of cushions and furs heaped round him.

Fenny's grey coat was spread over the top.

It had taken them three weeks to build.

Fenny knelt on the edge, in his shirt, with a lamp.

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