Chapter 30: The Note

Joss woke while I was reading the note, and he did not ask what it said.

I held it out to him, and he read it by the stove's last light.

"He says he isn't asking you to come," Joss said.

"He says that."

"Then it's your choice whether you go."

"I want to go."

"I know," Joss said, and he sat up and reached for his shirt. "Take the grey mare. She's the steadiest on ice."

"You're not coming."

"It isn't mine," he said, for the second time that week, and kissed my forehead.

I rode out of the market gate at midday with a scarf over my braid and the grey mare picking her way over packed snow.

The south road ran flat for a mile between two white fields and then climbed toward the pass.

I saw him from a long way off.

He sat a bay gelding at the first bend, with a pack behind his saddle and the ash stick tied alongside it.

He sat the horse crookedly, favouring one hip and the whole of his back.

I rode up and stopped three lengths away.

He did not say anything.

He had not shaved in some days, and the grey in his eyes was the only thing in his face that looked the way it always had.

"You came," he said at last.

"I came to say something. You don't have to answer it."

"All right."

"I'll say it once, and then I'll go back."

He nodded, and he sat very still.

I had practiced it all morning in my head and none of it was any good, so I said it plainly.

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