Chapter 4: Guest

The window I had broken was covered with a sheet of plywood and a lot of nails.

MacAlister Lodge looked smaller by daylight, and a great deal more lived in.

There were boots by the door, and a pot on the stove, and a dog asleep on the hearth stones with one eye open.

Rodrick set my bag on the cot and stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides.

"Before I say anything else," I said, "I have terms."

"Go on."

"I keep my bow. I keep the key to this door, and I lock it from the inside."

"Yes."

"You don't call me payment, or property, or yours."

Something moved behind his face and was gone.

"I won't," he said.

"Three nights. Then I stand up at the Rite and say what I want."

"Three nights," Rodrick said. "I'll sleep across the door."

"In the hall, outside it."

"Outside it, then."

He took a long iron key off a nail by the stove and held it out.

I took it.

His fingers did not touch mine.

He held the key by the very tip of the ring and let go the moment I closed my hand.

"Why is the dog watching me?" I asked.

"She's deciding."

"Deciding what?"

"Whether you're going to be any trouble."

"What does she think so far?"

"She thinks you broke a window and walked down a mountain in a wedding dress," Rodrick said. "She's impressed."

I laughed.

It came out of me before I could stop it, short and cracked.

It was the first sound I'd made in two days.

He turned his face away so I would not see what that did to it.

A lean man in a canvas coat came in with a bucket of kindling and looked at the two of us.

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