Chapter 5: Guest Right

They came over the fence at two in the morning, three of them, in the dark and without their colours.

I was awake because I had not slept.

I sat at the lodge's long table with the Gravel Fork pages spread out and a mug gone cold.

Then the yard went silent.

Wolves know that silence.

I put down the pencil.

The back door opened without a sound, and the first one stepped in with a knife.

He was an Ironwood hunter, a man I had trained beside for six years.

He saw me and stopped.

"Roxana," he said. "Don't make this hard."

"You've known me since I was twelve."

His face twisted.

"Orders are orders," he said, and came at me.

I took the table in both hands and put it between us.

The pages flew. The mug broke.

The second hunter came through the door, and the third was at the window.

I got the first one by the wrist and drove his knife into the floor.

The second hit me in the ribs and I felt it go.

I did not stop.

I turned, and the third had a blade out that did not look like steel.

It was long and white, and it caught the lamplight wrong.

Silver.

He lunged at my chest.

Something hit me from the side, hard, and I went down on my shoulder.

When I got up Jonas was standing where I had been.

He was in his shirtsleeves, and he had the third hunter's blade in the meat of his forearm, driven through to the bone.

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