Chapter 12: The Lullaby

His black horse was waiting at the end of the passage, tied to a thorn tree.

Cassian threw me up into the saddle and swung up behind me.

"The riders have the road," he said against my ear. "We take the moor."

We rode across open heather with the wind in our faces and the thread in my wrist pulling toward the east.

We came down into the Hollow with the sun just clearing the ridge.

It was quiet.

Smoke rose from three chimneys, and nobody had set a torch to anything yet.

The old woman sat on her doorstep with a bowl of oats in her lap and her shawl pulled round her shoulders.

She was humming.

Four notes, up and down, over and over.

I slid off the horse and walked toward her.

She looked up and smiled at me, easily, the way you smile at a girl you've taken in.

"You're out early," she said. "Did you sleep?"

"Not much."

"Sit."

I sat beside her on the step.

Cassian had stopped by the horse.

He stood with his hand on its neck, not moving, and I knew he couldn't do it.

He couldn't cross the yard.

"Tell me now," I said, without turning my head. "Why I was in a cellar with Perrin Ash, every second Thursday, for three years."

The old woman went on humming, and pretended she wasn't listening.

"You were looking for her," said Cassian.

His voice was a rasp.

"My mother."

I looked at the woman on the step beside me.

She was turning the spoon in her bowl, and she kept her eyes on the oats.

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