Chapter 10: A Door

Ivy's POV

At dawn I walked out of Moonwell Hall without a single ache in my body.

It was a strange thing to carry down a flight of stone steps.

I kept waiting for my shoulders to remember, and they didn't.

Nessa was sitting on the bottom step with a loaf of bread on her knees and my good boots beside her.

"I packed these," she said. "You left them under the bench. I also stole this bread, so we're now criminals."

"Thank you."

"Eat. You keep standing up straight and then looking surprised about it."

I sat down beside her and ate the bread.

It was the best thing I had ever tasted.

Joss came around the corner of the Hall leading his mare.

He stopped a few paces away with his hat in his hand.

"I'm told you're not going back to the Hollin wagons," he said.

"Who told you?"

"Your friend, in a very long speech about axles."

"It was an excellent speech," Nessa said.

I looked at the road below us, the long grey ribbon of the pass.

The Hollin wagons were drawn up on the flat beside the stream, forty of them.

I could see the smoke of their cook fires.

"I haven't decided," I said.

"You've decided," Nessa said. "You're only waiting for someone to say it's allowed."

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