Chapter 12: The Wound

The elders read my line into the pack's record that night, in front of the wagons, by torchlight.

Ivy Penrose, keeper of the winter stores, four winters, not one sack lost.

Half the pack clapped, and the other half stood with their hands at their sides and their eyes on the ground.

I signed nothing yet.

I took my ledgers back to the little fire Nessa had built on the stream bank, apart from the wagons.

Joss had pitched a canvas lean-to for the three of us.

Then he had gone to look at his mare, which I understood was tact.

I was cleaning the dust off the eleventh ledger when the crutches came out of the dark.

Rafe stopped at the edge of the firelight.

He wore a blanket over his shoulders because he could not bear a coat.

He leaned on two ash poles that must have been the healer's.

His face was thin and wrecked.

"May I sit?" he asked.

It was the first time he had ever asked me that.

"You can stand if you like. It's a free stream."

He lowered himself onto a log, a little at a time, and he did not make a sound.

I watched how long it took him.

I knew every inch of how long it took.

"I came to ask you something," he said.

"All right."

"What do you like to eat?"

I stared at him.

"You walked here on a burned back to ask me that?"

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