Chapter 4: The Butcher

"Now?" I said.

"Now," said the princess. "Unless you'd rather meet him at the altar."

She took me through the cloister to a small refectory behind the kitchens.

There was one table, one lamp and a fire that had burned down to red.

Someone had laid out a cold supper: dark bread, a wedge of hard cheese, cold mutton, a jug of cider.

A man sat at the far end of the table with his boots up on the bench.

He took them down when we came in.

Then he stood, and kept standing for a while.

He was very tall, long in the arm and leg, all bone and shoulder under a worn black wool coat.

His hair was black and fell to his jaw.

A pale scar ran from his left temple down to his jaw, through the edge of his short dark beard.

His eyes were dark gray, and they went over me once, top to bottom, the way a wolf checks the ground.

"Alpha Kerne," said the princess. "Wynne Ashdale."

"You're smaller than I was told," he said in the Kingdom tongue.

His accent was heavy and unbothered.

"You're exactly as large as I was told," I said in Eastmarch.

He stared at me.

Then he laughed.

It was a short, rough bark of a laugh.

"She speaks it," he said to the princess. "You didn't say she speaks it."

"I'm saying it now," said the princess. "I'll leave you to talk terms."

She went out.

The door closed.

I was alone in a room with the Butcher of the Pass, and he was cutting me a slice of bread.

"Sit," he said. "Eat. You've been on a train all day, and you smell like jam biscuits."

I sat.

He pushed the bread and cheese toward me, then the cider.

He sat back down across from me and didn't eat anything himself.

Up close, he smelled of pine smoke and cold air and something underneath that was just wolf.

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