Chapter 8: Ferris Pass

Every face on the moor turned toward the gate.

Alaric didn't move.

He stood in the arch with his hands in his pockets and looked back at Gareth with no expression at all.

"Well?" Gareth called. "Tell her. Tell all of them."

Alaric said nothing.

He looked at me instead.

Then he turned around and walked back into the courtyard.

The cameras went mad.

I went back through the postern with Prue at my heels.

Behind us, Gareth was already speaking to the reporters in his reasonable Council voice, and Lavinia was weeping softly into a handkerchief.

I didn't see Alaric again until after dark.

I found him in the north tower, in a bare stone room with a cot, a table and a fire.

He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, sharpening a knife he didn't need to sharpen.

He didn't look up when I came in.

"You walked away," I said.

"Yes."

"In front of everyone. You let him say it, and you walked away."

"If I'd answered him there, I'd have been shouting at a man in a tent," Alaric said.

"That's what he wanted. The Butcher, snarling at the gate."

He set the knife down.

"You asked me once if I'd tell you. Are you asking because you want to know?"

I sat down on the end of his cot.

"Yes."

He was quiet for so long I thought he'd changed his mind.

Then he started talking in Eastmarch, low and flat, looking at the fire.

"Two years ago, in the autumn, a Redoak company came up the pass at night."

"Forty men with torches. They said Eastmarch raiders were sheltering in a village below the ridge."

"It was eleven houses. Shepherds. Old men, women, children, about sixty sheep."

"There were no raiders. I know, because I'd eaten supper there two nights before."

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