Chapter 6: The East Wall

Sorrel took the prince's ring off its cord the next morning and locked it in the bottom of her satchel.

She told herself it was because it had burned the king.

It was also because her neck had begun to itch.

At the third bell that night her palm woke her, as it always did.

She lay in the narrow bed the steward had made up in the room beside the king's and listened.

Through the wall she could hear him pacing.

She put her gown over her shift and went to find him.

He was on the east wall, a hundred feet above the black rock of the valley, in his shirtsleeves with his bare head in the wind.

The moon was out, and every peak she could see had snow on it.

"You should be asleep, my lady."

"So should you. Why are you out here?"

"The tower is too small at night." He did not turn around. "The fire turns in on itself when I lie still. Up here it can look at the sky."

She came and stood beside him at the parapet.

She had only a few days of him to go on, but she could see the difference.

His shoulders were straighter.

His breath, in the cold, came out white and even, with no catch in it.

"May I look at your back?" she said.

He was quiet so long that she thought he had decided not to answer.

"The healer asks," he said, to the dark. "She does not need to ask."

"I do, though. It's your back."

He undid the laces of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

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