Chapter 11: The Ring's Heartbeat

Hedda came in at noon with a loaf under her arm and found me on the floor with my back against the bed.

She looked at my face, set the loaf down, and sat beside me without a word.

After a while she tore the bread in half and put the larger piece in my hand.

"Eat that," she said. "Then tell me which one of them I'm going to hit."

"Both."

"Obviously. In which order?"

I laughed, and it turned into something wet and ugly, and she put an arm round me and let me ruin her good wool sleeve.

When I'd finished, I told her all of it.

I told her what he'd done, and what the Provost had asked me to ask him.

She was quiet a long time.

"He's an idiot," Hedda said at last.

"He's a liar."

"Those aren't different things."

She picked a crumb from her knee.

"I'm not saying forgive him. I'm saying hate him on your own time and use his brain on weekdays.

"He's the best rune reader north of the river. And that thing in your satchel is humming."

"You can hear it?"

"Everyone on this landing can hear it. The girl from the next room asked if you'd got a bird."

I took the ring out of its silk.

The pulse beat on, slow and sure, under the crack.

Hedda pulled a brass lens from her pocket, on a chain she'd probably owned since she was twelve, and bent over the band.

"Light," she said.

I lit the candle by the bed with the one trick I'd learned from watching.

She held the ring to the flame and turned it, slowly, squinting.

"Here. Inside the band. There's maker's marks, and a line of runes under them, so fine you'd miss it with your eyes shut."

"What does it say?"

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