Chapter 24: Ten Above

The frost cell under Ironbark Hall stood open on the first morning it was ever warm.

The iron door was propped back with a log.

Behind it, where the stone floor had been bare, firewood stood stacked to the slit window, split and dry, enough to heat the hall until April.

The men of the watch had carried it down themselves.

I stood on the top step with my son on my hip, and I looked at the room where he had been born.

It smelled of pine now.

The thermometer nailed to the wall said ten above zero.

In ten winters it had never said anything but ten below.

"It looks small," Sinead said, at my shoulder.

"It was always small."

"Is it weird I want to hug it?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to anyway."

She went down two steps and patted the doorframe, and then she looked embarrassed and came back up.

The hall was full behind us.

Two hundred wolves from Ironbark stood on the benches and the floor, and a quarter of Greywater had come across the river to watch.

Bram stood beside me, his hand in the small of my back, and said nothing.

He didn't have to.

I could feel him through the mark, steady and warm, and just a little proud.

Garrick came up the aisle from the gate in his work coat.

He carried a pair of tongs, and in the tongs was the black iron key.

I had carried the key up to the hall's forge at dusk and put it back in his hand, because he had asked to tend the coals.

He had spent the night there, and he had not asked anyone for help.