Chapter 15: Who Did It

"Don't try to talk," I told the bear.

His eyes rolled toward the trees.

"He wants us to look," Kell said.

Tobiah went up as a hawk without being asked.

Kell and I dragged the bear onto Kell's cloak and hauled him.

The fox tanner took one look and ran for the guild healer.

The guild healer was a short, bald man with a bag that clinked.

He set the bear's jaw while the old hunter and I held his head.

The bear made one low, terrible sound and fainted.

"Jaw's cracked. Three ribs. He won't talk for a long while," the guild healer said. "Someone kicked him after he was down."

"How long?"

"Weeks before he says anything you can understand. Feed him broth."

Tobiah came in, shaking snow out of his hair.

He held out a fox-fur cap.

It was soaked through with blood on one side.

"Under a pine, fifty paces off the road," he said. "Somebody stuffed it there. The boot prints go back to town. Right to the river."

I knew those caps.

I'd last seen two of them on the ground in the high valley, beside a sled full of bait.

"The ford," I said. "There's a drinking house at the ford."

The drinking house at the ford was low and smoky and full at midday, the way it always was in Hunt week.

I walked in without my hood.

Kell came in behind me, and the room shrank away from him.

Tobiah came last, with the cap.

They were at a table by the fire.

The same two men. One wore a new fox cap.

The other was bareheaded, and the knuckles of his right hand were split and black with blood.

He saw me and stopped.

"The exile," he said. "Come to pour us a drink?"

I didn't answer.

I walked up to the table, reached down past his elbow and took the knife out of his own belt.

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