Chapter 4: Saltmarket

We were an hour down the river trail when I stopped and took the gray hood out of my pack.

Tobiah watched me pull it over my head.

He watched me tighten the string under my chin, and drop my voice, and say, "Keep up, bird."

He walked into a tree.

Not a small one. He hit it with his whole face and sat down in the snow.

Kell, coming behind us, stepped over his legs without slowing.

"He's taking it well," Kell said.

Tobiah sat in the drift with snow on his eyebrows and stared up at me.

"You're Gray Knife."

"I'm Gray Knife."

"Gray Knife. The Gray Knife. Top of the board for two winters. Killed the river wyrm at the Saltmarket ford with one throw."

"It was two throws. The first one bounced."

He made a noise I'd only ever heard from a kettle.

"Brannon has a carving of you," he said. "Over his bed. He talks to it."

"I know. I dusted it."

Tobiah lay back in the snow and put both hands over his face.

"Three years," he said through his fingers. "Three years we called you useless. He made you eat after us. He told you your tea tasted like a bog."

"It does taste like a bog."

"Willa!"

I held out a hand and pulled him up.

He was still staring at me. Then the stare broke, and he grinned so wide it must have pulled at his torn throat.

"This is the best day of my whole life," he said. "We just got exiled, and it's the best day of my whole life."

Saltmarket sat in a bend of the frozen river, a jumble of smoking roofs and trader stalls and dog sleds.

The Hunters' Hall stood at the top of the street. Timber walls, a roof of black shingles, two white tusks crossed over the door.

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