Chapter 13: The Old Man

I should have lied.

It would have been easy.

"Both," I said.

He looked at me like I'd slapped him.

"Both," he repeated.

"Sometimes. Not always."

"When?"

"When you frown at a chart. When you hum setting a splint." I swallowed. "He hummed the same song."

Auden got off the stool.

He walked to the sink and stood there with his good hand on the edge of it.

"So I'm a rerun," he said.

"That isn't what I said."

"He got fifty years with you."

"He got fifty years outside my door, Auden."

"He got you crying over him in a herb garden. He got the last look. I'm the one you picked because you missed him."

My wolf came up hot under my ribs.

"I picked you because you were kind to me when nobody else was."

"He was kind to you. I've been kind to you for twelve days."

"You're jealous of a dead man."

"I'm jealous of me!" He turned around. "Do you know how stupid that is? I can't even punch him."

I laughed.

I didn't mean to.

He glared at me, and then his mouth went crooked, and he put both hands over his face.

"This is the worst fight anyone's ever had," he said through his fingers.

"It's not bad, as fights go."

"Tell me about him, then."

He dropped his hands.

"Properly. Not the cell. Him."

So I told him.

He had a gray beard he trimmed with kitchen scissors.

He brought me apricots every winter from the infirmary garden, because the palace cook said they were out of season.

He read to me through the door, badly, doing voices.

He once argued with Piers in Council for two hours about a bridge.

He lost.

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