Chapter 48: The Silver and the Brown

The first snow of the year came down on the north ridge the next morning.

It was fine and dry, and nothing had walked on it yet.

We stood at the foot of the trail in a row.

Ewan had his sling off for the first time.

He kept rolling the shoulder when he thought I wasn't looking.

Brigid stood beside him in her patched coat with the grey cat on her shoulder.

The shaved-headed wolf leaned on the truck and ate an apple.

A rider had come up the Keep road before dawn in a Council coat.

He had a sack tied on the back of his saddle.

He set the sack down on a flat rock at the trailhead and untied the neck.

Eleven iron collars slid out onto the stone.

They were black and heavy, each one with a thread of silver wire along the inside edge.

"From the Council's stores," the rider said. His voice was rough.

"The Eight ordered them melted, by any silver fire that cares to do it."

"I was told to ask you first, Miss Corvane."

I looked at them.

I knew what they were for.

One of them, in another year, would have been around my neck.

"I don't care to do it for the Council," I said. "I'll do it for me."

I held out my hand over the pile.

The fire came up in my palm at once, white and silver and clean.

I let it fall.

The collars sank into it.

The iron slumped and ran.

The silver wire flared and went out.

A black stain spread across the rock and crept away into the snow.

Nobody said anything while it burned.

When it was done, I closed my hand, and the fire went out of it.

There was only a dark mark on the stone, and a thin, bitter smoke.

"That's all of them," said the rider.

"Thank you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Severed Ties: Rise of the Silver Wolf from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.