Page 56 of Setting the Break

"He's not being stupid. He's being Da." He looks at Morgan and swallows. "Your highness. He won't tell them anything. He doesn't like anybody who comes up the lane with a sword, he won't even tell them the time of day, he told the tax assessor to go and boil his head last spring." He hesitates. "But they'll not stop asking. And they'll look around, after. They always look around after."

"Then I'd very much like not to be here when they do," Morgan says.

The boy nods. He tips his head back toward the far side of the yard, where the field slopes down toward a line of bare willows.

"Follow the creek," the boy says, low. "Down past the bend where it goes under the alders. The trees'll hide you from the road the whole way, they run right along the bank. It's wet going, mind. There's no path, you'll be in the water half the time. But it comes out at the outpost at the Kettle ford, and there's always six at the outpost. They'll see you home."

"How far?"

"Half a day, walking the horse. More if you fall in." He looks Morgan over, the filthy coat and the mud to the knee and the hands still not quite steady on the reins, with the plain frank assessment of the young. "You look like you might fall in."

"I am almost certainly going to fall in," Morgan says.

The girl laughs out loud and claps both hands over her own mouth.

Morgan looks at the two of them. He has been awake for a day and a night and his eyes are burning with it, and there are men in war paint at the bottom of this family's lane who would put a sword through all three of them for what is happening in this hen yard. The boy has eggs in his shirt. The girl is still holding his sleeve.

"What are your names?" Morgan asks. "Both of you. Your father's as well."

"Hild," the girl says. "And he's Tor. And Da's Einar."

"Hild. Tor. And Einar, who told the tax assessor to go and boil his head." Morgan nods to each of them in turn. "I am going to come back when this is done, and I am going to tell your father what you did this morning. You are going to hate how long I spend telling him."

Tor goes red to the ears. Hild beams.

Then she lets go of his sleeve, finally, and Morgan feels his arm come back to him. He is not sure he has ever been so grateful and so ashamed of being grateful at the same time.

"Go on," Tor says. "Before Da runs out of things to say."

Morgan goes.

He leads the horse down across the bottom of the field with the barn between him and the road, and the frozen stubble crunches under both of them far too loudly. He does not breathe properly until the willows close in behind him. The creek is brown and fast and very cold. The first time he steps in it the water goes over the top of his boot and he says a word his brother taught him, entirely by accident, at the age of seven.

He looks back over his shoulder once from the edge of the trees. He can see the roof of the barn and a thread of smoke from the house and nothing else, no riders, no paint. He looks back again at the bend, where the alders start, and there is still nothing.

Then he turns the horse into the water and keeps going, and the whole way down the creek he is making a list in his head, and the list still covers half the keep, and none of the names on it are names he wants.

19

BOHDI

They come in through the east gate a little after noon, and the city knows before they are halfway up the hill.

Bohdi watches it happen. Word goes up the streets faster than a horse can walk, the way it always does in Valen. By the time they reach the market row there are people standing in doorways and people leaning out of upper windows and a baker in the middle of the road with flour to her elbows, all of them looking at the small dark-haired man sitting in front of the king.

Then somebody starts clapping, and somebody else joins in, and by the top of the hill half the lower city is on the road behind them. Indrie has gone scarlet to the collar. He puts his face in Eskil's shoulder somewhere around the cooper's and does not take it out again. Eskil looks straight ahead with his jaw set so hard Bohdi can see the muscle jump.

Bohdi grins at the crowd and waves, because somebody ought to, and because the alternative is looking at his king's face and laughing out loud in front of four hundred people.

He is also counting. He does it without deciding to, the way he always does, one eye on the road and one on the faces. He is looking for a blond head in the crowd, or at the top of the keep steps, or anywhere at all. He is looking for a tall slender shape with its arms folded, waiting to tell all of them precisely how late they are and how badly they smell.

He does not find one.

That is fine. Morgan does not stand in crowds. Morgan will be in the study with the door shut, buried in whatever four days of council has produced. He will hear they are back when a clerk runs in to tell him, and he will finish the line he is writing first on principle.

That is what Bohdi tells himself all the way up to the stables. He has been telling himself comfortable things for thirty years and he is extremely good at it, and it has never once failed him right up until the moment it does.

The stable yard is chaos. Grooms coming out of everywhere at once, horses being led off, somebody shouting for hot water, and Ingrid, who must have run the whole way, hurling herself at Dagny before Dagny has both feet on the ground. The two of them stand there wrapped up in each other in the middle of the yard while the horses mill around them, and Dagny has her face in her wife's hair and her eyes shut. Bohdi looks away to give them the moment and his eyes go down the row of stalls.