The Stormbringer's Mate

ng I noticed

it has been lying in the open for a day and a half. I had been smelling it for the last forty minutes of the flight, and Angus h

e woman standing on the landing p

twice around her neck. The wind pulled at her sleeves and tried to take her hood, and she stood there as if it were a mild afternoon in a town with

killed the engine. The rotors slowed. The noise fell away and the

erking his thumb at the rear compartment. "She won't have it

ld them

ey hair whipping. "She runs it. She runs the mountain, near enough. You want to a

t me sideways. I had not been up here in three years, and my body remembered the p

, which was one pace farther than polite, and looked

m," sh

not in the flight plan. I was listed as a maintenance contractor

s ask

." She lifted the thermos. "Tea,

a body in

ard the rear of the chopper without waiting for either of us, the lantern swinging from her elbow, and I followed because

the pad. He was a big man, or had been. Brown hair, a beard gone stiff with ice, a grey jacket torn at the

l lads brought him up to the house and the house sent him here, because the

he?" I

blue eyes, a scatter of freckles across her nose, eyebrows so pale they almost vanished. She looked at the dead man's hands, at his boots, at

thing, a kitchen blade ground thin and rehandled in dark wood, and she tu

twist or do any of the things a corpse does

esn't bite," she said, and put the knife away.

reet visitors

e weeks." She stood and picked up her lantern. "Bring him inside. The cold room is on the north side. Angus, you can put the chopper

ot back into the chopper. Elsie walked toward

of a ridge above a valley I could not see. There was a hangar to one side, a shed to the other, and a fence that had given up in two pl

r smelled of paraffin and wet wool and something baking. Elsie hung her coat on a hook and her hair was even

," she sai

the time and the date and his clothes and his boots and the exact shade of his jacket, and she did it all without asking me to h

said. "Th

e wall that ticked faintly when the wind gusted. She poured two mugs and set one in front of me without asking if I wanted milk. There was a

g how I know you

crossed

a letter to this station asking whether we had seen a rogue with a grey jacket and no pack mark, and the same day the pack house sent a different letter asking whether we had seen you." She blew on her te

a lot of

ky. The lette

oo much sugar in it and I was grateful for

im of her mug. "That's what Duncan's letter said. A rogue is dead on the east ridge, someone on this m

Council's

im will answer to them." She set the mug down. "The two letters arrived in the sam

at it. A brass face, a black needle, a sma

se is u

e road stays open, which it won't. Fiona, the pack healer, is at the pack house and comes up wh

re a

not blin

eyes went yellow for a second and then they didn't." I put my mug down. "A wolf your age shifts when

the window in small dry ticks. Her fingers were laced to

," she said at last. "Drink you

not an

I don't know you, and I don't know what you did on that night three years ago, and I am not going to hand you my secrets because the pack house sent you." She pulled a ring of keys off a nail and t

aint and sweet and impossible, the smell of a wolf who was not supposed to be there. Not the dead man. Her. Something in her scent had hooked itself into the b

t aft

ls

d her and her face was in shadow and her eyes caught the li

was before you saw my face. You knew by my scent. A w

not," s

did you le

to. The wind pushed at the roof and the lamp flicke

r scent in the snow on the east ridge, and I have been tr