the rogue tracker had put her hand in

e pretending to sharpen knives at the end of the table. "Elspeth made her drink," one

dead for a century,

er, and I still leav

me I had finished the story had grown a second head: the rogue had seen a vision and fainted and t

eal. Ivo did, and he sat down across from me w

d behind his chair and answer when spoken to." He looked at me with those flat warrior's eyes. "He also

will g

," Ivo said. "I w

y heart going in circles. A false name was easy. I had used six of them. The difficulty was that Rhys could hear a lie in

I was watching a wood pige

ra had given me when I was small. If Rhys heard the truth in it, he would think it was my whole truth. Nobody in t

came down. Torches in the brackets. The long table moved to the head of the room, and Rhys in the chair at the middle of it with his pale hair catc

Two brothers who looked so alike I had to check their boots to tell them apart. A quiet man with grey at his temples who watched everything and said no

ed his head to Rhys. "You ha

said. "She will an

the hatchet face le

Mara, and my father was a border wolf who died before I was

er is not a mother and the father is a story. I felt Rhys's attention come down on me like a hand

ogue tracker at a muster table. Kie

d pleasantly. "Perhaps the Alpha hope

pring is Kielder's business," he said. "You are here to discuss the border

is arriving in three days, and who will want to know why an Alpha of Kie

oward him. Three days. Aldric would be here in three days, and the Council would wan

wine, and I stayed by the hearth with my back to the fire and

n there," he said. "A

you I

never once looked at me as if I had your whole name." He stood close, and the firelight made h

hree days, when the Council's envoy is he

not an

nly one I ha

look at it. His hand came up and his knuckles brushed the end of my braid where it lay over

omething," Rhys said quietl

ind him when a shadow moved at the far end of the hearth, and Doran

about the spring. I wonder what you will tell them, tracker, and what my foster-