HE WAS JUST A SECRET WOLF

Chapter Thirty-Nine: What the Sergeant Saw

Orin did not stop talking for three hours, and Kael did not want him to.

They sat by the spring at Sootwater, in the thin gold light of late afternoon, with the old man propped against a fallen log and his splinted leg stretched out before him. Widow Harrow had already scolded him twice for sitting up, and he had ignored her twice. He told the story the way he told everything, in order, in a flat even voice, without ornament. But he kept stopping, and starting again, and looking at Kael as if to make sure he was still there.

"I was twenty years old," he said. "The youngest man in the western picket. Captain Hale picked me because I could keep my mouth shut. That was the only talent I had."

"You were a sergeant."

"I was a corporal. Vale exaggerates. It's an Imperial habit." A dry breath. "I was in the ditch on the south bank at dawn, because Mace had sent me to check the water. I saw him loose the arrow. I saw it go into the line, and I saw Tam fall, and I understood what it was before anyone else did." His hands tightened on the blanket. "And I did nothing. I stood in that ditch with my mouth open. I told myself I had misunderstood."

"Orin..."

"I'm telling you so you'll know what kind of man raised you. Not a hero. A boy who froze." He met Kael's eyes. "Then the horns sounded, and the river turned red, and somewhere in the first hour the Queen's chamberlain found me by the south road. He said the Queen wanted the child out by the servants' stair. He said I was the only soldier left alive within a mile of the palace." He swallowed. "So I took you. And for seventeen years I told myself that carrying you was atonement. It was the only thing I ever did right."

Kael did not answer. He found that he could not. He picked up a stone from the edge of the spring and turned it over in his fingers.

"You lied about the cottage," he said at last. "The stone. The letter. The note."

"I did."

"You lied to the Emperor, and to me, and to the people who were digging."

"I did all of those, and I'd do them again." The old man's mouth twitched. "I'm told I'm very good at it. Your mother said so. She said I had a face like a closed door."

"She said that?"

"In the last letter. The one she gave me with you." He nodded at the cloak, folded beside Kael. "She wrote a line to me at the bottom, on the outside. Be kind to him, Orin. And do not tell him I was afraid." His voice cracked, very slightly. "I never could keep that one."

The sun slid lower. Somewhere across the clearing a child was chasing a goose, and a woman was shouting at both of them.

"There's something else," said Orin.

His voice had changed. Kael looked up.

"Two years after the war. You were two and a half. We were in Ashdown, in the cottage. I had been very careful. No letters, no travelers, no questions. I thought I was safe." He wet his lips. "One night I heard a sound at the door. Someone scratching, very softly, like a stray dog. I took the old sword and opened it."

"Who was it?"

"A woman. Thin and ragged, with a child on her hip." His eyes went far away. "I knew her. Dessa. The scout from the western ford. She had been walking for a month."

Kael's heart gave a hard slow beat.

"Ket's mother."

"I didn't know the child's name then. She was a little thing, two years old, asleep with her face in her mother's collar." Orin drew a long breath. "Dessa told me everything. How she'd gone to find Captain Hale on the morning of the Greenwater, and found him dead with an arrow in his throat. How she had run. How she had been hiding in the Greywood since, with nobody to tell. And she told me she had found Mace."

The name sat in the air like a stone in water.

"He was alive?"

"He was living in Solhaven under another name." Orin's voice was very low. "A gatekeeper at the palace. Tobiah Grist, they called him. A big quiet man with a limp, who locked the east postern every night and opened it every dawn and had never once, in thirteen years, been asked where he'd come from." He shook his head. "The Emperor kept him close. A loose arrow is a thing you want to be able to find."

"She knew his face."

"She'd seen it across a hundred campfires. She followed him to the market one day and knew him by the way he cut his bread." The old man pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth. "She wanted my help. She said, Orin, you were a picket too. You saw it. If the two of us stand up together, they'll have to listen. And I said no."

"Why?"

"Because I had you." He looked at Kael, and the lines in his face were deep as old wounds. "You were two and a half, and you had your mother's eyes, and a mark on your wrist that would get you killed. I was terrified. I told her I couldn't. I told her it was too dangerous." His voice broke. "I told her to take her child and go to the Greywood, to the old oak, and wait."

"And she did."

"She did. And three days later she left the child with the Wolves and went to Solhaven alone." He closed his eyes. "I never saw her again. I never asked. I'd have been a coward either way."

Kael sat very still.

The light had gone amber. Across the clearing, a thin column of smoke rose from the first cook-fire anyone had dared to light. He heard a pot clank, a spoon strike wood. He heard Mara's voice, scolding Pip. He heard the quiet, steady heartbeat of the man in front of him, a heart that had been broken for seventeen years and had never once stopped.

"You were afraid," he said.

"Yes."

"Of what would happen to me."

"Of everything." Orin opened his eyes. "I'm not asking you to forgive it. Only to know."

"I think I know." Kael set down the stone. "I think I've known since the cottage. You didn't keep me ignorant because you were weak. You did it because the only thing you were sure of was that you couldn't survive losing me." He took a breath. "I was angry. I'm not, now. I mean, I am. A little. But it's the kind of angry that comes from loving someone, so it doesn't count."

Orin made a small broken sound.

"That's a very Fox thing to say."

"I've been spending time with Foxes."

"I can see that." The old man reached out, awkwardly, and gripped his shoulder. "Torin."

"Kael."

"Kael." A long, shaky breath. "I'm so proud of you I can't stand it."

He found Ket on the edge of the clearing at dusk, sitting alone on a stump with her bow unstrung across her knees.

She had not wept since the hall. He had watched her the whole of the long day, small and fierce and quiet, moving through the camp like someone carrying a full cup. She had helped Widow Harrow dress wounds. She had split kindling for a woman who could not lift an axe. She had said nothing to anyone, and no one had known what to say to her.

"I need to tell you something," Kael said.

"I thought you might." She did not look up. "You've got the face. The one you wear when you have to say something awful."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Teyr has the same one." She gave a thin, cracked laugh. "He wanted to tell me in the hall. I said no. I wanted to hear it from you." Her dark eyes lifted. "Is she dead?"

"I don't know."

"But you know something."

He sat down beside her on the cold earth. He told her all of it, slowly, in order. The scout at the western ford. The sergeant with the cup of wine. The ragged woman at the cottage door, with a sleeping child on her hip. The long walk to the old oak. The road to Solhaven, and the gatekeeper at the east postern.

When he finished, the stars had come out. Ket had not moved. Her hands, around the bow, were white to the knuckles.

"He's alive," she said.

"Maybe. If Orin's right."

"A man called Tobiah Grist."

"Yes."

"Who locks the east postern at night." She said it quietly, as though committing it to memory. "A big man with a limp."

"Ket..."

"I don't want you to try to stop me." Her voice did not shake. "I know what you'll say. It's seventeen years. He might be dead. He might have gone. It might not be him." She turned her head and looked at him, and in the starlight her face was thin and sharp and very young. "But I've lived my whole life not knowing why my mother left. And now I know. She went to Solhaven for the truth, and she didn't come back, and that man is the reason."

"I wasn't going to stop you."

"No?"

"I was going to ask if I could come." He tried to smile. "I'm told I'm good at breaking into palaces. I've never actually done it. But I'm told."

She stared at him. Then, to his surprise, she laughed, a short, startled, ragged sound that turned into something else halfway through. She pressed her wrist against her mouth. She shook. After a while she stopped.

"You're an idiot," she said wetly.

"Everyone says that."

"I mean it kindly." She wiped her eyes. "You're going to Solhaven anyway. The whole lot of you. The Princess, the Fox, the clans. I'll go as a Wolf archer, in the Wolf delegation, in front of the whole hall." Her mouth set. "And when I find him, I'm going to ask him one question."

"What?"

"Whether she said anything. At the end." Her voice dropped. "That's all. I don't even want him dead. I just want to know what my mother's last words were."

Kael did not trust himself to speak. He only took her hand, awkwardly, and held it.

They sat there until the stars were thick above the pines.

The bird came at midnight.

Sorrel found him by the fire, where he was sitting with Aurelia and Orin, passing a bowl of thin stew from hand to hand. The Fox arrived at a run, a tiny scroll clutched in his fist, and his face in the light was ash-white.

"Tavian," he said. "It's from Tavian."

Aurelia was on her feet before the word was out.

"Read it. Read it, please."

He unrolled the slip with trembling fingers. It was written in a quick, slanting hand, smudged where the ink had run, and Kael read it over his shoulder.

Rell. Got to the house at dawn on the second day. Maren and the girl are safe. Out through the east stair, as I hoped. They're with Mother's old nurse on the south road. Oswin knew I was coming. He had the house sealed. Lord Cressin's men, forty of them, plus the Chamberlain's own guard. I got in through the cellar. I killed no one. Three men are hurt.

Father's recall order never reached the gates. Oswin has the palace seal. He's declared the Emperor "indisposed" and himself Regent in the name of the Lion Council. The captains are split. Half the city is under his hand.

I'm in hiding in the old chapel. I can hold a day, two at most. Don't come by the road. They're watching every crossing. If you must come, come through the east postern. There's a gatekeeper there. A big man with a limp. He's let me past twice. I don't know why.

Tell Father he needs to hurry. T.

A long silence followed.

"Grist," said Orin, very softly.

Ket had risen from the shadows at the edge of the firelight. She stood perfectly still, with her bow clutched in one hand and her eyes fixed on the little scrap of paper.

"He let Tavian through," she said. "Twice."

"Why would he do that?" said Aurelia.

"Because he's been waiting seventeen years for someone to ask him a question." Orin's voice was heavy. "And because I think he's tired of being a locked door."

Kael looked at the paper. At the smudged ink, the careful handwriting, the last line. Tell Father he needs to hurry. He thought of a tall grey man in a plain coat, standing on the edge of an empty hole, saying I would like to go home now, and see if I can save him.

"Oswin has the seal," he said. "He's the Regent. He doesn't want a Great Hall. He doesn't want a confession. He wants the clans to walk into Solhaven in two weeks, and the Emperor to be dead or silent when they do."

"He's going to ambush us," said Aurelia.

"He's going to ambush all of us."

"Then we can't go."

"We have to." Kael rose, and found the mark on his wrist was calm, steady as a lamp. "If we don't, the Emperor stands alone in that hall with no one to hear him, and Oswin wins. And Tavian's in the chapel. And Ket's mother's killer is at the east postern."

"It's a trap, Kael."

"I know."

"It's the worst kind. The kind with a door that's open."

"Yes." He took her hand. "But Orin taught me something. He said he's never once been wrong about which door is a trap. So maybe I should ask him which door isn't."

They all turned.

On his blanket by the fire, with the stew bowl in his lap and his splinted leg stretched out, Orin looked up. His grey face was weary and creased and unreadable.

Then, slowly, with great care, the old man began to smile.

"Now," he said, "that's the first sensible question anyone's asked me in a month."