Chapter 337: The Road To Arshford

She only smiled, and reached down, and patted Shadowmere’s neck, and felt the warm slow thump of his heart beneath her palm.

And under it, so faint she might have imagined it, she felt a second heartbeat, far away. Slow. Vast. Patient.

I’m coming, she thought.

***

The tower stood at the top of a low rise, a square stone shell with no roof.

They reached it at noon. It had been a watchtower once, one of a line that had run along the old border, and it was falling down by degrees. The walls still stood, four-square and waist-thick, but the floors were gone, and the beams, and the stairs. Grass grew where the hearth had been. A single ash tree had sprouted through the middle, tall and thin and golden, and its leaves lay in drifts across the flagstones.

"Here," said Draeven.

He swung down. Kaelen did the same. Morgana slid from the saddle, a little stiff, and Shadowmere put his nose into the ash leaves and began, with great contentment, to crop at a clump of long grass.

They spread a blanket in the angle of the wall, out of the wind.

It was a good place. The old stone held the sun, and the air inside the walls was still and warm. Above, the sky was pale and high. She sat down with her back against the stones and her legs stretched out, and a great sigh went through her, from her shoulders to her toes.

"Don’t fall asleep," said Kaelen.

"I’m not."

"You’re swaying."

"I’m resting."

"You’re resting like a woman who’s about to pitch face first into the stew."

"There isn’t any stew."

"There will be." He crouched in front of the small pile of wood he had been gathering. A spark leapt from his fingertips, small and blue and cold, and the kindling caught with a soft whump, and orange flame spread across the sticks. "I have a surprise."

"A surprise stew?"

"I’ve been carrying it in my coat since the palace."

He pulled out a small dented pot. It was blackened and ancient, with a wire handle and a hole in the lid. Morgana stared at it.

"Where did you get that?"

"Lysander. He said, a man cannot travel without a pot. He seemed to feel very strongly."

"Lysander is a wise man."

"Lysander," said Draeven, from the opposite wall, "has always had an unreasonable attachment to cookware."

Kaelen ignored him.

He unwrapped Agnes’s bundle with the air of a man opening a treasure chest. The cold chicken emerged, and the bread, and the cheese, and a lump of the plum cake wrapped in a cloth. He tore the chicken into chunks. He put water from a skin into the pot, and some of the bread, and a handful of something green from his pocket that smelled of mint, and set it on the fire.

"It’s soup," said Morgana.

"It’s stew."

"It’s chicken water."

"It’s a rustic stew, and you will enjoy it."

She did.

She hadn’t expected to. But the smell rose up, warm and savory and wild, and her stomach turned over, and when he put a battered tin cup in her hands she drank it down to the bottom. It tasted of smoke and salt and mint. It was the best thing she had ever eaten.

"You see?" said Kaelen, smug.

"I withdraw all comment."

"I’ll accept an apology."

"I’m sorry I doubted you."

"Say it again."

"I’m sorry I doubted you, great Kaelen, master of the rustic stew."

"Thank you."

She laughed. She lay back on the blanket, with her head against her saddlebag, and the cup balanced on her stomach, and looked up at the sky.

The light was soft and gold. It slanted through the branches of the ash, and the leaves above her glittered like thin plates of metal. A wood pigeon cooed somewhere in the distance. The fire popped softly. She heard Draeven’s boots on the flagstones, and the quiet clink of a spoon.

He sat down beside her.

He did it with great care, folding his long legs and lowering himself to the blanket as if she might break. He did not say anything. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and a few of the pale gold scales caught the light on his wrists. He sat with his elbows on his knees and looked out through the doorway of the ruin at the long green valley beyond.

"It’s lovely," said Morgana.

"It is."

"Have you been here before?"

"Once." His voice was quiet. "A hundred and seventy years ago. I was returning from the north, in winter. I stopped here for the night." A pause. "It was not as pleasant then."

"Why?"

"There was a roof. And snow came through it." The faint curve of a smile. "I slept in the corner, in my cloak. In the morning, there was a fox in the ashes of the fire. It looked at me, and I looked at it, and neither of us moved for a very long time."

"What happened?"

"It stole my last piece of meat."

She laughed.

"I did not mind," said Draeven. "I remember thinking it was the most agreeable theft I had ever suffered."

"You’ve got a very polite way of being robbed."

"I have had a great deal of practice."

"Have you?"

"Kaelen." He did not look at his brother. "Tell her about the time you were robbed."

"I was not robbed."

"You were relieved of your boots."

"I traded them."

"For a goose."

"It was a good goose."

"You were barefoot in the mountains for three days."

"Character building," said Kaelen, with dignity.

She was laughing so hard that she couldn’t breathe. She rolled onto her side, with her hand pressed to her ribs, and tears ran down her temples into her hair. Draeven watched her with a small, helpless smile, and Kaelen looked deeply offended and then gave up and began to laugh himself.