"Not willingly. I search for a sword once wielded by their kings," This made Addie stop nodding. "Gods, lad. You're walking a tricky path."

"You walk it with me."

The cragsman snorted. Air left his nostrils, froze, and then sizzled into mist when it hit the flames. "Where is this place we're heading."

We, Raif was glad in his heart to hear it. "It's named the Lake of Red Ice and I do not know where if is save that it lies somewhere to the east."

"That would explain why we were duck-marched north."

"Yes it would"

Both men grinned.

"She knew you by your name?" Addie asked, a question beneath the question.

"I made the mistake of telling the Far Riders my name. They also learned I was a clansman, from Blackhail." Raif tried not to think of the look in Yiselle No Knife's eyes as she had named him Mor Drakka. "Word must have spread." Reading the worry on the cragsman's face, he added, "She was close to guessing, Addie. She knew my name wasn't Deerhunter, knew I was clan and heading east."

Addie frowned. "Deerhunter. That was one god-awful name."

Raif laughed and after a moment Addie joined in, and they laughed so hard their bellies ached, rocking back and forth by the fire.

Soon after, huddled in blankets, greased rags over their faces, they slept. Raif roused himself once in the night to feed the fire. The sky was ablaze with stars. When he next awoke they were gone, and gray clouds were heading out from the north. It was past dawn. A lone raven was kawing at the top of the ridge.

Addie prepared a breakfast of cold meat and boiled water. "Where to?" he asked as they ate.

Raif looked at the clouds. Without meaning to, Yiselle No Knife had given him information. "Find us a path east," Raif said, standing, "any further north and we could lapse into the Want."

Beating ice and pine needles from their gear, they prepared to break camp and head into land ruled by the Sull.

THIRTY-FIVE Mistakes

"Has the bruise gone?" Raina Blackhail asked Anwyn Bird, angling her face toward the light.

The clan matron folded her arms over the chest and looked critically at all of Raina, not just the bruised section of skin on her cheek. "It's yellow."

Raina put out a hand toward her. "Do not say it, Anny. Who could I go running to?"

"Plenty. You could have started with Orwin Shank."

"His son has just died. How can I put another burden upon him?"

"Corbie Meese then."

"He has lost friends and comrades. His wife has still not risen from her confinement."

Anwyn looked fit to explode. High color flooded her face. "You cannot let Stannig Beade get away with this. You must speak up."

"And say what?" Raina cried. "The clan guide slapped me? He will deny it. He'll bring that sly girl in as a witness and she will confirm his story that I fainted and hit my head against the door." As she was speaking Raina thought she heard a sound coming from behind one of the loom tables, but was too agitated to fully register it. Probably a settling pedal. "I will not be believed. People will pity me. My word will no longer be relied upon. I will be lessened."

"Better lessened than dead."

The two women faced each other, shaking. They were standing in the widows' wall alone. Anwyn had chased off everyone earlier and then gone to fetch Raina, pulling her away from the task of packing a war-supply cart alongside other clan wives.

The hearthstone the room was named for was black with creosote and soot. A meager fire burned deep in the grate, and if no one tended it soon it would go out. There were logs enough in the firepile that lay heaped against one side of the chimney wall, but no one had bothered to add any in several hours. Not all of the shutters had been opened either and the light was patchy and gray. Less than twenty days the Scarpes had occupied this hearth—in direct defiance of the widows' wishes—and in that short time they had turned it from the prettiest and brightest chamber in the Hailhouse into a hovel. Handprints and filth on the distemper walls, ring-shaped burns on the floorboards where they'd set their cookstoves, a shutter left open so the snow came in and rotted the plaster, dog shit, food spills, smoke damage: the list went on. Someone had even stolen the big iron candleholder that had been suspended on a chain from the ceiling. Women looming and carding needed good light to work by in the winter months, and Brog Widdie had wrought that candleholder to relieve their eyes. No wonder the widows were reluctant to come back. Beade had ordered the worktables, looms, racks, embroidery hoops, drum carders and benches returned to their original places but he could not order the widows to sit at them and work.

Not yet anyway. Raina pushed her lips together. She knew at some point she would have to arrange the proper cleanup and retempering of the chamber, but right now she didn't have the strength necessary for issuing the dozens of orders needed to carry it out. Right now she wanted to keep her head low and exist in peace.

And she did not want Anwyn accosting her and trying to force her into action. It was easy for the clan matron; the weight she bore was less. She could retire to her kitchen, and have no one inspect, criticize, or challenge her as she carried out her work. Chief's wife was different. Every time she, Raina Blackhail, walked through the roundhouse gazes followed her, judging her every move, storing mistakes for malicious gossip, disapproving, pleading, snooping.

Muscles beneath Anwyn's large round face set into place as she regarded Raina. "I will give you until supper tonight," she said, "to tell Orwin Shank in person what Stannig Beade did to you. If that hour passes without him knowing, I will visit him myself and tell him what you told me."

Raina inhaled sharply. Anwyn Bird could be hard as stone. Over twenty people worked in her kitchen and she was capable of bullying every one of them. Now she wants to bully me. Why did she push so much? What made her so sure she was right? Anwyn had not stood in front of the entire clan and watched as they willingly believed lies. All those months ago in the greathearth Mace Blackhail had spun the tale of how he and his foster mother had succumbed to mutual lust in the Oldwood. Five hundred warriors had drunk up this outrageous lie.

Truth. Untruth. Didn't Anwyn know that the only thing that mattered in these circumstances was who could sound the most plausible? Stannig Beade was clan guide, practiced in the arts of oratory. He would know how to make his account seem reasonable. Poor Raina. She was upset and I offered her a cup of malt She drank it a little too quickly—you know how women are around hard liquorMand when she rose to leave she cried out in grief and fainted right by the door. Her cheek caught the iron bolt on the way down, isn't that so, Jani?

Raina gazed into Anwyn's dark blue eyes and questioned why she did this. A memory of many moons back came to her, of a package slipped from Angus Lok's hand into Anwyn's belt while neither thought Raina was watching. It had happened in the little diary shed at midwinter. Raina had known Angus Lok nearly as long as she had lived at Blackhail. Always when he came to visit he stirred things up. I will be chief Raina had declared not long after he had last departed. He had told her things, she remembered. Stories of how Mace was treating his tied clansmen—things that only Hailsman should have known.

Raina wondered if Anwyn was in cahoots with the ranger. Angus had not hidden his dislike of Mace Blackhail and Clan Scarpe. Perhaps he and Anwyn had grown weary of Raina's inaction. Perhaps they hoped to force conflict and oust Beade.

Or perhaps Anwyn was just worried about a friend. Raina searched her face. "Do not push me, Anny. There's no telling where it could lead."