He winced and lurched back towards her. “All I feel right now is ice in my bones and a yearning for a crackling hearth.”

Where he was to find the latter, he wasn’t sure. Ardel’s cottage was a good three hours’ ride back across the fields, and he was certainly in no state to go clambering about over Branghall’s walls, ward-brooch or no.

Though Halvor’s eyes met his, Kurkas had the strangest feeling that she hadn’t seen him.

“Don’t come apart on me now, yeah?”

“The Dark surrounds me,” she murmured, “and there’s no light to show the way.”

Scripture? Now? Kurkas revised his assessment of his companion’s grip on reality.

“A soldier makes his own light. Just needs something to burn.”

Her eyes widened in recognition. “Kevor? Kevor, is that you? Just wait until I tell Katya. We thought you were dead.”

Kurkas felt a chill that had little to do with the weather. This went far beyond exhaustion. “Snap out of it, Halvor. I can’t drag you out of here by the heels, much less carry you.”

“I’ve no need to leave.” She frowned and sat down in the wet. “I’m home. I can lay down my burdens.”

Brilliant. Absolutely bloody brilliant. What was he to do now? Smart thing would be to leave her to it. Maybe find a way of reaching Yanda without Makrov catching wind. But he wasn’t that smart, was he? Smart folk didn’t leave pieces of themselves on battlefields, much less stomp into occupied territory with a fugitive.

He cast about the marketplace. A few knots of southwealders remained, eyed warily by a handful of soldiers. No one seemed to be paying them any heed. So far.

“Captain Halvor,” he hissed. “You need to pull yourself together right bloody now, you understand me?”

She stared past him, expression brightening. “Elda.”

Elda? Who in the Raven’s name was Elda? Kurkas glanced back over his shoulder. A stocky woman stood in the alleyway mouth, rain trickling across a crow’s-footed face and iron-grey plaits. He’d seen her before, though she’d not seen fit to waste her breath on him. Calenne’s foster-mother.

Boots splashing through filthy puddles, Elda closed the distance. “Revekah? It’s me. I’m here.” She glared at Kurkas as if seeing him for the first time and sniffed. “Oh, it’s you. The captain who left filthy boot prints across my hallway. What have you done to her?”

“What have I done?” Fraying patience snapped. “Now you listen to me . . .”

“It can wait.” Elda straightened, suddenly all business. “Let’s get her inside.”

Kurkas glanced from one to the other, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling with uncertainty. But what were the options? Leave Halvor out in the rain?

“Have it your way.”

Forty-Seven

Forty-Seven