They walked on. The others had started up again, following the track she’d found, an old deer trail that wound through stands of pine and spruce.

Finally, he said, “What about the other thing?”

She glanced back. The others were lost to sight among the trees.

“Yes, Kem. I killed the Duenn Manor captain who was raping your mother.”

He flinched, as she’d meant him to.

“If I could have killed Lord Duenn and gotten away with it, I’d have done that too. But I couldn’t. Running was our only option.”

His face got very red, blood rushing to his cheeks. He huffed, catching his breath, then demanded, “What else are you hiding from me?”

She rubbed her forearm.

“Why do you always do that with your arm when you’re nervous? ‘An old injury,’ that’s what you always say. What does it really mean?”

This time it was she who didn’t know what to say. How to proceed. Where to go with this. It was too much. Too soon. Too late.

“See! You still won’t trust me. Whatever it is.”

For the first time, she saw tears on his face.

Her beloved child was crying, and it was she who had hurt him.

“No, no, listen, Kem. I’ll show you. But it has to be in secret.”

“In secret? Why?”

“I have to show you. It’s not something that can be explained.”

He scrubbed impatiently at his damp cheeks with the back of a hand. “You’re just putting me off, but I guess that’s how you operate.”

“Yes, I did put it off too long.” Once started, she found she didn’t want to stop, too much bottled up all these years. “I loved your mother so much. It’s true, it was hard to be her sister some of the time. She was difficult one day and generous the next. Oh, by the High Heavens, she deserved better. Here’s the thing I want you to understand, Kem. I’d do it again.”

“Do what again?” he said sullenly. “Murder a man?”

“Yes. If you can’t live with that, then so be it. I didn’t even know she’d been sent down to the barracks until I was walking back from the latrines late in the evening and I heard her crying out from the shed the men called ‘Cock’s-a-Walking.’” Her voice got flatter, harsher. “I blame myself.”

“How can you blame yourself? You were, what, the lowest rank of sentinel?”

“Militia, not sentinel, because we were the Manor’s guard, not imperial. But, yes, I was the lowest rank.”