She moved, quick as a cat, and pressed her sleeve against the cut to staunch the blood. After a week of nearly perfect solitude, her touch sent a shiver down my spine.

“You’re not from the mountain?” she asked, examining the cut.

“It’s my mother’s village, but I was born on the coast.”

“It was bad luck, then, that brought you here.”

Yes, I thought. A mountain of it.

“Did your father have ships?”

“Three.”

“This isn’t deep,” she said, releasing me. “But be careful shedding blood here. What did he trade?”

The casual way she mentioned blood set my heart racing, and I glanced at the wolves. None of them seemed to have scented my blood, but perhaps there were other, hungrier things about.

“Cloth, mostly.” I tried not to let her see my fear. Animals could smell that, too. “He wanted to sell furs from the mountains after we fled the city.”

Her silence warned me long before she spoke.

“A poor choice.” It was all she said, but the temperature in the room dropped.

“It was,” I said, rushing to fill the frigid air. “Nobody would touch his goods. That’s why he needed the Locklands. He wanted to trade through them, but no city merchant would take someone from the mountains seriously. And now . . .”

“Now he trades bones for more bones.”

It was an odd phrase, and I braced myself for the question I had to ask. “Did you kill them?”

“Who?”

“The other two men with my father.”

The Huntress turned away from me and poured the wine into two horns.

“They knew the price.”

“The price for what?” My voice rose. I tried not to think about the white wolf on the sledge and the resemblance it bore to her other wolves.

“Drink,” the Huntress ordered.

I obeyed, but the wine did not drown my questions.

“The price for what?” I asked again.

She gave me a swift, piercing look. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“You’re the Huntress,” I said, taking another sip. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with a price. Or murder.”

“If you knew who I was, you would not be asking me that question.”

I felt my fear ebb, pushed aside by a growing wave of irritation.

“Fine. Are you going to tell me?”

She swirled the horn of wine, glancing up at me once through the tendril of steam rising from it.

“I haven’t decided.”

Before I could release my cry of outrage, she stood, beckoning me to follow her. “Come, merchant’s daughter. I have a place for questions.”

She led me up a different staircase. I thought it might lead to the central tower, but I was not sure. I had been allowed so little access to the keep that the layout remained hazy.