A little of the chill fades from his bones. A little of the weariness from his soul follows it.
Shipwright sits next to him, working her boots from her feet, rubbing the life back into them.
‘Here,’ Shroudweaver says, patting his lap. She moves them over and he sets to, his fingers tracing calluses and curves.
She sighs happily. ‘Now I really know how you bring the dead back to life.’
He shoots her a look. ‘A bad place for that kind of chat.’
She kicks to remind him to keep working. ‘Why?’
‘I’ll show you once your socks are on.’
A little later, he hangs the soup over the fire, and pulls a lit branch gingerly out of the larger logs.
Shipwright sits close to the flames, her fingers working over something brass which spins and clicks.
‘Come on,’ he smiles. ‘I’ll give you the tour before dinner.’
She grins up at him. ‘Give me a kiss before that and you’re on.’
He pulls Shipwright to her feet, and presses himself against her. She can taste the desire on the edge of his lips.
‘If we keep this up, I’m going to bed hungry and uneducated,’ she mutters. ‘Plus, you’re getting cinders in my hair.’
Shroudweaver steps back. ‘Romance is dead,’ he intones. ‘In its place, we present history.’ He moves the torch closer to the outer wall, past a series of small regular hollows. ‘See, here, bread ovens. Set around the edge of the house to heat it all evenly. The warmth would have been channelled down through tiles.’ He points at her feet. She scuffs experimentally and something clinks.
‘Hah, I knew it.’ He pulls her back towards the fire. ‘Here, living quarters. You see the outlines? Sleeping quarters over there.’
Shipwright turns, waves her arms up at the tower. ‘And this?’
He frowns. ‘I’m not sure. A watchtower, probably. Times gone by, you’d want eyes on the north. On the forest too probably.’
She watches him explain the finer details, eyes alight.
‘Here, a well,’ he says, ‘and here, if you dug, the midden.’ Hisfingers linger on a wall, a brick scratched with marks. It pulls loose with a little knife work.
In the hollow behind they find some ancient coins, stones worn smooth by the wind. Something that might have been a bracelet once. A cat collar.
She stands behind him as he turns them over slowly in his hands.
He looks up at her. ‘So many generations before us.’ A soft smile. ‘Isn’t it a relief?’
She puts an arm around his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I’m quite fond of this generation. It has us.’
Shroudweaver leans into the curve of her. ‘True. Lucky.’
Her fingers trace the hard lines of his skull as the wind blows down from the sleeping barrows. ‘Thell tomorrow?’
He nods. ‘Thell tomorrow.’
Shipwright furrows her brow, and harrows a hand through his hair to pick out windblown seeds, hooked as claws. ‘And after that, what’s the plan?’
Shroudweaver’s voice is soft. ‘First, we speak to Skinpainter. Get a handle on the situation.’
She works at a particularly stubborn burr. ‘And after that?’
‘We wait for Crowkisser to come to us. We can’t match her on the field, but if I can get her out onto the Barrowlands, we have the advantage.’
