Inside.
He knows which jokes land before I admit they've landed. He knows why I check the treeline. He knows I keep three weapons under my bed because he listened, and he didn't flinch, and he kept coming back every morning, and somewhere in all of those mornings I stopped noticing I was letting him, and now he's standing here with a basket full of proof and I am holding a stone that mirrors the one I chose for the person I see myself most in this settlement and my hands are?—
My hands are shaking.
I trusted Oliver. I trusted him the way you trust someone who grew up beside you, someone who knows your name beforeit meant anything, and he counted us up like inventory and traded us for goods and I remember standing in the Stonevein camp and understanding that there is no weight too small for someone to put on a scale with you, if the other side holds something they want more.
I've known Ursik for weeks. Weeks. And he was looking at me like?—
"Hey." His voice drops, just slightly. "Aislin?—"
I shove the basket back into his chest.
It hits harder than I mean it to and he catches it, surprised, off-balance for half a second — and that half second is enough. I'm already moving, turning away from the look on his face and the stone and the carved figure and all of it, already pushing through the edge of the crowd with my heart hammering in my ears and the morning feeling suddenly very bright and very loud.
I don't run.
I walk fast, and I don't look back, and the courtyard falls away behind me.
20
URSIK
Istand there for three full seconds after she disappears into the crowd.
The basket is in my hands. The cord she'd barely looked at, the stone she'd held for less than a breath before pressing the whole thing back into my ribs like I'd offered her something she needed rid of.
The courtyard carries on around me — laughter, the clink of objects being drawn out of baskets, Drogath's voice somewhere to the left narrating someone's exchange with the satisfaction of a man watching his own prophecy prove itself — and I just stand there like I've been planted.
I've stood in front of blades with less of this particular stillness.
Kerra appears at my shoulder. She looks at the basket, then at the space where Aislin was, then back at the basket. She says nothing for a moment, which is actually the most unsettling thing about it.
"Don't," I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
She considers this. "I was going to say you should probably not stand there holding that basket with that face on you for much longer or Drogath is going to notice."
She says it a half-second before he arrives, which means she saw him coming and timed it, and I file that away for later.
"Ursik." Drogath draws up beside me with the particular solemnity of a man who has been waiting his whole life for this exact dramatic beat. His beaded staff shifts as he plants it. He surveys the empty space where Aislin had stood, then the basket in my hands, then back again with the slow, mournful sweep of someone composing a ballad in real time. "Your offering was rejected."
I look at him.
"This is significant." He lowers his voice, which means he raises it slightly and adds a resonant quality that he probably callsgravitas. "The ancient texts speak of this — when the gift is turned away, it is an omen?—"
"Drogath."
"—the spring herself recoils, and the coming season?—"
"Drogath—"
"—carries the weight of this refusal like frost that?—"
"I will remove your head from your body if you keep talking." My voice is very flat. "I will do it with my hands, which is harder than using a blade and takes longer and I will not mind. If you say one more word about the spring, I will find out if that staff floats and test it in the river."
