Page 199 of The Sun He Buried

“Less than the hall.”

“The hall is made of timber.”

“Then more.”

His eyes stay on the snow.

“Everybody kept leaving me.”

“A mystery.”

“The singing was bad.”

“I heard.”

“From where?”

He doesn’t answer.

Purple in the dark. Men looking over my shoulder. The silver-eyed man losing the rest of his sentence.

I turn my face toward him.

“Did you make them go?”

“They discovered other obligations.”

“Inside the wall?”

“Urgent ones.”

I think about this until thinking becomes too heavy.

“You do that.”

His gaze reaches me. “Do what?”

“Make people go away.”

The purple eye narrows.

“You do.” I push one finger into the scratchy wool. “You make them go first, so you can say it was your idea.”

He stops breathing. I know because I’m close enough to hear the absence.

“Then you sit outside when they’re gone.”

Snow lands between us.

“It’s a very bad system.”

Eirik looks back at the sky. His face is silver, pale skin, and two eyes that have stopped giving me anything easy.

Still, he doesn’t put the sharp part back.

“You’re drunk,” he says.

“Yes.”