Page 5 of The Sun He Buried

That’s his entire response.

The courtyard wind pushes another curl across my mouth. I spit it out, lose my grip on the yarn, and watch the cat drag another half inch between his teeth before Asta catches him around the middle.

“Traitor.” I point my hook at him.

Asta settles the cat against her ribs. He goes boneless in her arms, because apparently he can behave when the person holding him has dignity.

“You put the basket beside him.” She pulls the damp strand from his mouth. “Then you looked away.”

“I trusted him.”

“You met him yesterday.”

“It was a powerful day.”

The cat starts purring.

Asta gives me the yarn. “Your judgment remains excellent.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“Then your delivery needs work.”

I wipe the wool on my skirt and study the last row of stitches. The scarf was supposed to be a deep blue rectangle. At present it has one straight edge, one adventurous edge, and a narrow section in the middle where I forgot how counting works. Asta will wear it anyway. She’s worn every terrible thing I’ve made since we were children, including the yellow hat that kept sliding over her eyes through an entire winter procession.

She claimed it was warm.

It was also an attack.

Behind us, wood cracks against wood in the training yard. Boots scrape over packed earth. Men grunt, curse, and occasionally hit the ground hard enough to make the low stone wall tremble beneath my bottom.

I’ve lived in Sólvik long enough that the noise barely catches my attention now. The sea does. It always does. Even here, tucked behind the hall with three walls between us and the cliffs, I can hear it driving into the rock below. Gullither has wind through grain, soft and endless. Sólvik has waves trying to break the land apart.

I love both sounds.

The cat reaches one black paw toward my basket.

“No.” I pull it farther away.

His paw follows.

“You’re very bold for a man being held by his armpits.”

“He’s worked out that you’re weak.” Asta turns one page of the household list balanced on her knee.

“I’m not weak.”

The cat gets his claws into the blue wool.

I lunge for it, catch my boot on the basket handle, and pitch sideways. My shoulder hits Asta’s. The household list flies out of her hand. The hook escapes mine. The basket flips over, releasing two balls of yarn, three loose buttons, and the heel of bread I forgot I had.

The cat takes the bread.

Of course he does.

Asta watches him trot toward the training-yard gate with his prize. “A decisive victory.”