Page 64 of The Sun He Buried

“That sentence doesn’t make sense.”

“Neither did excessive.”

I lean across the carriage and take her cup.

She lets me drink from it before taking it back. “Did he feed from you?”

“No.”

The answer comes easily. Baldr made sure it would.

“He said he wouldn’t unless I asked, and he wouldn’t ask me last night because he wanted me to know which part was him.”

Asta’s amusement fades.

She looks at the curtain hiding him from us.

“That was good of him,” she says.

“Yes.”

“And the rest?”

I point at her. “You had your serious question.”

“I have many.”

“You get one.”

“You’ve been speaking since we passed the gate.”

“That was one very long answer.”

“With twenty-three buttons.”

“They mattered at the time.”

The curtain shifts again. Baldr doesn’t look inside.

Asta leans closer. “Was he—“

“The horses can hear you.”

“The horses do not care.”

“I care. I have to look at those horses.”

“Sól.”

“They know things now.”

That ruins her.

She folds over with both hands against her stomach, laughing without making enough sound for the riders to hear. I try to stay offended. Then the carriage bounces again, Asta tips into me, and we’re both laughing by the time Baldr’s voice comes from the saddle, asking whether the wheel’s broken.

It hasn’t.

The road spends the next three days trying.