Page 125 of Flames and Blood

“That’s not what I said.” He leans on the rail next to me, not too close. He’s careful about the distance. He’s careful about everything. “You say the right thing every time. But your heart’s not in it. Your mind’s somewhere else.”

“You noticed?”

“I notice things. It’s a flaw.” He smiles. “I’m not going to ask where you go. I wanted you to know somebody sees it happen.”

“There’s a lot on my mind,” I say.

“Of course there is.” He straightens off the rail. “If there’s anything I can help with, tell me. I’d like to be of some use.”

He means it. That’s the trouble with him. It’s the same with my mother. They keep doing the right thing, and I can’t seem to appreciate it.

He goes in to the meal. I don’t. There’s an hour before the council sits, and I already know where I want to spend it.

The grave is a plain stone in a row of plain stones, on the ledge where this family has buried its dead for longer than the mountain has had a name. My name is cut into it. Kallista Ondrathe, two dates, and under that, “Heir of the Aldrake, taken too soon.” It’s not the first time I’ve been here since I got back to the Eyrie, but it’s still the same shock every time I see my name on a gravestone.

Somebody chose this spot, close to the path, easy to reach in bad weather, so a woman who visits every week wouldn’t have to climb for it. Somebody else stood exactly where I’m standing and watched my mother cry over ground that doesn’t hold me, and knew it.

I read every letter of the stone twice. Then I go to the council session, and I’m pleasant to eleven people about grain.

The session runs until the lamps get lit. When it breaks, I go back out to the gallery instead of up to my suite, and I’m out there long enough for the cold to get through my sleeves before Sereth comes looking for me.

“You’ve been asking around,” he says. Not accusing. Just saying it, which is how he says most things.

“It was my own funeral. I think I’m owed some curiosity.”

“Fair.” He puts his back to the rail. “Ask me, then. I was on the party. I found her.”

I go still.

“You found her?”

“I did. Some days I wish I hadn’t. Other days I’m glad it was me and not somebody who’d have handled her worse.” He says it plainly, but his jaw works before he continues. “She was on a ledge below the north face, where the wind piles the snow. I nearly walked past her. I thought she was rock until I saw the color of the hair against the white.”

“Sereth—”

“No. Let me. You asked, and I’d rather say it once and be done than have you piece it together out of Hesper and whoever else you’ve been working on.” He looks at me sideways when he says that. “I called the others up. Aldis decided to bring her down on a board, covered the whole way, so nobody in the lower passages would see more than a shape under cloth. I carried the front left corner.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for that part.” It comes out rough, for him. “One more thing, since you’re not going to stop until somebody tells you everything. Hesper told the whole hall about the ring, and she told it wrong. She said your grandmother’s ring. It wasn’t.”

The gallery goes very quiet.

“What do you mean, it wasn’t?”

“I mean I saw it on that hand, and I knew it wasn’t right. I’ve never said so to anybody, because what was I going to say? ‘Your daughter’s dead and also her jewelry is wrong’?” He rubs the back of his neck. “The stone sat too high. The band was worn on the wrong side. I watched your grandmother turn that ring with her thumb my whole childhood, Kalli. I know which side wears.”

I put my hand on the rail and hold onto it.

Hesper told the whole hall that my grandmother’s ring went into the ground on that woman’s hand. I have believed it since the day I got home, and it was never true.

“Kalli.” His hand comes toward my arm and stops short of it. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I sit down on the bench along the gallery wall, because my legs have decided to do it without asking me. “It’s a lot to hear at once.”

“I shouldn’t have given it to you in one go.”

“You should have. I asked.” I make myself look at him. He looks concerned. “You’ve done more for me tonight than anybody in this house since I got back.”