Page 273 of Salt Between the Wolves

That meant very little, since people swore many things, yet something cold settled quietly in Eira's stomach.

Leander dismissed the guard and waited until the door closed behind him, and neither of them spoke immediately as the room suddenly felt smaller.

Finally he looked toward her. "What are you thinking?"

Eira's gaze remained fixed on the maps spread across the table as she considered dozens of possibilities—trade patrols, border disputes, routine movement, any number of explanations, most of them reasonable, yet none of them felt correct.

"My father doesn't move soldiers without a purpose."

Leander leaned back slightly. "No."

The silence stretched, and outside a bell sounded somewhere near the harbor, marking the arrival of a ship and serving as another ordinary reminder that the world had continued moving while she had been pretending distance solved problems.

Leander folded his arms. "And if the report is true?"

Eira already knew the answer, though she did not want to say it.

"If Frostvein is moving south..."

Her voice faded, because there was only one direction south of Frostvein that mattered, only one place where her father and Soren could stand on opposite sides of a decision neither would willingly abandon.

Leander watched understanding arrive across her face slowly and reluctantly, the way difficult truths usually did.

"Eira."

She looked toward the window, toward the distant northern horizon hidden beyond mountains she could not see, and for the first time since arriving in Silverwake, remaining here no longer felt like a choice but like avoidance.

Leander waited, as he always had when silence mattered.

Eira appreciated that about him, though at the moment she hated it, because the longer neither of them spoke, the harder it became to pretend she had not already reached the conclusion waiting at the edge of her thoughts.

Finally she looked away from the window.

"One rider's story is not evidence."

"No."

"He could be mistaken."

"He could."

"He may have seen a patrol."

Leander's expression remained infuriatingly neutral.

"A large patrol?"

Eira frowned.

"A border force, perhaps."

"In another kingdom's territory?"

She did not answer, and the argument sounded weaker once spoken aloud.

Leander crossed to the table and glanced down at the scattered maps.

"You want me to tell you that it means nothing."