Page 84

He stopped a pace from the bench. His eyes went to the carved wall. To the dragon-eye. To her hand resting in her lap. Whatever moved across his face, she couldn't read it.

"What is this place?"

"A meeting room. For witches. Older than the chamber above. Older than the Order." She paused. "The mark on the wall was my mother's. Or my mother's was a copy of this one. I don't know which yet."

He studied the carving without speaking. "Old work."

"Yes."

He sat down on the bench beside her. Not close enough to touch. Close enough that the stone between them lost its bitter chill.

The lamps threw a slow trembling pattern across the wall. Water dripped somewhere in the passage above. Nothing else moved.

After a while, he said, "I came below the chamber once."

She turned her head.

"Before they brought you here. Not this far. A few hundred paces and I turned back. The Order doesn't walk where it hasn't consecrated. First thing they teach a Severant. The unconsecrated dark talks to you, if you let it. So we don't go in."

"But you did."

"Once."

"I had killed a man. I wanted to ask the dark whether it had anything to say about him."

"Did it?"

"No. Or — yes. It said the same thing the Order had said, and I came up still believing the Order, and I have been believing the Order for nine years."

She watched him in the lamplight. "How old were you?"

"He'd trained me. With the blade I used on him."

"That isn't what I asked."

"I know." A pause. "Nineteen."

"And the man?"

"Twenty-three. A Severant. The Order said he'd broken. Killed two of his own unit and run north. I was on the team they sent after him. Youngest." He paused. "He didn't fight."

Silence settled heavily between them.

"I have been thinking about him this winter, witchling. More than I used to."

"Why this winter."

"I don't know yet. Something in your face when you ask me questions. Something in the way you don't look at me when I drink from the flask. He drank too. He drank for years. And then one winter he did not, and the Order said he'd broken, and I went north with three other Severants and I put a blade in him while he stood still and let me. I have not asked, in nine years, why he was standing still."

The chamber grew deathly quiet, the air biting colder. "Lysander."

"I don't know what I am telling you. I don't think I am telling you anything yet. I am only — saying it out loud. Here. Where the Order does not go."

"Because?"

"Because this is a place where witches once met. And I am sitting in it. And I am not yet certain what that means about me, but I would rather find out underneath this village than above it."

Her throat tightened. "I am glad you said it."