CHAPTER 51

Stepping into the break that led to their camp he could see the outline of the horse towering black against the plum-blue of the light. A small bump at the horse's shoulder; that was the girl's head where she leaned against him. He could just see the shine in her hand. She had been combing him.

Her face, turning, was a pale blur in the dusk. The Hound raised the small body of the hare in an ironic victory. She gave no reaction. Her eyes were only dark smudges in the planes of her face. The horse bowed its massive head back towards her, pushing her and snorting, irritated at the interruption, and the Hound laughed at them.

"Ah. You've let him bully you."

She shrugged, and stroked the muzzle that was bumping her shoulder.

Walking over to them his boot kicked a ring of stones in the dirt. He looked down. Broken branches were stacked into a neat cone inside the ring, a bundle of chaff and twigs piled up outside of it. He grunted and dropped the carcass, crouched over the branches. His fire-striker, taken out of its pouch, sat on one of the rocks. He turned his head to look. His bag lay where he'd left it, untied now. Digging through his bag to find the striker she'd come across the comb. The thought of her sorting through his possessions rattled him. He picked up the striker.

"Do you even know how to use it?"

The dark hollows widened as her brows rose. Inside the hollows her eyes shone as pinpoint glints. "Of course I do," she told him.

"Didn't the servants light your fires, back home?" He wondered what about the invasion of his bag had bothered him to the point of needling her.

She reached for the horse's muzzle again and, cupping it to bring it close to her face, kissed it carelessly on its broad curve, the way ladies kiss the cheeks of their friends, her nose bumping it. The horse blew into her palm, chewing. The Hound stared at her, astonished, mouth open, and she turned to him and with the same devastating offhandedness as the kiss, asked him, "When was the last fire you lit, back home?"

He bent his head and whipped the striker against the flint with more force than he'd intended. Sparks dropped from it in a spray like stars. The second time he remembered to put the tinder underneath. A red droplet. He blew on it, and used the interval of time to recover himself. The droplet snapped once, twice, and became a fizzling gold.

"You could've lit it yourself, you know. Earlier. While you could still see to do so."

"I can see well enough now," she said. "I was going to light it." She reached and took the fire-striker from his hand and put back in its pouch. He squatted on his heels beside the fire, looking up at her.

"After today. What happened in the mill. This is what you chose to do? Stand around all alone in the dark?"

"Yes," she said. "It is. I have to learn not to mind it."

He grimaced up at her. "Mind what? The dark?"

"Yes. Being alone in the dark. And just... everything. Mind everything."

"What does that mean?"

"If I'm to be scared of the whole world, what is left to me?" She looked down at her hands. He watched her rubbing the striker's ash from her fingers.

"Your body," he answered without thinking, "unharmed."

"If I can't even be here for fear of someone coming and taking me, who does my body really belong to?"

He sat back on his heels. She gathered her skirts under her, knelt, and put her hands to the fire. Behind her the black horse loomed like a gargoyle.

"All right," he conceded, finally.

Over the branches her hand stretched, dropped the pouch into his palm. He tossed it in the air a few times, thoughtfully, catching it overhand, then threw it past her into the dark, heard the soft tump as it landed on his bag.

"All right," she repeated, and, picking up a branch from the pile, stirred the fire up into life.