Bound to the IceDragon

e

because I'd insulted his mother. In the second, I had thrown a book at him on purpose, for a bet. In the third, which Nysselle swore sh

uttering her bread with great seriousn

f it is

"The real question is why he did it. It isn't like him, Zeph. He doesn't talk to people. In four years he has never

pick up y

r words and

e to, and because the other ch

said, though that sat in my chest like a swallowed stone. I didn't understand any of it myself, and saying a thing out loud makes it real. And Nysselle was the

lie I told at Frostveil, and

d mood," I said. "Maybe

fortable. Then she shrugged and stole a pear off my

across a crowded room, careful, careful, waiting for the sound of it breaking. She deserved better. But eve

tarted two

l coin-chill from my first night. It was a sharp, deliberate bite, as if someone had pressed an icicle into the mark. I stopped i

e far end, and Vaelor Dr

turned away, and he crossed the gallery without once looking up. The moment he wen

ating like a trapped bird. It

ange things to skin, and that I was tired and homesick and finding p

attle against my plate ten full seconds before I noticed him at the high table. Nysselle asked if I was all right,

olarly kind of madness, but it was what I knew how to do with a problem. And the pattern was clean, the way patterns are when something is real. The mark woke before he came into sight. When he

e I saw him, like a farm girl

ned me was quieter. When the cold faded, I felt a small, silly pang of

llage market with that same silver crescent hidden under her collar. I couldn't do it. I could only see her the way I had always known her, with her re

sleep across the room, and I wrote three pages about the food and the lessons and the huge

uld stop myself, I wrote: Mama,

t it for a

ds going white on the washboard, and the water going still. "Because people are cruel about things they don't understand, love," she said, and then she didn't speak to

he lamp. Then I folded the rest and sealed it. Th

rnoon I went

rails and reading tables lit by lamps that burned without flame, and the smell of old paper was so thick I could have wept. I had been i

et she never used and a cardigan the colour of oatmeal. She peered at me over her d

purpose?"

sea

oward the ground floor, far back, behind the last row of shelves. "Heraldry and Elder

red me to tears in ten pages. Then, wedged flat at the very bottom, I found a thin black book

hen I opened it, but

, a snake eating its own tail. Each one had a short entry beside it in dry, scholarly p

ges we

t you could miss it unless you were looking. Pages one hundred and twelve to one hundred and thirty were missing, and a few tiny

th wen

long thin card with names stacked down the side and dates in ink. It was crowded, hundreds o

rakt

ars ago, the winter he came to Frostveil as a twelve-year-old boy. After that there was one a year, always in t

the day before he

his silence like treasure had come to this dusty corner every winter to look at

one and walked through crowds like a knife through water, had been looking for the same pages for four years. Pages that showed my mar

hat am I. It was why somebody

hit me li

al, and my breath left me in a white cloud. The lamps on the nearest table guttered

oked

r his fingers had turned white. He was looking at me. He was looking at the book. For a moment I saw

back,"

't want to hold me. "You were here. Y

back, Va

ok, but I made myself hold the book up with

the gap. A muscle

"I have spent four years tr