The Queen No Alpha Can Command

"and a door we can bar. T

er gave my court, and my co

. "The old ferry cable still up, and Tomas knows it blind. A root cellar under the floor that comes out in the bank, because the ferryman was a sm

that's tru

e of a woman discussing weather in another country. "We don't win a fight against thirty. We make the river fight it. They have to

d my threshold. Now he looked at his hands, and then at me, and something in his f

at once." His voice gathered itself as he went, a man remembering he used to be a person with a trade. "Six of them on the barge, mid-river,

ld it,"

ur winch, Tomas Reed. You've got the hands for the release. I've got the temperament for standing still."

s like stones in the dark, one by one. "If I order you and you obey because you're afraid not to, we're just Silvercrest with worse

The fir

her lap and her ruined leg out straight, loading bolts with the hands of a girl

kno

the door is mine. I can't run, so I'll shoot. Nobody arg

d time, close enough to

le of the ferry house with my bandaged arms and my borrowed court, and understood

bank in the middle of them, unmistakable even at that distance, because a man doing a thing he hates stands differently from a man enjoying himself. Beside him, on a

like I said. Bram's not among them. Neither is the n

entre of the river, Toma

oil, for our roof, for the ending Bram had described with such distaste in my doorway. M

ment," he said, alm

s the water, clear as a bell

d in one second - because Bram had used his whole name, his struck name, the name the brand on his chest answered

ep away from the winch, and t

nds around Tomas's

d not tear. There was no time to be gentle and no forgiveness if I was rough. I did the thing my blood knew before I did: I took hold of the root of it, and I broke Bram's voice

facing. His hands closed on

d, with fifty year

he winch a

rrent, and the river, which does not take sides and does not have to, took six hunters and a cask of oil and a great de

t. I want that understo

with a ferry hook, serene as a saint in a window, unhurried, and a young hunter who came over our threshold alive changing his mind about it too late; Finn's bow, and Finn's bow, and Finn's bow, until the one good shoulder gave out and he shot left-handed and badly and it was enough. And me - half a wolf that night, no more;

all five, listening to the ferry h

out of the bank downstream in first light and smoke, and stood in the wet grass and watched it burn, while across the river the remains of

idence I will ever be able to prove, that what he put in his report that mo

se, and Bram was, as established, a ma

e. Her face was black with it. All our fa

whatever I was - standing in a field of ash that the wind was already taking, alive, unbowed, uncommanded, and st

the ashes. The Ashen Court. Let them have the name for free - b

him halfway down before he caught himself - and I caught him too, my bandaged hands under hi

oke and the river and the ashes. "Write it wherever laws go. In t

and unashamed, and looking stra

even