The Stormbringer's Mate

ot slee

hat looked east into nothing but snow and the dark. I lay on my back with my boots off and my coat still on and li

en to the pack house, and she had not written to the Council, and she had sat in her kitchen

ent three years learning the difference and

as at the table with a pencil in her hand and a sheet of graph paper in front of her. She had not heard me come in. Her coat was over the back of

ooking round. "Porridge in the p

e the chair across from her felt like a decision. She kept working. Her pencil moved in small tight st

that eve

radio it down to the met office in Aberdeen and they pretend to be interested." She turned the page. "The ba

eks ago it st

e pencil d

of the inside of a mussel shell, and the freckles across her nose were darker than they had been at night. She had a sm

, and then I'll ask you something, and you'll answer it honestly or you'll

liste

ld me that the Cairngorm pack had exiled its best enforcer and that the enforcer would be going north, and that if a woman with red hair ever found his trail in the snow she should let it lie." She

was

ck house. I didn't ask his name. I've been kicking myself about tha

o leave my trail alone, and she had shut the door in his face and then

u telling m

ood down, and I have been sitting on that for a night, and it's gone sour on me." She set the

mug and I turned it away from me, and she saw

e coast pack who came to the border and called out our Be

u l

a month. Duncan called it a failure of judgment and sent me north

e version

version th

t up and went to the window and stood wit

e mountain, I should watch him for a week before I trusted him. Not because he was a traitor. Because he had a habit of carryi

erything p

ing to be

as if she had not just put a knife in the middle of the table. I sat there with my porridge going cold and my wolf

She showed me the instrument shelter, a white box on legs out behind the station, and the rain gauge and the anemometer and the mast, and she explained how ea

ected me again, and the third time she corrected me she was almost

out to check the fence. She walked fast for someone with sho

about Fin

e in Inverness that I later found out had burned down." She kicked a drift out of the way of a fence post. "He's quick and h

e's a

at the broken fence and looked at it. "He'll be back tomorrow. Be careful what you say

e and said nothing and her shoulder brushed mine once when the wind shifted, and the touch

anything. She just picked up

ger of whisky from a bottle with a cracked label, and we sat in the kitchen wit

e," sh

you w

n all day. You've got a face lik

ter. And you said you found my scent on the east ridge three weeks ago. But I haven't been on the east ri

r whisky and set the glass down

enough to make me write to the pack house and ask questions, and the answers came back and one of them was your name." She tapped the ta

f habit now, the way you look at a clock in a station,

ls

ha

needle

hen she stood up so fast the chair went over backwards and she was at the wall wit

id. "That's a forty point dro

the barometer was climbing, and it was climbing fast, and somewhere below us

, dead all day, crackled onc