The mare’s flanks steam in the violet twilight, a heavy, rhythmic heat that smells of wet coat and miles of frozen mud. Sarael Vorne slides from the saddle, her boots meeting the snow-swept cobblestones of the southern gate with a dull, heavy thud. Twenty-five years of the High North have scoured the softness from her face, leaving only the iron-grey plait over her shoulder and a scar across her nose to mark the passage of a life she chose in the dark.
She ignores the shivering sentry who eyes her plain charcoal cloak and the old longsword at her hip; to him, she is merely a late-travelled soldier, not a ghost. She reaches for her mare’s bridle, her gloved fingers numb and stiff. The city beyond the gatehouse is a jagged spill of amber torchlight and hawthorn-red banners, festive and suffocating in its preparation for a crown that was once hers. Three days, she thinks, her throat tightening against the smell of wood-smoke. I will stand in the shadows for three days, then ride back to the silence.
Movement shifts the white veil of the storm. Out of the driving snow, a solitary, broad-shouldered figure is walking directly toward her. The man does not stop, his stride breaking the rhythm of the falling snow.
