“You have one job, Gorm,” came a voice from the far end of the room. Even muffled by the furs, Saga knew it at once. Maester Alfson. “And you’ve failed at that. Have I not told you their silence is imperative? How precarious our situation is until we can move them to Rökksgarde?”
“Forgive me, Maester,” came Gorm’s voice. “Something’s rattled them! Started squealing like pigs at the slaughter. Draugur, it was, I’m certain of it. This one’s bandage pulled free.”
“Draugur,” repeated the maester, much nearer now. “You fool, the dead would not trouble themselves here.” After a few moments of wordless movement, the maester spoke. “Luckily, I’ve just returned from harvesting more losna. An extra dose will set them right.”
“But—Maester, but their teeth is snapping!”
The maester muttered a string of irritated curses. “This batch has weeks left in their Reaping, Gorm. I won’t have them wasted to your incompetence. Do it like this.” After a moment, the woman’s screams grew muffled, then dulled completely.
“Administer the losna to beds three, five, seven and twelve,” said Maester Alfson, “or you’ll be volunteered for consumption, Gorm.”
“Y-yes, Maester,” stumbled Gorm. “Where are you going?”
“I have a strange feeling about this. I’m fetching Skotha’s hounds.”
Cold trickled down Saga’s spine, pooling in her stomach. She should be in her bed, slumbering soundly, not hiding in this place of horrors. As the maester’s footfalls faded, and Gorm busied himself quieting the screaming patients, her fear did not subside.
“What do we do?” she whispered to Rurik. “We must leave before the hounds arrive.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “No,” he said, to her surprise. “The hounds will not trouble us.”
“How do you know that?”
“This smell is hiding much.”
She bit her lip, unconvinced. “Can you not just knock Gorm on the back of the head?”
A low chuckle rumbled through Saga’s back. “Such violence you crave, Winterwing. Is only one way out of this place, and I fear they will come before we can escape. Let the hounds come and discover nothing. Will satisfy the maester to know no one is here. And then we are free to leave.”
“I don’t know?—”
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
Saga considered for a minute. “Against my better judgment.”
“I will show you,” he said, shifting on the mattress.
“I want this place scented,” the maester was saying from beyond the furs.
“’Twill be a challenge, Maester,” came a gruff voice in reply. “What is that smell?”
“It is none of your concern,” was the maester’s terse reply. “Scent the place!”
Saga’s heart thundered in her chest, nausea churning violently in her stomach. What if they were discovered? The rattle of a chain grew closer, closer, closer, the dog huffing softly from beyond the furs. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the fur to lift, waiting to come face-to-face with a snarling hound?—
As though reading her thoughts, Rurik’s hand made the softest of taps onher hip, slow and rhythmic and decidedly calming. She focused on the sensation with all of her mind.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A low growl filled the air. It seemed to come from everywhere at once—in front, below, behind. The breath lodged in Saga’s throat, and she was sure that this was it; in moments they’d be discovered. But the dog beyond the furs whined.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Up seemed down and left seemed right, everything twisting and turning in the dark dread beneath the furs. Saga was distantly aware of a clank and rattle, growing gradually softer, but she could not trust her senses, not with the dizzying swirl of her mind.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Nothing, Maester,” called out a man. “I’m sorry to tell you, but there’s nothing to trace, not in this stench.”
