“The sage will grow over it,” I say. “By spring.”
He puts his hand flat on the turned earth. Holds it there.
“Goodbye, brother,” he says. “Your oath is paid.”
I give him time. Sit on a broken stone a few feet away and check the supplies from my pack. My herbs are running low. The bandages Mother Sanque packed are good quality, enough to handle the gash on Kovren's shoulder and the smaller cuts from last night. The oil is half-empty.
When he stands, his face is different. Not lighter. Not peaceful. But the thing that was grinding behind his eyes for all the days I've known him is gone. The guilt is still there, and the grief is new and raw, but the relentless forward momentum of eight years of hunting has stopped. He looks lost.
I know that expression. I wore it when I left my village with my father's bag on my back and no idea where to go.
“Let me stitch that shoulder,” I say.
He sits. I work. The wound is deep but clean, the same kind of claw damage I stitched in the ditch on the first day. My hands are steady. They always are, when there's work to do.
“What now?” he asks while I stitch. His voice is rough from the night. From the crying.
“Now we go somewhere warm and I sleep for about three days.”
“Maren.”
“Vorneth,” I say. “Mother Sanque is waiting. She wants to hear what the stone felt like. And she'll want to examine us both after last night.”
“And after that?”
I tie off the last stitch. Sit back. Look at him.
He's looking at his hands. The way he does when he's trying to figure out what they're for, now that the thing they were built to do is finished.
“After that,” I say, “we figure it out.”
“I don't know how to do that.” He turns his hands over, palms up. “I've been hunting for eight years. I don't know how to stop.”
“You learn. The same way you learned everything else. One day at a time. One thing at a time.” I put my hand on his knee. “I've been walking for eight years. I don't know how to stop either. So we'll learn. Together or separately or badly. But we'll learn.”
He covers my hand with his. The size difference is absurd. My whole hand vanishes under his palm.
“Vorneth,” he says.
“Vorneth.”
We pack. Leave the ruins behind. Walk down the mountain toward the pass. The air is sharp with frost, and the sky is the kind of blue that hurts to look at.
He carries both packs. I carry the empty oil jar and the map, folded small in my pocket. The cloak drags behind me on the trail, collecting pine needles and frost.
I don't look back at the stronghold. Neither does he.
Six months later,I am arguing with a goat.
The goat belongs to Tomas, our neighbor, and it has eaten the herbs I planted beside the front door. Again. I am standing in the yard with dirt on my hands and murder in my heart, and the goat is looking at me with the supreme indifference that only a goat can achieve.
“That was rosemary,” I tell it. “Medicinal rosemary. Do you have any idea how long it takes to establish a rosemary plant at this altitude?”
The goat chews.
From inside the house, I hear Kovren laugh.
It's still a new sound. Six months and I'm still not used to it. Low, quiet, a rumble that I feel through the floor more than hear through the walls. He laughs more now. Not often. Not easily. But more.
