"Thank you," she said.
Drogga shrugged, but his eyes were kind. "Thank me when we're three days up a mountain pass and the puppies have figured out how to howl."
Mab watched him go, the saddlebags swinging against his hip as he waded back into the chaos of the yard.
The sun crested the eastern hills as the column formed up. Mab still stood near the stable doors, this time with Tibbs, watching the warriors mount their horses. The dog, who Annie had dubbed Brownie, was already settled in the supply cart, bedded down in a nest of old blankets with her pups. Annie sat beside her, one hand resting on the dog's flank.
Tibbs had his pack slung over one shoulder. He hadn't said much this morning, but his eyes were bright and alert, watching everything.
"You ready?" Mab asked him.
He nodded. Then, quieter: "Are you?"
She looked at the holding behind them. The kitchen door, still standing open. The yard where she'd hauled water ten thousand times. The gate post where Brownie had spent her whole life tied to a rope.
"Yes," she said. "I think so."
Varek's horse appeared in front of them. A massive black beast, taller at the shoulder than Mab's head, with a coat that gleamed like oil in the morning light. Varek sat astride it, one hand loose on the reins, the other extended toward her.
"Up," he said.
Mab stared at his hand. At the horse. At the distance between the ground and where she'd need to be.
"I don't know how to—"
"Foot in the stirrup. Hand in mine. I'll do the rest."
She looked at Tibbs, who was already being waved toward the supply cart by Drogga. He gave her a small nod and turned away.
Mab put her foot in the stirrup.
Varek's hand closed around hers, and then the world tilted. He lifted her like she weighed nothing, swinging her up. For half a breath she hung there in the open air, and then his arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back against his chest, settling on the saddle.
"There," he said against her ear.
"I don't know how to ride."
"You don't need to know." The words rumbled through his chest into her spine. "I've got you."
The column began to move.
His heat soaked into her back and his arm rode low across her belly, his hand spread wide over the curve he'd refused to let her hide.
Mab watched the holding fall away behind them. The walls that had held her whole life. It got smaller as they climbed the first hill. Smaller still as the road curved. The walls that had blocked out the sky shrank to the size of her fist. Then smaller.
She lifted her thumb.
The holding disappeared behind it.
She held it there. Thirty-two years, gone behind one kitchen-rough thumb.
Her hand came back down to rest on Varek's arm.
Chapter 16
The first day passed in a blur of motion and cold.
Mab had never been on a horse before. Had never, in all her life, traveled farther than the holding's own walls. The nearest village lay six miles south—a full day's walk each way, by the kitchen talk—but she had never once seen it. The world had always ended at the scullery door.
