"Stone and Cold Hands"

Tom did not sit.

"The captain first," he said. "I'll not put bread in my mouth while he's bleeding out on your flagstones. Help me carry him, or stand aside."

The woman studied him a long moment. Whatever she saw in his face seemed to please her, in a tired sort of way. She wiped the flour from her hands on her shift and nodded once.

"Good. He chose well, then. Bring the candle."

She moved past him into the passage with a speed her years had no right to. Tom followed. The blue flame threw their two shadows long against the carven walls — the woman's small and quick, his own ragged and limping behind. The faces in the stone watched them pass and Tom did not look back at any of them.

Marrow had not moved. His head had slumped sideways and a thin dark thread ran from the corner of his mouth.

The woman knelt. She put two fingers to the captain's throat. She closed her eyes.

"Still here. Barely." She looked up. "Take his shoulders. Mind the splinter — don't shift it, only lift. The chamber has a cot behind the curtain. I should have warned you. I forget that strangers cannot see what is plain."

They lifted him together. The woman was stronger than her frame promised. Marrow groaned, deep in his chest, and his eyes opened a crack as they bore him down the passage. He saw the woman's face above his own and a slow, exhausted smile crossed his ruined mouth.

"Yves," he whispered. "You old witch. Told you I'd come back."

"You're late, Edward."

"Aye."

His eyes closed again.