I

Kate’s thighs burned with every step. She plowed through snow at times as deep as her hips. But now she was ignoring the pain. She needed to be quick to beat the storm and whatever else pursued her. She had seen them three nights before and had hardly slept since. She was lucky to have spotted them from a ridge overlooking her camp before walking right into them. But they were picking her tracks out of the snow. Easy enough when no storm came to cover them up. And they were following her.

The night before she had thought about stopping to catch some sleep, but as darkness fell, the orange light of touches bobbing through the wood showed her pursuers only a mile away down the mountain.

Now, so close to the north gate, she felt a surge of adrenaline pushing her onward. Her legs burned from the effort of navigating the mountains. She cursed the hills and cliffs constantly because of their elusiveness, their stubbornness, and their persistent defiance to abide by any map she created for them, however, she had to thank them for giving her the advantage of high ground. She would never have seen her pursuers otherwise.

The mist was thick this morning as it had been every morning. But a storm brewed behind her, like a wolf breathing down her neck waiting to bite. The sky was pitch black a few miles behind her and was creeping closer every minute in a silent march.

The ground had leveled at her feet an hour ago. She had been tripping over roots and past large oaks for more than a couple of miles. I must be close to the edge, she thought.

The North wall was two hundred yards off the tree line in the valley. With this mist, she may not even be able to see the wall once the trees ended.

Her mind was racing trying to remember how long ago it had been since her uphill trek from the mountain had leveled when she notice the trees beginning to thin. She broke into an awkward run, unable to lift her legs fully over the knee-deep snow, pulling her torch from her pack as she went.

Just as she thought, the north wall was beyond an impenetrable film of mist. She stood at the outskirts of the wood starring into the whiteness beyond. The air and ground seemed to blend together ten feet in front of her.

Quickly she knelt and began to light her torch. The air was still and the wood silent. She imagined she could hear boots charging through the snow behind her. Or was she actually hearing it? She glanced back into the darkening wood. Nothing but large grey trunks that stretched upward, disappearing into the mist.

Once the torch was lit, she set off at a run into the whiteout. She waved the torch over her head looking for the wall. After what felt like an eternity of running headlong into nothing, a large dark mass appeared before her.

The north wall. Twenty feet high of solid wood. She felt her legs burning fiercer than ever, but she moved faster still. Breaking her long-lasting silence, she shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Hey! Open the gate! Open the gate!”

After a moment, the gate keeper’s horn answered her. Bellowing through the air vibrating within her chest. Then the sound of wood creaking and pulling and snapping followed as the gate began to pull inward.

Once she cleared the threshold, the gate began to swing closed behind her.

Kate dropped her torch in the snow with a hiss at her feet and collapsed onto her knees. She heard people calling for her and the sound of feet crunching through the packed snow. But she didn’t care. Her eyes closed and she sat there in the snow feeling exhaustion steal over her. A not too unfamiliar feeling.

She was brought harshly back to her senses by a pair of hands shaking her roughly by the shoulders.

“Kate! Wake up,”

She opened her eyes. Max was leaning over her.

“Let’s get you somewhere warm,” he said.

She nodded slowly looking around. A small crowd had gathered by the gate. She heard them muttering behind their hands.

“What happened to her?”

“She looks awful.”

“She has been gone so long.”

Max was pulling her to her feet. “Now, everyone, quiet down. Let her get some rest and I’m sure we will all hear the story later.”

“Max!” the voice came from over their heads. Sasha, the gatekeeper was leaning over her rail to look down at them from atop the wall. “You better come look at this.”

For a confused second no one moved but Max. “Everyone wait here,” he said and strode off to the wooden staircase. Kate wobbled on the spot for a moment, looking over her shoulder at Max climbing the steps. Then she followed.

She climbed the stairs painfully and Sasha helped her up with a strong hand. Max stood at the sentry position gazing down into the abyss of white. Kate walked up beside him to look. At first, she saw nothing but mist, but the gatekeeper pointed for her. She followed the line and saw them.

Four small yellow lights bobbing through the snow towards them. She felt an icy feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with the cold outside.

“They weren’t even a half mile behind you,” said Sasha.

Kate licked her chapped lips watching the torches get closer to the wall, like floating lights in the mist.

“Keep an eye on them for me Sasha,” said Max. “If they get to close fire a warning shot at their feet. Hopefully, they will get scared off.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” said Sasha.

Max just watched the torch’s slow movement through the snow quietly. “Come on Kate,” he said after a moment. “Let’s get you something to eat, and you can tell me what has been happening out there.”

II

The storm hit late that night. Black skies descended upon them in the afternoon dropping heavy snowflakes over Northanger. The winds arrived after dark, hurling sleet and snow at them and howling against the window panes. Kate sat by a window in Max’s upper rooms watching the blackness outside. Their house was close to the wall so she could see the dancing light from the sentry’s torches on the wall by the north gate, as well as light from within some of the closer homes. Shadows would pass over the glowing windows from time to time as people walked by them.

Kate had half walked and half been carried back to her room earlier that morning. Even with the important news she had raging in her brain, she could not stop herself from collapsing onto her bed and falling into a deep, undisturbed sleep. She had slept away most of the morning and afternoon and had awoken to see her bow, quiver, and the long metal knife she had borrowed from the boy laid neatly on her desk beside a crackling fire. Max supplied her with a steaming bowl of stew and the two of them made their way into his study on the second floor. Her empty bowl now sat beside her as she watched the howling storm beyond the window.

She lived above the hospital with Max. Some of the nurses in training stayed there as well but for the most part, they stayed with their families or friends out in the town. Tonight it was just Max and herself on the second floor and their one patient downstairs in the hospital wing.

But that didn’t stop visitors from coming in and out at regular intervals. Every now and then someone would burst through the door in a swirl of snow and scarfs, slamming the door behind them and calling for the Doctor. Max would usher them upstairs to his study, were Kate sat now, and allay their worries and woes about the storm, but he would not indulge their fears.

Margaret Fuller came in to extol her grievances against the heavens for bringing suck a hellish gale about the town. Anna Brinkman was beside herself with worry that her girls would fall ill after such a cold storm and wanted to know what to do.

“Just stay warm Mrs. Brinkman. That is all we can do. I am just like the rest of you at this moment and our only option is to wait. I do suggest however that you do not under any circumstances brave the blizzard again, once you have returned home.”

But it had quieted now. Max sat behind his desk and read quietly. Behind him, the shelves were lined with the same tattered old books.

Kate could see him in the reflection of the window. The fire blazed to his right, warming the room, casting golden light over his aged face. She would see his eyes dart up to check on her occasionally, before returning to his book. Max was a good man. She appreciated that he did not rush her in telling her story.

She sighed, watching a small shadow come to rest beside the window across the street from her. Her mind wandered back to the boy. She knew he must have woken since her departure because she had already looked for him downstairs in the hospital.

But if he isn’t staying here where is he? she thought.

She sighed again. Max’s grey eyes flashed in the reflection of the window for a moment.

“So,” she said at last, turning slowly on her perch at the window. “Where is he?”

Max looked up at her over his book with a look of feigned indifference. “I’m not sure at the moment actually.” He closed the book with a snap and set it down neatly on the desk. “And his name is Grey.”

“Grey?” she said. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“Yes, Grey. Were you expecting something different?”

“No, I didn’t know what to expect. He never talked much.”

“Still doesn’t,” said Max linking his fingers together over his stomach, leaning back in his chair. “But I feel he is much smarter than he lets on. He can read, I know that for certain. In fact, he really was quite excited by my collection. And for the past few weeks, he has been building some sort of furnace out by the corn fields on the south end by the metal store. I think he likes the seclusion.”

“He does,” said Kate. “I don’t think he likes people all that much.”

“I’m not so certain.”

“Why is that?” she said.

“Well, I get along fine with him. He doesn’t say much but I can see him growing more comfortable around me all the time. He speaks more when it’s just the two of us.”

“What do you mean?” said Kate, rather too quickly. She felt a twinge of jealousy in her stomach but was not sure why. For a moment she felt like she should be the one that he, Grey, spoke too. She was the one he met first.

Max’s smile was a little too understanding for her comfort. She put her chin on her knees and looked into the fire across the room. Her eyes watered from the heat even at this distance.

“I believe Grey just feels more comfortable around me for now, that’s all,” said Max.

Kate scoffed. “Why do you think that?”

“Oh I have my suspicions,” he said, leaning forward, propping his elbows on the desk. “Did he tell you anything about where he came from?”

“No,” said Kate. “We didn’t talk much about anything. He was just sort of there. I don’t know. Sometimes I felt like he didn’t have to say anything. I just sort of understood him” She blushed a little and tried to hide it, burying herself deeper behind her knees.

“Hmm,” said Max. “Well, maybe we will be able to get more out of him eventually. He is a strange person and we can’t know what to expect from him.”

“I don’t think he is dangerous if that’s what you mean,” said Kate.

“I don’t know. Maybe not dangerous” said Max, nodding slightly, looking as though he was disappearing into his thoughts. “I have been watching him very closely these few weeks. He is very quiet as you said. Very observant. His eyes are always moving; watching the things around him. He reminds me of an animal. Some wild animal. We can assume he has been alone for quite some time; alone in the wood and the wilderness beyond the mountains in the west. And this place might feel like a cage to him. Men like him don’t react well to a cage. No, I think we will have to keep a very close eye on him. Maybe not dangerous. But definitely wild.”

“Do you think he is okay?”

Max laughed but stifled it quickly with a cough. “My dear, I don’t think we have anything to worry about as far as his health is concerned. I have never met someone as tough as him. You know, anyone else with two broken ribs and a hole in their side would still be stuck in bed moaning in pain. But he is out and about every day. Well, he is limping about I guess. But still; I have told him to rest but he won’t hear any of it. He’s restless like you! Always on the move!” Max chuckled again. “And he knows not to get caught out in a storm like this.”

“Was he out by the corn fields today when the storm hit?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe he is stuck out in the metal storeroom,” she said. “Maybe he didn’t have time to get back. It won’t be warm enough out there for him…”

Max laughed again. “I don’t think Elli would have let him stay out there in the storm. He is probably staying with her and the rest of the…”

“Elli?” said Kate abruptly. “Why was she with him?” Again, Kate felt her cheeks warm but she watched Max’s smile falter.

“Well, she went out there to talk to him today. I thought it might do him some good to...” he paused a moment. “Well, she was very insistent that she help him. I thought maybe she could get him talking. Make him feel more at home here.” His voice trailed off.

Kate felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. Elli was easily the most beautiful woman in Northanger. Everyone talked about it. All the older woman would watch her walking by, cheeks glowing pink in the brisk air, eyes sparkling, and her blond hair flowing effortlessly over her shoulders and say, “oh, if only there was a man for that beauty.”

The only man left was Max, and he was widowed with no children. With the pass to Stonebrook blocked by the mountains and the Boneyard, there was little hope for the survival of this community. Not without more men around. She couldn’t blame Max. Over the years he had become the unofficial leader of Northanger. Everyone was constantly seeking his advice, he being a doctor, and eventually, the people of Northanger placed him into a leadership role without him ever even asking. Kate often found his friendly demeanor comforting and relaxing. And he was the smartest person she had ever met. It made sense for the people here to trust him.

But she could sometimes see the lines of his face grow weary with the pressures of the people here. He was growing tired. And no solution seemed to be at hand. That’s why he had sent out the mappers to find a new path the Stonebrook. There was no future for the people here alone.

And that is why he had sent his best student to see Grey. The most beautiful girl that Kate had ever seen. Max wanted this boy to stay. He wanted some hope to be brought back. If anyone could make Grey stay it was Elli.

“So he is with Elli and her family?” said Kate.

“That would seem the most likely conclusion,” said Max. Kate felt another twinge of sadness or maybe regret, as the idea of Elli and Grey together sitting warm by the fire somewhere deep within the darkness of Northanger came into her mind.

“You know he asked about you a few times,” said Max, in a matter-of-fact tone. “I think he will be happy to see you once this storm breaks up.”

Kate smiled in spite of herself but still had a sinking feeling in her stomach. She could see Elli laughing at something Grey had said, eyes twinkling and her smile perfect.

“So why don’t you tell me about what happened out there,” said Max.

It took a moment for the image of Elli twirling her hair between her fingers and smiling slyly as Grey sat with her by the glow of the fire to clear from her mind.

But the importance of her trip into the wood eclipsed those images quickly.

Kate took a deep breath not sure where to begin. She decided on the simplest way to start.

“I found Stonebrook,” she said.

Max blinked at her, and his thumbs, which had been twiddling a moment before, froze. “You found Stonebrook?” he said, a little stupidly.

Kate nodded. “I found it. I was right. There is a pass through the mountains across the river. It’s only a mile farther east than the spot I was found with Grey.”

“You kept this quiet!” said Max. “You found a passage?” He pushed his chair back and stood abruptly and paced up and down his bookcase. “How big is it? Do you think it might be blocked off soon? With snow, or rocks from a rock slide?”

“It’s small,” said Kate. “And very steep. It took almost a full day to make my way down the ridge but I did it. I think it might have been formed by water runoff in the spring when the snow melts.”

“Did you make it all the way to Stonebrook?” said Max

Kate nodded again.

“Well, what’s been going on? What did they have to say?” said Max.

“They didn’t want to let me in at first. They have had the same trouble that we have had.” said Kate, “They have been unable to make it through the Boneyard, but I got the impression that they haven’t tried too hard. They are amazed at what I told them. They had no idea it was so bad here. They still have a lot of men living there too. And their city has grown. It’s huge! They wanted to send some people back with me but some of the leaders of the city were against the idea. They said they wanted to wait until spring to build up relations again. They were not sure if they could trust me and wanted me to bring more people back with trading goods.”

“Bastards!” said Max, in a rare moment of anger. Kate recoiled a little from him as he tossed his hand up in frustration. “More than fifteen years of searching for them and then they blow us off! How long did they put you up?”

“Only a day,” said Kate.

“A day?” said Max “Those absolute bastards! What were they thinking, only putting you up for...”

“I wanted to leave Max,” said Kate quickly. “It took me a long time to find the city. And I knew I only had a few days to beat the storm and return. They actually didn’t want me to leave at all. They wanted me to stay for the whole winter but said I wouldn’t. I told them I had to go back.”

Max continued to pace back and forth, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “This is very big news. We will have to organize everything for the spring. A few of us will have to travel out there and touch base with the community. I might still know a few people out there. This will turn everything around! Have you started drawing out a map?”

“Not yet. Max, I don’t think we have time to wait for spring. We have to go soon. Before the snow starts to melt. I think this pass will turn into a giant waterfall once the river fills and overflows in spring. There will be no way to get down the ridge into the basin.”

“Damn,” said Max, placing a fist over his lips, his eyes darkening. “Damn this valley! Damn this whole mountain range prison! It’s like the hills are trying to keep us trapped!”

“We need that map drawn up!” he continued after a moment.

“I didn’t have a chance to start once I got back up the valley and those people spotted me.”

“Ah,” said Max, stopping in his tracks. “Tell me what happened?”

Kate thought for a few moments, remembering the treacherous climb back up the ridge to the valley. “It was cold out there,” she said at last, chin still resting on her knees. Max listened patiently, not pressing her. “I didn’t go near the Boneyard. I stayed west and headed up the mountains to where Grey and I had been found. It took a while to find it again, and then to retrace my steps from that night we were searching for the bear and the metal. But I found the passage and it took almost six days to make it all the way to Stonebrook. The trip back was quicker since I knew where I was going. But once I made it back up the valley to the mountains I saw them.”

Max leaned against his desk and folded his arms listening intently.

“They had found one of my old camps. I was retracing my steps and stopping at each of my previous camping spots. I was lucky to have spotted their torches a mile or two off.”

“And your camp was in the valley?” said Max. Kate nodded, looking at him. His brow furrowed and the lines of his face hardened as he frowned. “They are moving closer. I thought it was just a fluke that you had run into Kane and Aiden so close to us, but it seems they might be moving this way.”

Kate had the same worry. It had been on her mind for some time now. If the savages were moving out of the plains, it wouldn’t be safe to hunt or travel at all out in the wood. Not alone anyway. Not without protection.

“Was it only four like we saw on the wall this morning?” said Max

“I think so,” said Kate. “When I first saw them, I thought there were more. It looked like a small group of them. Maybe a hunting party. Or maybe they are mapping the mountains like us.”

“How many?” said Max.

She thought back. “Five maybe. But Definitely four. I could see them all searching my camp and looking for tracks.” They sat in silence for a time, Kate staring into the fire, Max leaning against his desk, hands in his pockets, looking up at the ceiling.

“What do you think they are doing?” said Kate at last.

Max contemplated the ceiling still, rubbing his chin absently. “They are moving. But I don’t know why. Food maybe. Maybe it’s the storm. Maybe,” he looked down to her. “Maybe the man downstairs could tell us what they are doing.”

III

Kane lay in one of the far end hospital rooms on the first floor. He was not restrained, but it hardly mattered. He had more extensive injuries than Grey had when he had arrived. And he had a terrible fever. His body radiated heat, and he was constantly swathed in a layer of sweet. His room reeked of body odor and filth. Max and the nurses were doing their best to help him, keeping him hydrated and dressing his wounds, but if he did not start to recover soon he would die within the week.

The next morning, Kate followed Max downstairs to the room in question to see the patient. As Max pulled the door open in front of her, she pulled her shirt up covering her nose in a vain attempt to block the stench. The room felt humid, and the walls had a thin layer of moisture coating them.

In the center of the room, covered in a bundle of blankets was Kane. He looked pale and emaciated. He had been thin before but now his cheekbones stood stark against his sunken eye sockets and thinning hair. He was hardly recognizable as he was. His lips were chapped and split, and he had a patching beard growing unchecked over his face. She could see him breathing shallowly.

Max went to work. Sitting beside Kane, he pulled the blankets back revealing the man’s bone-thin arms and chest. Max lifted the man’s head and poured small amounts of water down his throat. Kate thought that he would choke on it but he did not.

“I thought he wasn’t awake,” said Kate, still covering her nose with her collar.

“He is awake,” said Max softly. “He is just very sick.”

Kate was no doctor but she knew that sickness could be transferred to people from contact. “What if you get sick?” she said to Max quickly.

“No my dear,” he said, administering more water. “He has infections from his wounds. It’s not contagious. I just hope he gets better soon.” Max leaned back on his heels after giving a third helping of water. “I have been giving him food twice a day and water every hour for a while now, but… well, we will see what happens. Maybe this man will help shed some light on the goings-on of the worlds outside our walls. Maybe he won’t.”

IV

The storm continued to rage most of the day. The sun could not even break through the black clouds. All that happened during the afternoon was a sort of shift from black to a dullish grey in the sky. The windows became splattered and covered with flecks of sleet and it became almost impossible to see outside.

A couple of the nurses used this time to head through the square and into her and Max’s house. They had stuck out the first night of the storm with their families and now were back to listen to more lectures from Max during the morning hours and to oversee the patient on the first floor. Elli did not return. Sitting in the dining hall, Kate felt a sort of boiling in her stomach as she scanned the faces of all of the girls that had come back and saw that Elli was not among them. She pushed her bowl of stew away from her, thinking of Elli keeping Grey with her somewhere within Northanger. She undoubtedly wanted to keep him all to herself.

But as night began to fall, the gall began to rage strong as ever. Kate was growing tired of her confines within the upper rooms and the hospital down below already. Max was well enough entertained with his books but Kate rarely found comfort in printed words. She preferred being outside in the open air to sitting idle with her nose pressed into a book. The girls downstairs were also well enough entertained with each other, laughing and gossiping as they did. Kate had always preferred to be on her own, or with Max, rather than with most other girls in Northanger.

She moved from table to table in her room, in the dining hall, in the lecture hall, and in Max’s office with a thick piece of parchment and her favorite quadrant. She was slowly fine-tuning the map of the valley she had started while in the wood. She had made many maps over the past few years but this one was proving to be very difficult. Her hands had been very cold out there so it was hard to read her notes or make out the proper measurements through her shakey hand writing.

The process was growing more frustrating by the minute and just when she thought she could take no more, the finely carved tip of her carefully cut quadrant snapped as she was turning it over along the parchment. The small bone piece flew away and rattled across the wood floor. Kate felt her ears boiling and she flung the broken quadrant across the room where it bounced off the wall and landed with a clatter on the ground. She glared at it for a moment, fuming. Then she looked out the dark window at the shadowy snow pelting the panes and sighed.

Her restlessness made the waiting even longer it seemed. It could be days before this storm was over. The year before it had lasted over a week. Some of the smaller houses were almost buried in snow by the end of it. So, by nightfall, Kate was back at her usual perch on the windowsill in Max’s study. It was a very familiar spot for her for these long winter months.

Max again sat behind his desk, a book open in his lap, and the firelight flashing over his face. Kate was thinking about her last adventure into the wood, Max would not let her out of the walls again after this storm finally ended. The weeks to come would be too unpredictable. Winter was harsh enough inside Northanger. Outside with no shelter, it was easy to get lost, get hurt, or freeze because of the lack of shelter.

So here she would remain until the sun could finally return and thaw the snow. She sighed already imagining her normal routine of pacing the hallways, walking aimlessly around the square, and sitting here on the windowsill watching the snow pelt against the glass pains. Her thoughts slowly wafted back and forth. She shuddered after a moment remembering the torches following her in the snow the day before. She had only just made it through the gates in time

Suddenly she felt a little less agitated at the idea of remaining behind the walls of Northanger for a few more weeks. Whoever those men were did not matter anymore. They would not have had time to make it back to the shelter before this storm came upon them. They would surely die out there. She shuddered again and tried to blink away the troubling thoughts and focus instead on the square outside.

Her heart leaped into her throat for an instant. A torch was bobbing its way through the storm towards them. As the light crossed the square, her mind jumped back to the way her pursuers had followed her through the wood the same way.

“Max,” she said. Her voice was a little horse.

He grunted in response. She could see he had not looked up from his book through the reflection of the window.

“There is someone crossing the square. I think they are coming to see us.”

“Hm?” he said glancing up.

“I can see torchlight.” she said, now watching the flame drawing nearer, heading for their front porch.

“Why does no one listen to me.” said Max with a sigh, setting down his book. “We can’t have people walking about in this weather. One small cold could kill us all!” His words were followed by a muffled pounding from the front door beneath them. “Probably Mrs. Ferris about her dear girl’s health again. Yes, do risk getting the flu yourself and spreading it about your house just to come and ask me whether one log or two would be enough to warm the house tonight.”

Just as he finished, the door flung open to reveal one of the younger nurses in training looking very nervous followed by Sasha Marlow wrapped up in five or six layers of coats and scarves and gloves.

“Miss Marlow,” said Max looking surprised. “What do we owe…”

“Max!” she said breathlessly, striding into the room and pulling her scarf down so she could speak freely. Her cheeks were very pink and there were flecks of snow in her eyebrows and hair. “There are people at the gate!”

Max stared at her in disbelief for a moment. “What?”

“Three people with torches are pounding on the gate! We saw them waving the torches trying to get our attention, but we can’t hear what they are shouting over the storm.” She was breathless and agitated, bouncing up and down slightly. Kate had already leaped off her perch and was standing next to Sasha in front of the desk by the time Max stood.

“They can’t be let in Max.” said Kate.

“But they’ll die!” said Sasha glancing at Kate.

“They would do the same for us if it were the other way around! We can’t trust those people!” said Kate.

“We don’t know that, they could…”

“Ladies, please,” said Max recognizing the fight rising in Kate and Sasha’s faces. “Sasha,” he continued, “Kate is right. We don’t know what to expect from these people. But Kate,” he turned his eyes on her, “We are not like them at all. They might not help us but we will not stoop to their level. We have to let them in. For all we know they could be from Stonebrook, not the plains!”

“Are you crazy?” said Kate. Max had already stridden around his desk and was pulling his coat from the hanger beside the fire. “They will murder us in our sleep! This is why we built these walls in the first place! Let them find their own shelter!” said Kate.

“Miss Marlow,” said Max as he flung his coat over his shoulders. “Do you have your bow with you?”

“Outside.” she said.

“Kate?” he said now grabbing a scarf from the hanger.

“It’s in my room.” she said.

“Get it.” he said tossing her a second scarf. “Miss Marlow, wake Miss Myers. She is nearest, and meet us at the base of the gate it two minutes.” Sasha left without a word, disappearing beyond the door in a whirl of cloaks and trailing scarves. Kate noticed the young nurse standing by the door looking pale and frightened by the intensity of the room.

“Susan.” said Max walking forward to her, pulling on his gloves. “Everything will be fine girl.” he said placing a hand on her shoulder. “Go and sit with the other girls for now. We will fetch you later.”

She nodded and disappeared though the door as well. Max waited long enough for her footsteps to reach the landing before he turned back to Kate. “Hurry.” he said.

V

Kate dressed as fast as she could, throwing on random gloves and socks. She seized the bow and quiver leaning against her bedpost and jumped for the door, but a metallic clanging noise stopped her. Turning back, she saw Grey’s long knife quivering on the wood floor. She had knocked it over. She hesitated for half a second before grabbing it and heading out the door again and sprinting down the hall.

She flung the quiver over her shoulders and tied the knife to her belt as she ran and she was out on the porch within two minutes. Max was waiting for her. The storm howled through the square beyond the porch and it looked almost pitch black out there. Max was holding a torch aloft, the flame sputtering and lashing out in every direction as it was buffeted by the wind.

“Ready!” he shouted over the roaring wind. Kate nodded and he pointed over her shoulder to the torch hung up by the door. She pulled it out of its holster and followed Max who had already dove into the swirling storm in the direction of the gates.

The ground was slippery under her boots and the wind pushed and pulled at her from every direction like it couldn’t decide which way it wanted her to fall. She felt a chill stabbing at her even from underneath her layered clothing and her face stung from the gale. She pulled her scarf over her face with a gloved hand and held her gleaming torch high over her head following Max.

He too looked to be having trouble with the wind. He rocked back and forth and almost slipped and fell a few times. For a while it looked as though the two of them had disappeared into a black void of nothing but ice and swirling wind, but the outline of the buildings across the square came into view slowly as they drew nearer to the north wall.

It took longer than the two minutes that Max had determined but they reached the base of the gate. Two blurry golden torches were waiting for them, huddled against the wall. Sasha and Linda Myers were there, faces covered holding both bow and torches, eyes alert.

When they drew up to them Max pointed up to the sentry and shouted something to Sasha that Kate couldn’t hear. Sasha must have understood, as she turned to the gate and waved her torch three times in a slow deliberate fashion. Kate looked up and saw a faint glimmer of a response from another sentry above waving her torch as well.

Max beckoned for her to come closer and the four of them put their heads together so as to hear.

“Bows out! All of you! Marlow, target left, Myers center and Kate,” he said over the wind squeezing her shoulder, “Take the one on the right.”

“You want us to shoot them?” showed Kate.

“No,” shouted Max. “It’s just a precaution.”

“I won’t be able to hit a thing in this wind!” shouted Sasha.

“Me neither!” said Linda.

“That doesn’t matter,” shouted Max, taking the torch from her as she adjusted her bow. “We just have to let them know where we stand! Ready?” He looked around at each face. Kate felt nervous. The two others looked nervous as well, but Max had a hard look on his face. “Alright,” he shouted. “Marlow, have the girls above us follow after they close the gate!”

Sasha nodded and waved her torch over her head again signaling the sentries above.

“Take your positions!” Max shouted. They fanned out, Sasha moving left, Linda standing by Max in the center and Kate took the right. She stuck her torch into the snow by her foot, pulled her bow from her back, and notched an arrow. She looked down the line. Max was still holding two torches, one high, the other held loose by his side pointing down. Kate watched a stream of embers and smoke curl away into the night behind him trailing from the torch and carried by the wind. Linda nodded toward her, an arrow cocked and ready. Sasha held her bow in one hand on the far end of the line and her horn in the other.

Sasha had placed her torch into the ground as Kate had, along with an eagle feathered arrow. She shouted down the line, but Kate couldn’t hear and then put the horn to her lips and blew. Now Kate could hear. The sound was strange over the storm. It was as though the low bellow from the horn was carried every which way on the wind giving it a reverberating, pulsating sound. But Kate could still feel the note rumble in her chest strong as it ever was.

The horn was followed by a monstrous crashing and groaning from the gates before them as they swung inward, letting in a fresh wave of stinging wind and sleet from the dark abyss of the wood beyond. Kate drew her arrow and pointed down range and waited, holding her breath.

VI

At first she saw nothing but flecks of white snow billowing out from the darkness. But as the gates pulled inward more and more she saw two small golden stars floating deep within the black night, struggling to shine. The torches threatened to be blown out at any second. The dark outlines of three men slowly loomed in from the dark abyss of swirling night. They were plowing through the snow inward to sanctuary.

They were heavily laden with furs and packs. Kate’s finger, which were stinging badly in the cold, tightened their grip on the drawn arrow. The tip she aimed towards the one on the right. She immediately noticed there would be little threat from these men, watching them trip almost blindly over each other trying to reach Max and his torches. The two men on the left and right held torches like Max’s high over their head. The third man was being supported by the two on either side of him.

As soon as the party cleared the threshold of Northanger, the cracking and grinding of the wooden gates erupted like thunder in the stormy night air as they began to close behind them. The three heavily bundled men made their way to Max who began leading them toward the hospital. They followed the light from his torches. The three of them passed through their ranks glancing left and right at the three woman pointing arrows straight into their faces.

The awkward party progressed slowly. Kate’s man was struggling harder than the other because of the burden of the middle man on his shoulders. She could see his knees and arms shaking as he pulled almost in vain against the dead weight of his companion.

Max reached the porch first and fixed his torches in the brackets on either side of the door. Those, along with the lamps lit along the step rails, made the entrance to the hospital look like a small floating island in the surrounding darkness. Max pulled the door open and held it for the three men. The first man dropped his torch haphazardly into the snow and collapsed into the entryway. The second man heaved his charge up onto the steps to the porch and fell to his knees. Kate kept her bow aimed true on the back of his head.

The young nurse, Susan, was some ways down the hall looking stunned by the appearance of what appeared to be three small grey bears into the entryway of the hospital. She had lit candles to illuminate the space and had waited for them. Kate saw Max glance at her before stepping over the two collapsed figures on the porch and crossed into the house.

“This way,” he said. Kate was now certain they were all men. Their breathing was labored and each one shook with a chill. Sasha moved forward with her drawn bow and helped Max usher the one conscious man into the dining hall. Linda Myers stayed with Kate watching the two unconscious masses.

“What do we do?” said Linda still pointing her drawn bow at the two men.

“I don’t know.” said Kate over the howling storm. “But we need to get them inside out of the cold!”

“Should we check them?” said Linda, her grip loosening on the notched arrow.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Linda bent low over the man who had been dragged through the snow from the front gate. Kate watched her peeling layers of furs and cloths away to reveal his face. Kate moved to the second man slowly, expecting him to jump up at any moment and attack. But he didn’t. She prodded him with the end of her bow but he didn’t move. She waited a moment and then knelt beside him, glancing through the open door to see if Max had returned. He hadn’t. And Susan was nowhere to be seen either. She rolled the man onto his back with some difficulty. He was just as laden with cloths as the other. She pulled away layers around his face.

She didn’t know what she expected, but she was taken aback by how handsome the young man was. He had dark eyebrows with flecks of snow in them and a smooth face. She brushed her hair to the side. It had fallen into the man’s face when she leaned over him. Then his eyes flickered, and his nose twitched.

Linda drew up beside her. “I think that one is dead.” Her voice was shaking. Kate watched the man stir a little. And then he opened his eyes. They were a beautiful icy blue. He looked at her and she stared back for a long moment. The man moved his lips like he wanted to say something but the light behind his eyes faded and he passed out on the porch once more.

VII

The storm raged on. Kate stood by the window in the dining hall looking out into the swirling snow. She, Max, Sasha and Linda were all waiting for the two men to wake. Max was able to herd the first man in front up to the fire in the hall, where he now lay in what appeared to be deep sleep on the hard wooden floor. The second man that Kate had seen had to be dragged in next to his companion. She and Sasha had managed it after a time. If they were cold before, they certainly were not now. He was heavy. They had not removed any of the men’s clothing, but it felt as though each had a good amount of supplies on their person underneath the thick grey furs.

Kate had at first stood idle between Sasha and Linda and listened to their whispered conversation about the arrival of the three men.

“They don’t look like people form the plains…Do you think they are from the same place as Grey?... Do you think they could know each other?- could they be from the plains?- How old do you think they are?”

They all talked on and on until, “Kate?” she looked up into Sasha’s pink face. “Do you think these are the same men that chased you from the wood? Do you think that is how they knew how to get to the gates? If they really are outsiders, then they would be hard pressed to find us if not for that.”

“Yes.” said Kate, arms folding a little tighter over the bow held against her chest. “Those are the men that were tracking me in the wood.”

Sasha looked back at the two lumps on the ground and said, “They don’t look like the people from the plains. But they don’t look like people from the west either.”

“Grey doesn’t look like someone from the west.” said Linda. “Well, not really how I pictured them anyway. But he has a kind of wild look to him you know.”

“Yeah,” said Sasha nodding her agreement. “Sometimes he has this look on his face like…”

That is when Kate had faded out of the conversation and slowly made her way to the window. Her mind had been on Grey for a while. She wished he was with them now. He might know something about these men that they didn’t. She had also been wondering, like Sasha, if Grey might even know these men. He had arrived in such a strange way. She had never heard of outsiders from the west ever coming this far out since before she was old enough to remember.

She remembered walking with Grey in the quiet wood and seeing him stop and look over his shoulder. She remembered asking him what was wrong after a while and him not ever answering her. He would just stop, turn, and stare down the path behind them. And then wait and listen. It was like he was expecting someone to come.

“Kate,”

She turned. It was Max. He had walked up behind her quietly. Her eyes met his and he took the invitation to continue. “We need to move the body outside.”

She nodded and moved to the heavy wooden door passing by the still whispering Sasha and Linda. As she passed into the hall she heard Max say, “Keep an eye on them and find us as soon as they wake.” Kate glanced down the hall and saw Susan peeping out from around a corner by the stairs watching her. She beckoned and Susan hurried down the hall as Max emerged and closed the door to the dining hall.

“Are you okay?” said Kate putting a hand on Susan’s shoulder. Susan nodded, looking up into her face, but her trembling lip and pale face gave her away. “Those men are asleep. Why don’t you go in there and keep Sasha and Linda company while they watch over them?”

Susan looked a little relieved and a little nervous as she glanced from Max standing behind Kate to the closed door. Max cleared his throat and said, “I don’t know if…”

“Go on now.” said Kate, giving the girl’s shoulder a little squeeze and jerking her head towards the door. “Get in there and we will be back soon.” Susan nodded and gave a final glance at Max before sliding the door open and disappearing inside. Kate knew that the girl was scared and feeling desperately alone in the back of the hospital wing all on her own. The other girls were undoubtedly asleep. And she knew that alone, left to its own devices, a mind can easily spin a web of fear in the darkness of the unknown. Giving her company would spare her a sleepless night of wondering and fearing the unknown room at the end of the hall with the fur clad strangers waiting behind it.

Max said “I don’t know if that was a good idea. She is only eleven. She shouldn’t be wrapped up in all of this.”

“But she is,” said Kate turning back to the front door. “And she shouldn’t be left alone on a night like this. She is only eleven.” Susan was the youngest girl in Northanger. Her father had died when she was still very young leaving Max as the only man left in the city. Kate pushed the door open to the sound of whistling wind and a gust of snow shot into the hall.

The body had not moved. Obviously. But still, it was eerie to see it there, eyes glazed over pointing straight up into the ceiling. She and Max pulled their collars up against the cold wind and looked down at the body for a moment. Then they exchanged a look and moved forward. Each grabbed a fist full of the man’s clothing and pulled. He was heavy, just like the others. They both heaved making him slide a few feet at a time towards the door. It took them a full five minutes before the managed to prop the door open against the wind and heft the stiff body over the threshold and into the hall. As soon as its boots left the porch and landed on the inner carpet, the door slammed hard on its hinges muffling the wind and sleet battering the walls from outside.

They didn’t stop to catch a breath. “Into the first room down the hall,” said Max panting as they continued pulling the man down the hall, leaving a wet streak on the woodwork. A few minutes later they had managed to drop the body in the center of the first hospital room. Max collapsed into a wooden chair by the empty hearth and wiped sweat from his forehead. Kate took a few steps back from the body, hands on her knees and catching her breath as well.

“What do you think?” said Max at last. “Should we check him?”

Kate looked up at him as she sat against the wall still breathing heavily and nodded. The pair of them stood and moved over to the body. Max crouched low on his heels and peeled away layers of fur and cloth to show the man’s face again. Kate looked down into the lifeless face, hands on her hips. She felt a mixture of wonder and nausea as she looked into the clouded eyes and sunken cheeks. He looked young. Somewhere in his twenties. He had a little bit of stubble on his face but clean cut brown hair.

“What do you think of this?” said Max, rubbing the fur overcoat between his finders. Kate crouched low on the opposite side of the body and examined the fur wrapped around his neck as well.

“It’s wolf pelt.” she said, recognizing it. It was the same that Kane and Aiden had been collecting.

“I think so too.” said Max. “How do you think they got it?”

“If they are coming from the west end of the mountains they would have come right across Kane and Aiden’s camp. They could have picked them up there.”

“Hmm,” said Max, still running his hand over the pelt. “I guess yours is not the only camp they have been looting.”

“What do you think?” said Kate, but she already knew that Max’s mind was following a similar path as her own.

“I think that these men are not from the plains. Or from Stonebrook. Especially if they were that far west.”

She noticed a strange looking scar on the man’s neck under his ear. Kate pulled the fur wrap away to reveal a raised burn mark on the man’s neck. For a moment she did not register what it was, but then she noticed the curved edge and rounded from of a letter G. She puzzled at the brand for a moment and then looked back into the man’s face. “Do you think that Grey might know them?” she said as Max started to pull away the layer of fur around the man’s chest. But his response was lost in the horror of what lay beneath the fur.

Kate clapped a hand over her mouth and fell back over her heals onto the floor, as Max peeled the wet fur off the deep gashes in the man’s chest. The flesh had been torn wide open and icy blood covered the inner layer of the fur coat. Max grimaced looking down at the four long lacerations extending from the man’s neck all the way down to his belly. The blood was only half frozen, so it looked like a muddy slush covering the man’s body, but bone and organs were popping out of him at odd angles.

“Wolf?” said Kate still covering her mouth, trying hard not to be sick. But she knew that it couldn’t have been something as small as a wolf.

“No wolf could do this.” said Max

The door slid open with a bang behind them. Kate wheeled around and Max threw the fur back over the open wounds over the man’s chest. The young nurse Susan was standing framed in the doorway.

“They’re awake!” she said breathing heavily.

Kate and Max sprinted down the hall and skidded to a stop in the entryway to the dining hall. The two men where kneeling by the fire, crouched low and shivering. They had thrown off the grey furs and a few layers of sopping wet clothing and were huddled by the fire in nothing but thin shirts, pants, and wooly socks.

Sasha and Linda were standing back, holding their bows ready with notched arrows, but not drawn. They watched the two men with nervous expressions.

Max moved forward calmly looking down at the two men. Kate followed him in and stood beside him behind the two men. The fire’s heat washed over her, making her skin tingle and her eyes water. The two men formed into dark silhouettes in the sudden light kneeling directly in front of the fire.

Kate didn’t know what to say. Part of her was afraid of these men. But the pathetic nature of their situation made them look so completely harmless she could not quite reason why she felt so afraid. Or maybe she was just nervous. She was rubbing her thumbs and middle fingers together and standing on her toes. She felt at the ready like she did on a hunt, or when she felt she was being hunted.

She glanced up at Max, standing beside her. He looked stern; eyebrows knitted, lips tight. She could tell he was thinking hard. As soon as she looked at him however his arm moved up and pushed her back. She moved away from him as he pulled up a chair from the table behind them and swung it around to sit behind the men crouched before the fire. Kate watched him, backing up blindly so she could stand with Sasha and Linda.

Max leaned forward in his chair folding his hands together and resting his elbows on his knees and continued to watch the two men a few feet in front of him. Nothing seemed to be happening. Kate felt a hand grab her sleeve and turned to see Sasha holding her back. She hadn’t notice herself creeping forward again. Sasha’s eye glinted as she shook her head a little, but Kate pulled her forward. All three of them drew up behind Max sitting in his chair. Both Linda and Sasha held their bows limply at their sides watching the dark figures by the fire.

At last, Max cleared his throat. One of the men glanced back, still shivering uncontrollably. The man nudged his companion and the two of them turned, crouching low, to face the strange group before them.

“Welcome gentlemen,” said Max, “to Northanger.”

The two men said nothing for a moment. They just stared at the four people looking down at them and then around the room. Finally, after examining most of the dining hall and all of the faces above him, the man on right said, “W-where is William?”

“The third of your group is dead.” said Max in a level tone. “I am sorry.”

The two men exchanged a look. Kate was struck again with a thought of how pathetically vulnerable to two men looked. Both had their arms wrapped tightly around their chests and crouched so low to the ground fighting to trap warmth within their bodies.

“There was nothing else we could have done.” said the second man to the first in a shaking voice.

“And what of his th-things?” said the first man to Max. “What have you d-done with them?”

“Nothing.” said Max. “His body is in one of the back rooms. We have only brought him in from the cold.”

“T-take me to him.” said the man.

Kate saw Max’s face darken as he looked down at the man. “No.” he said. “You need to get warm before you start moving around.”

“I’m f-fine.” said the man, and he coughed. “Take me to him!” his voice cracked on the last word and he started to cough again.

“Wait here and get warm.” said the second man, reaching out and putting a shaky had on his companion. “There’s no point.”

Kate looked at the others standing beside her as the man at their feet continued to cough and retch over the hardwood floor. Sasha had her arms folded tight over the bow against her chest and bit her lip watching the two men. Linda was frowning and holding a gloved hand over her chin, a concerned look in her eyes.

Kate looked back down at Max, whose face had not changed. He watched the two men intently with a hard stare. Neither of the two men had held his gaze for more than a second.

“W-where is this pl-place?” said the first man at last.

“Northanger is in the northern end of the valley in the center of the mountain range,” Max said.

The man’s face hardened, his jaw clenching and his eyebrows tightening. “How are we still in these mountains? We are searching for a settlement beyond the eastern boarder of the range. Do you know of it?”

“Stonebrook is the place you are looking for.” said Max

“How do we get there? W-we have been walking in circles f-for days now looking for a pass through the valley.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“We only know of one pass through the valley but you will not find safe passage there.” said Max

The first man began to curse under his breath and the second whispered something in return. Max took a moment to glance at the girls on either side of him, before clearing his throat again and saying, “If you please gentlemen. We are not accustomed to letting people in through the gates of Northanger very often. Perhaps we could do with an introduction? My name is Max. The three women behind me are Linda, Sasha, and Kate.”

The second man looked at his companion who was staring into the ground, before looking at Max. “Christopher Moore,” he said. “of Burk.” Moore was a very large man with bulging arms and a baldhead. His face was pudgy and reddened with cold, and he had a dark, well-kept, beard.

Max nodded to him and turned his attention to the first man. He was leaner than Moore, but looked fit. He had sandy brown hair, cleanly cut, and a well-trimmed beard cut close to his face. He looked up at Max sitting before him. “Roman,” he said, “Roman Grey of Burk.”

VIII

Kate felt a sudden jolt in her chest. “Did you say Grey?”

Roman Grey looked at her and nodded. “Who are you?” he said.

“Kate.” she said feeling a sinking icy feeling in her stomach as he looked at her.

“You are the girl f-from outside.” he said. “I saw you leaning over me.” Kate nodded at him. He looked from her face to Sasha’s and Linda’s and then back to Max. “Thank you.” he said at last. “Thank you all. We would not have survived out there much longer.”

“What happened to the rest of your group?” said Kate quickly, before Max could respond. Max sent her a dark, reproachful look, but Roman raised his eyebrows.

“You must be the one we were tracking out there in the forest.” he said.

Kate nodded at him. “And there were more of you. Four of you were all going through my camp site.”

“Five,” said Roman. “What were you doing out there? Hunting?”

Kate was taken aback. “Uh,” she said.

“She was mapping the mountains,” said Sasha. “Kate found…”

Max cut her off quickly and said, “Mapping and hunting. We need to be prepared for the winter months here. The storms don’t give us much opportunity to gather food once the season has set in.”

“Mapping.” said Roman looking back to Kate. “Do you have a lot of maps of the mountain range?”

Kate glanced at Max who was looking up at her over his shoulder, and then said, “I have some. Nothing too far away from Northanger. Mostly just here and the west end near the river.”

Roman squinted at her. “Well,” he said at last. The five of us have been together for more than a year making our way east.”

“What happened to the rest?” said Sasha.

Both men exchanged a look. Christopher Moore looked down at the floor as Roman went on, “I’m not sure. We lost one of our party about a week ago. He walked out of the camp and we never saw him again. We didn’t find anything of him. Just tracks. We think something…something big took him. There was blood covering the snow only ten yards outside of the firelight. We didn’t hear a thing. Not a thing. And the tracks looked like something really big and heavy was moving around the camp. It looked as though it circled us all night until one of us left the camp.”

Again, Kate felt a chill inside her settling in like a heavy rock. She remembered the tracks she and Grey had seen in the wood. Hadn’t Grey said the same thing? ‘Something big’? she thought.

“We needed to find shelter, and we ended up finding a sort of cave not far from the gates here. It was dark and shallow, but it blocked the wind and it was dry.” Roman watched his hands rubbing them together as he spoke. “Moore and I were collecting fire wood a few hundred yards off from the cave entrance. Our fire was dying, and the storm was only getting worse. By the time we got back, the fire was dead, and the two others in our group gone without their furs. No traces. Just roaring winds and snow.”

Silence followed his words only interrupted by the crackling of the fire. Kate felt herself on the tips of her toes, leaning forward, her chest tight, waiting for more.

“We got the fire going again.” said Moore. His voice was low and sounded like gravel. Kate’s eyes moved to him. Moore was broader than his companion and big chested. Also, he was older looking with a baldhead and long ears. “We heard screams on the wind. At first we didn’t know if they were real. It was as if they just blended into the wind. And we could only see a few feet outside of the cave. It was pitch black out there. But then William was there. Stumbling in from the dark. Bloody, and covered with snow. We threw the furs over him and he was mumbling and shivering.”

“What did he say?” said Kate.

The two men exchanged another look. Roman glanced up at the faces around him and shook his head. “Something about a monster. A monster with bad breath. I think I caught a look at it. When we headed into the snow, I looked back and saw a big, black… something. It had long hair and teeth…”

Goosebumps were trickling down Kate’s arms and she felt her eyes watering, as silence fell over the room again.

“Why are you here?” said Max at last. “Why come so far just to reach Stonebrook? What is so important for you and your companions to travel over a year in the wilderness to reach this place?”

“We do not wish to be here, I assure you,” said Roman squinting at Max. We will be on our way as soon as the storm clears.”

“All we ask is for shelter and food for the rest of the storm,” said Moore. “It can’t last much longer. I’ve never seen snow like this.”

“No, you haven’t,” said Max.

“We have nothing to trade you,” said Moore. “We are at your mercy. We can work our debt off in time but our plan is to not stay long.”

Max watched them carefully for a moment, Moore awaiting an answer and Roman Grey looking away from them all with a sour expression. “We will give you shelter. And food. I will have some of the girls start working on a stew.” said Max. “In the meantime, let us find you some warmer clothes and a bed to sleep in. Kate?” he stood from his chair and turned to face her. “Go to my study and come back with two of the lighter coats from my closet along with fresh socks and pants.”

Kate nodded and turned to go.

“Wait!” said Roman, grabbing her wrist.

Kate jumped and wheeled around to face the fire again, wrenching her hand away from him. Roman was pointing at her from his knees.

“Where did you get that?” he said.

Kate looked down at the knife at her side. The cold silver blade glinted in the firelight.

“Uh,” she said looking up and glancing at Max’s blank face, “I found it.”

“Where?” said Roman.

“In the wood. By the western end of the valley. It’s about a six day walk from here.”

“You found it,” he said, still staring at the knife.

Kate just nodded and glanced at Max who was exchanging looks with Sasha and Linda. She hesitated a moment longer, but Roman remained quiet and she left the room for Max’s study.

IX

Kate woke early the following morning. Wind was still howling against the wooden walls outside and the windows were all still covered in a thick layer of sleet. Kate dressed and headed down the hallway towards the second floor landing quietly. She was thinking she might try to see if Max was awake in his study, when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs from the entryway below. Kate froze, expecting either Moore or Roman to emerge on the landing. Not wanting to be caught alone with one of them she was about to turn back to her room when Max stepped into the hallway.

“Max!” she said softly.

He turned and gave her a nod. “Good morning Kate,” he said, in an equally quiet tone. “It’s early. Having trouble sleeping?”

She shook her head, walking down the hall to meet him. “What are you up too downstairs?” she said.

“Checking up on our patient. He seems to be getting a lot better. I think his fever may break sometime today. He might actually survive.”

“Oh,” she said, “great.”

Max chuckled. “I understand your sentiment; however, he is human after all. We owe him a certain amount of dignity. Perhaps saving his life is the start of a new relationship with all the outsiders from the plains! Or at the very least, he has been a useful project for my nurses to practice on.”

Max laughed under his breath again and asked Kate if she was hungry. She said she was and the pair of them headed down the stairs for the dining hall.

“Where are they?” said Kate.

“In separate rooms,” said Max not missing a beat in knowing whom she spoke of; “One is at the very ended beside our sick guest, and the other is in Grey’s old room,”

“What about the…” she broke off looking at down the hall to the first door. She was thinking about the body she and Max had left in there the night before.

“Roman and I moved him to the back,” said Max, again picking up on her train of thought right away.” I gave him a few minutes with his friend before we wrapped him up. Once this storm is over we will bury him. I would like to speak with you now that we have some privacy. You and a few others.”

Max led her back into the dining hall. Inside, the table had been pushed back to its normal position in the center of the room and the fire still roared in the hearth as it always did during the winter. Sasha sat atop the table facing the fire, her feet resting on the chair before her.

“Morning,” she said with a slight nod to the pair of them. She had dark circles under her eyes and her hair, usually in a tidy bun, looked a little wild and stringy. She was holding the beginnings of a new arrow in her hands. Wood shavings covered her lap and the table around her from the slow shaping of the shaft.

“Did you sleep in here?” said Kate, watching her carefully wedge the bone arrow tip into the newly sanded shaft.

Sasha scoffed, focusing her attention on fitting a hand carved bone arrowhead into the small wedge cut at the top of the arrow.

“I asked her to stay here for the night,” said Max walking to the far side of the table and throwing the curtains wide across the windows. White morning light streaked in from the frostbitten windows. “I didn’t want Moore and Roman Grey coming back for their things in the middle of the night.”

“I’ve been alone all night.” said Sasha with a sigh, and then extending the arrow to Kate said, “What do you think of this?”

Kate sat beside her atop the table feeling the fire before her tickling her face and arms with warmth as she examined the new arrow. The shaft was long and smooth, level to a fair degree and the tip very thin. Usually, Kate whittled down thicker pieces of bone into flat triangular arrowheads for her arrows, but Sasha’s arrowhead looked round, long, and cone-shaped.

“I used bear teeth. Anna gave them too me the other day when I went looking for more antlers. She said they looked strong.”

Kate handed the arrow back to Sasha, who placed it on a small pile of featherless arrows beside her. “I like it,” said Kate. “I usually don’t use teeth because they make my arrows pull left for some reason.”

“Hmm,” said Sasha, brushing wood flakes from her lap onto the floor.

Max had strode around the table once more and stood before them by the fire, and cleared his throat. “So, what are we thinking about our newest guests? Any ideas?” he said.

Kate exchanged a look at Sasha, but neither answered right away.

“I for one am a little worried,” he said at last, pacing before the fire, hands behind his back, looking down at his worn boots. “I don’t even know where to begin really. They both seem well spoken like they are educated. They seem grateful for our help. But what are they doing here so far out into the mountains?”

“Do you think Grey knows them?” said Sasha.

“I don’t know,” said Max, speaking quickly. “It is a huge world out there. There is no telling how far they have traveled and from what place they birth.”

“But they said that they were from Burk!” said Kate quickly, “Just like Grey.”

“Yes, yes they did. But from what Grey has told me of Burk, it is a monstrous place. Thousands of people live there. Thousands!” I can’t imagine being able to place a single person in a thousand. But I suppose it is possible, to say the least.”

“I feel like it’s too much of a coincidence to have them show up here in Northanger just weeks after Grey,” said Kate. “They must know each other.”

“And what of his name? Roman Grey…” said Sasha.

“Grey,” Max repeated, rubbing his chin as he continued pacing back and forth. “Do you think the two of them could be related?”

“They don’t look much alike,” said Sasha. “Roman is taller. And his hair is lighter.”

“His eyes are the same color,” said Kate. “Blue. They are a lighter blue. Like the sky.”

Max glanced up at her as he came around again, and wrapped his hands behind his back again. “I think we should be cautious in mentioning Grey to these newcomers. We should try to find out what they want in Stonebrook. They cannot leave while the weather remains like this. We might as well talk to them. See what we can discover. When it was just Grey it was one thing, but now that there are more of them…” his voice trailed off and she looked into the fire.

“What?” said Kate, although she could guess what Max was thinking about.

“I don’t want any more people getting hurt in our dealings with the west. I don’t want to see more of our people led away in chains as our buildings burn. I don’t want that here and I don’t want that in Stonebrook. Not again.”

Kate watched Max’s back carefully.

“So, what do we do?” said Sasha.

Max turned back to them folded his arms across his chest and said, “This storm could break at any moment. Until then, I don’t want any mention of Grey’s existence in this town. Kate,” his eyes fell on her, “Don’t let them know about the pass to Stonebrook, whatever you do. And I don’t want anyone to be alone with them for more than a few minutes. Keep your knives on you at all times.”

“What about the rest of the girls at the end of the hospital wing?” said Kate.

“I’ll speak with them. Everyone should be waking up soon,” he said.

“I don’t have all of my gear. My best knife is still at the north wall,” said Sasha.

“Leave it. Borrow one of Kate’s for now. Have you looked at the things they left here?” Max jerked his head over to the pile of fur and bags arranged neatly at the end of the table.

Sasha shook her head. “No, I haven’t touched it since we put it there last night.”

Max nodded. “Well, I think this storm could be a blessing for the time being. At least we can keep their existence here quiet for now. Why don’t you get some rest Sasha; it’s been a long night. Join Linda upstairs. I don’t want anyone sleeping alone from now on.”

“Why not?” said Kate, as Sasha slid off the table and stretched.

“I just don’t,” said Max. “I am not too sure about Roman and Moore. I think we shouldn’t be taking any chances.”

“Do you think they could be dangerous?” said Kate.

“Anyone can be dangerous. I just want us all on the safe side,” said Max. “I think we have a few hours still. They probably will not wake for some time.”

Just then, the door to the entryway opened Roman Grey and Moore entered.

“Good morning,” said Roman, nodding towards them, looking directly at Kate.

“Good morning gentlemen,” said Max, quickly masking his surprised face.

Both men had strode into the room, heading for the fire. Roman looked around at the table, the rafters, chairs, and windows taking it all in. “Sure is cold in here. We are not used to weather like this.” He nodded again to Kate, coming to a stop in front of her and holding his hands up to the fire.

Moore lumbered up beside him staring at Kate and Sasha as he walked and did not look away until he came to a stop by the fire.

“Did you find your rooms to your liking?” said Max facing the pair of them.

“Yes, thank you,” said Roman smiling to Max. “The blankets are very warm and soft. I haven’t slept so well in a long time. Not since I left home.”

“Would either of you care for some breakfast? I was planning on heading to the kitchen to put something together.”

“That sounds good. Will you be joining us, Kate?” Roman turned to her unexpectedly.

“Uh,” she said, glancing at Max, “I guess so.”

“Excellent,” he said, giving her a slight grin. “And you? Sasha, am I correct?”

Sasha was spared an answer as Max butt in and said, “She was just headed upstairs. If you two would like to follow me, there is a back way to the kitchen over here by the pantry. Sasha collected her small pile of freshly carved arrows and headed for the door.

She gave Kate a look as they passed; Kate heading to follow Max and the others, and she heading for the door leading the entryway and stairwell.

“See you later,” said Sasha.

Kate nodded and looked up to see Roman holding out his arm, gesturing her to go first after Max. She nodded to him and followed Max to the door on the opposite side of the room, glancing back over her shoulder to check on Sasha.

Behind her, Roman was engaging in a conversation about the excellent artisanship of all of the woodwork he had seen thus far with Max ahead of him, and Moore was watching Sasha. He stared at her fixedly until her dark brown hair disappeared behind the door. When he turned back, Kate saw a strange look on his face. A dark, hungry look.

X

The hours dragged by. Linda joined them in the dining hall later in the afternoon. Sasha remained upstairs sleeping. The five or six nurses, including Susan, who stayed in the back of the hospital wing did not make an appearance, no doubt under Max’ orders.

Max seemed very nervous about these men, and Kate had the feeling he wanted to give them as little opportunity to interact with herself or Linda, or any of the girls within the building as possible. Roman seemed eloquent and intelligent. He asked a lot of questions about Northanger, about the bone tools he saw lying around, and about the process of building the hospital. He spoke with Max about medicine and illnesses. He told stories about his travels through the woods and plains on his journey from the west.

He was no longer the cold, angry, mess who crouched on his hands and knees by the fire a day before. He held himself up tall with square shoulders and spoke with ease and sat with comfort.

Moore, on the other hand, was quiet. He seemed to blend in with the background, always sitting near Roman but rarely speaking. Kate would catch him staring at her sometimes. He would not look away when this happened. Kate would feel an involuntary shudder and would look away. Even when she was looking away, she thought she could feel his eyes on her and it made her insides squirm. She moved around the room, trying to avoid them. When he was not looking at her, he was looking at Linda, and by how uncomfortable she looked, Kate knew she was experiencing the same thing.

For the next few days, Kate could not get a moment alone with Max. Roman and Moore were always there. Always. In Max’s study, the dining hall, the lecture room: everywhere. They had no time to speculate about the two newcomers. No time to discuss Grey or the passage to Stonebrook.

Days blended almost seamlessly into nights. The only difference was the slow fading of murky grey light coming in from the windows, shifting to pitch darkness as the hours dragged. The wind and sleet never ceased.

“When will this storm end?” said Roman over breakfast on the third day. He sat across from her at the dining table, a steaming bowl of stew resting before him. “I know I have said it enough, but I have never seen anything like this in my life. It’s incredible!”

Max was upstairs in his study. Moore was standing by the window watching the room, and a few of the nurses from the hospital wing were sitting at the far end of the table, whispering to each other in low voices. Sasha had left a few minutes before, unable to stand the stares of Moore any longer, and Linda had followed her.

“What is the weather like in the west?” said Kate, stirring her own bowl of stew with a wooden spoon.

“It’s hot,” he said. Kate was reminded strongly of Grey when she had asked him the same question. “But it’s beautiful out there,” said Roman.

Kate raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Well,” said Roman looking around the room, and dipping his spoon in his bowl. His eyes sought the ceiling and he half smiled as though he were trying to recall something in detail.

“I live by the ocean,” he said at last. “Up on the bluffs overlooking the harbor. During the spring, you can see all of the sailing ships docked below and they rock up and down with the current. The air always smells of salt water. And there is never a cloud in the sky! It’s beautiful. And the ocean just goes on forever. As far as you can see, just clear water. On nice days I have taken boats a hundred yards out and could still see the sand on the ocean floor. There are all sorts of different colored fish darting in and out of the coral. It’s incredible.”

Kate listened quietly, picturing the scene as best she could and watching him smile as more details arose in front of his eyes. She had never seen the ocean but she had heard Max read to them about it. And she had seen illustrations, but that wasn’t really the same thing. “How long has it been since you have been home?”

“A long time,” he said with a sigh. “A long time.”

“And that’s Burk you are describing? In the west?” she said.

“Huh?” he said, frowning.

“Burk,” said Kate. “You said you are from Burk the other day.”

“Oh, yes I did,” he said. “Well, that’s part of Burk. Burk is a huge city. It’s an amazing place.”

Kate ate a spoonful of stew waiting for him to go on.

“I lived at the very western edge of the city on the coast,” he said. “But the city’s limits stretch pretty far inland. I doubt you could even imagine a place like it.”

“Try me,” she said, eating another spoon full of stew.

“Well,” said Roman, “There are massive buildings of stone and metal. Bigger than even this one. And taller. And there are stone roads and city shops of all kinds: more than just butchers and seamstresses. There are pottery workers, and rug makers; tailors, artisans, and restaurants, and glassmakers. There are carpenters and metalworkers.”

“We have those things here as well,” said Kate, chewing slowly.

“Not like this. In Burk, we have such incredible and detailed architecture it would amaze you. It’s truly something out of the old world. Our buildings are taller and larger than anything is here I would bet. We blend metal, stone, and wood together. The city is set up in a grid so it’s easier to get around and the streets are numbered. It’s incredible. Max has been telling me about your maps; so you can no doubt picture the layout, am I right? There are no hills, rocks, or trees in our way though. We didn’t build around the land. We paved it.” He smiled waiting for her to join him in wonder at the picture of his city that defied nature.

“There is nothing else like it in the world,” he continued, “and nothing quite so beautiful. Not any of the beautiful places I have seen in my travels across the plains have I seen anything as incredible as Burk. And we know how to work metal better than anyone else in the world. I’ve noticed that your craftsmanship in woodworking is quite good hear, but I haven’t seen much metal around. Do you have any metals workers hear?”

Kate chewed slowly and shook her head.

“Well, maybe we could teach you one day,” he said. “My father’s trade was metal working. He ran all of the forges in Burk. Everything from tools and weapons to industrial materials. There were hundreds of men working day and night to make enough for the city.”

“Hundreds?” said Kate.

Roman nodded.

“How many people live in Burk?” said Kate, her spoon half way to her mouth.

“Thousands. Thousands upon thousands. Like I said, it’s huge.”

Kate just shook her head and grinned through a mouthful of stew.

“You don’t believe me?” said Roman.

Kate shrugged, “I just can’t imagine a place that can fit that many people. It seems impossible.”

“Not impossible,” said Roman. “Just uncommon. Today, at least. My father said that Burk is the last piece of the old world still alive.”

“What do you mean ‘the old world’?” said Kate.

“I mean the world before,” he said. “Before, well… just before. You have read through Max’s books haven’t you? And heard him talk about science and math and even geography? Those books, those ideas, are from an older world than the one we live in. The places and the people back then were so different than they are now. And there were millions of them. Burk is the closest thing left to that kind of world.”

Kate watched him, forgetting about the spoon in her hand.

“Hasn’t Max ever talked about it? About where all of those books came from?”

“Yes,” Kate said slowly, “But it was never something we focused on. There is too much to worry about here than to spend time thinking about the past.” But she thought about the Boneyard. She had never seen it before, but there were plenty of people that had seen it around Northanger. Max for one. It was uncommon for people to talk about anything like “the old world” around here, but whenever the Boneyard was brought up, whispers would come and go about a long lost people with buildings that touched the sky.

Roman was smiling and shaking his head. “This place,” he said, looking around the room, “is just a small part of a huge world. There is so much out there. So much to see and so much to do.”

“Are there many more places like Northanger?” said Kate. “On your way here, how many did you see? Can we reach them?” Kate felt excitement for a moment at the idea of exploring beyond the plains and seeing more than just the savages by the edge of the mountains like Kane and Aiden. But Roman’s smile faltered.

“No” he said, “there are not many. This is actually the first settlement I have seen since leaving Burk. There were a few nomads here and there, but not many. And they usually avoided us entirely. Yours is the first new face I have seen in a long time.” He grinned at her across the table, his bright blue eyes flashing. “You were the one I saw outside my first night here?”

Kate nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t think you would remember. You were only conscious for a second or two.”

“I remember,” he said smiling at her. “I have seen many things out there in the wilderness; waterfalls, giant crystal clear lakes, valleys and gorges, acres of sprawling green grass, all different kinds of sunsets and sunrises, but seeing you was like a breath of fresh air. It was the most beautiful thing I have seen in a very long time.”

Kate blushed and started to laugh. “I… you can’t be...” she tried to string together a response but words seemed to fail her.

Roman laughed as well, his spoon circling the bowl in front of him. “I’m serious,” he said.

Kate looked up to see his soft blue eyes watching her closely. She felt self-conscious all of a sudden and looked away again. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. They had left the table and were resting in her lap but for some reason that felt wrong. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and picked up the spoon with the other. Roman had not looked away.

“I’m sure there are plenty of more pretty woman in Burk. You have just been away too long,” she said, looking into her soup.

“There are plenty of beautiful woman in Burk. I have met many of them. But I have never seen a woman like you before.”

Kate looked up at him again. She felt her face getting hotter as she looked into his sky blue eyes. He was watching her steadily with a soft smile.

“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you how I feel. When we first stepped through the gates of this place, I could not have even dreamed of waking up to a face like yours. It made me feel…” he paused for a second and finally looked away with a sheepish smile. “It made me feel like I was home,” he said. He gave her another crooked smile.

Kate had no response. She felt a little winded and her heart was beating rather hard. Not like when she was running, or climbing, but rather something different. Her cheeks still felt warm and her stomach had a lightness to it that made her feel uneasy. Or sick. Or excited. She was not sure which. “Okay,” she said at last, then immediately regretted it. She realized that she was leaning forward across the table and sat back again.

Roman laughed and leaned back in his chair too. “Why don’t we talk about something else, now that I have made a fool of myself? Tell me about what you do here. What about these maps you make?”

“There is nothing much to them,” she said, feeling confused. She thought she had been the one making a fool of herself.

“Not from what Max has been telling me. He says you make the best maps here,” Roman said, picking up his spoon again and going back to work on his stew.

“Well, I am definitely one of the only people that make maps,” she said, copying him unconsciously, dipping her spoon back into her own bowl. “Sasha does sometimes, and so does Linda, but they spend most of their time hunting.”

“Do you hunt?” said Roman.

“Sometimes,” she said. “I do when I am out in the wood for a long time. I sometimes help the others track larger game in the wood during the spring and summer. But mostly I make maps.”

“I’ve been talking to Max a lot about this Boneyard place you are all so afraid of. He says it blocks the only known passage to the next settlement beyond the valley.”

Kate nodded. “A lot of people have died trying to reach Stonebrook.”

“How?” he said.

“We’re not really sure,” she said with a shrug. “Some think that a group of people or a tribe of some kind has settled there. Like the ones from the plains to the west. They could have been what killed all of the people trying to get through…” she hesitated, Roman’s blue eyes still watching her. “Some others think that there is a… a monster in the wood. A beast. They say it lives in the Boneyard and that people who get too close are… well.”

“What do you think?” said Roman.

Kate grimaced and shook her head. “I don’t know. There are plenty of dangerous things out there, but I don’t know about a beast.” Even as she said it, Kate thought about the cold nights in the wood she had spent with Grey. It was an unfamiliar part of the valley and there was an unknown something out there. But it could have been just a bear. Or a wolf.

“I don’t know either,” said Roman, frowning. He hunched over his bowl looking off in no particular direction. “I saw something out there. And I don’t know what it was.” Silence fell between them for a while. Kate remembered when Roman had told them all what happened to his group out in the snow. She pictured him and Moore in a dark blizzard with an unknown animal prowling outside the light of their torches with yellow eyes and a deep growl like thunder.

“I have hunted a lot of different game,” said Roman. “But this thing was different. It was big, and…”

“What?” said Kate quietly.

He had a serious look on his face as he stared down at his stew, but he just shrugged.

Kate said, “Well, Max always told us that it’s an unfriendly group of people that moved into the Boneyard. We don’t know how many, but we can’t risk sending scouts out there. Not when we have so little left.”

“Ah,” said Roman. “I’ve heard the people you run across around here can be pretty bad. Max has already told me about your run in with the man down the hall.”

“He did?” she said, her spoon stopping halfway to her mouth.

He nodded, taking up his spoon as well. After a mouthful of stew he said, “Yeah. It’s incredible how you got away.”

“Yup,” she said, thinking of Grey and wondering what lie Max could possibly have told him. “I was pretty lucky.”

“Lucky?” he said, “It didn’t sound very lucky. You’re quite the fighter from what I hear.”

“Thanks,” she said, still wondering what Max had told him.

“So if the Boneyard pass is blocked, how do you get to the next settlement?”

“We don’t,” said Kate.

“So that’s why you make maps? You’re looking for another passage?”

Remembering what Max had said about not giving away too much information about Stonebrook or about the mountains, or Grey, she thought carefully how she should answer. But she couldn’t see a way out without obviously lying.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “That’s part of the reason we map the mountains.”

“And you haven’t found another pass?” said Roman.

Kate shook her head.

“Do you think I could take a look at your maps? Maybe I could help you chart out new places to search.”

“I guess so,” she said, thinking hard.

“Great,” said Roman with a smile. “Where do you keep them?”

“You mean right now?” said Kate.

“It’s not like we have much else to do,” he said, shrugging.

Kate hesitated for a moment and then said, “I think I have one here.” She walked to the opposite side of the dining hall to a small cupboard used for storing miscellaneous things. She sifted through various junk; a tablecloth, some chair cushions, broken bone utensils and tools, and pulled out a small stack of worn out paper. This was an older map she had made the previous year that focused more on the southern end of the valley away from both the Boneyard and the new pass she knew to be to the northwest of Northanger.

She blew off a thin layer of dust atop the papers and stood up closing the cupboard door. The nurses at the end of the table watched her and whispered to each other as she walked back to where Roman sat eating. Then she noticed that Moore had gone from the room. She slowed and looked around making sure she had not missed him.

“Where did Moore go?” she said, coming to a stop in front of Roman. He turned in his seat and shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But he can’t have gone far. It’s not like he could go outside in this weather.” He chuckled under his breath and nodded to the stack of papers. “Is that it then?”

“Yeah,” said Kate. Moore was so quiet most of the time that he disappeared into the corners of the room. But she glanced at the door, thinking. Moore made her feel uncomfortable because of his incessant staring at her or the other girls in the room. She thought that she should feel relieved, as she usually did when he vacated a room. But this time she didn’t. She felt uneasy.

“Let’s have a look,” he said, getting up and coming around the table to stand beside her.

Kate shook off her feeling of unease, turned to the map in her hands, and started to unfold the papers and place them in order atop the table. She arranged them in the correct order and smoothed them out, careful not to crinkle the paper too much or smudge the ink.

“Wow,” said Roman, looking down at the map. “This is really good.”

“Thanks,” said Kate.

“Here we are,” he said pointing to a marker towards the center of the map. “And I can see over here is where Moore and I came from.” He dragged his finger to the bottom left of the map towards the western end of the valley. “We really could have used this when we reached the mountains. It would have saved us a lot of time. You’re work here is quite incredible.”

He asked more questions about the area and about how she had made the map. Kate answered as best she could and described the terrain of different areas to him. He was a good audience, listening closely, asking detailed questions and following her technical descriptions. He was quick to praise her work and she found herself getting lost in the conversation, getting deeper and deeper into her experiences mapping in the valley.

“Do you use the stars to navigate at all?” he asked

Kate shook her head. “No. We don’t know how. And besides, the canopy is usually too thick to see through in most places.”

“But you can still learn, can’t you?” he said.

“Max and I read a book describing the stars and constellations in the skies a long time ago. It was the same book that taught me how to draw maps. But there wasn’t much about navigating with the stars.”

“You can’t learn everything from books you know,” said Roman with a chuckle.

Kate felt a little stung. “I know that. It’s just…”

Roman waved away her response. “I learned to sail at night using the stars. And the stars here are the same as they were in Burk. I’d be happy to show you. Well, that is, once the sky clear up.”

They continued to talk for some time. The girls at the end of the table slowly filed out, one by one until she and Roman were alone in the dining hall. The conversation moved from star charting to ocean charting, to hunting, and on and on…

Soon they were swapping stories about being lost or stuck. And then Kate found herself recounting the story of her encounter with Kane and Aiden in the wood, weeks before. She found the story easy to laugh at now, and Roman laughed with her, his shoulder rubbing against hers as they sat close to one another.

“I was so angry when he started burning my charts. I had been working so hard on them for weeks, and he was just tossing them on the fire! My fire! And all of my things! They were just tossing them around the camp!”

Roman was watching her recount the story with interest, chuckling under his breath.

“And trapping wolves! How stupid do you have to be to do something like that? I found one of their traps, and the wolf was still alive. And that’s when…” Kate’s voice trailed off. That’s when she had seen Grey. “That’s when they found me,” she said, changing direction. “Well, soon after that anyway. They caught up with me but Max told you everything after that I’m sure.”

“Not everything,” said Roman. “But it sounds to me like you handled everything pretty well. You should give yourself more credit. Like I said, I haven’t met a women like you before.”

Kate shrugged, feeling that swooping sensation in her stomach again.

“So, around here is where they found your camp?” said Roman, pointing to a spot at the end of the valley.

“That’s it,” said Kate checking the spot. “And over hear was their camp,” she said, tracing her finger across the paper. “That’s where I found the trap with the wolf.”

“We must have missed that one,” said Roman. “But at least we found the furs. We would have died in the cold without them.”

They fell into silence for a while, looking back down at the map. “That’s not all we found you know,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He straightened up and moved passed her. As he did so, she felt his hand squeeze her shoulder for a fraction of a second.

He stopped beside the folded up wolf furs and the pile of supplies that belonged to himself and Moore and rummaged around. Finding what he wanted, he came back to Kate holding out something small for her to take.

“What is it?” she said reaching out and taking the small square object.

“It’s a book,” he said. “I found it at that same campsite where we picked up the furs.”

Kate stared at the book in her hands. It was thin, light, and coated with dried mud. She could not even make out the title printed on the cover.

“Do you recognize it?” he said.

“No.” It looked a lot like any other book. Old, worn, and dirty. But something in the back of her mind was stirring. “Do you think it might have been mine?” she said.

“No,” said Roman, looking at it as she turned it over in her hands. “But I know this book.”

“What it is about?” said Kate, flipping it open to a random page. The pages were crusty, and the once black printed letters had a faded grey look to them.

“I haven’t read it. Really that doesn’t even matter. What matters is the book itself,” he said, sitting down beside her again.

“Why?” Kate gently closed the book and looked at him again.

He didn’t speak for a moment. But just when Kate was about to break the silence, he said, “That book belongs to an old friend of mine.”

“Oh?” she said. She looked down at it and again feeling as though something was tugging at the back of her mind still. “But…”

“We left Burk together, but he got separated from the group,” he said looking down at the chart splayed across the table. He leaned forward heavily on one arm, and with the other used his finger to trace a steady path from the blank uncharted plains up into the valley. “We knew he would keep going and we have been hoping to meet up with him. If he is still alive, that is.”

Kate looked down at the book again. Had she seen this book before? Hadn’t Kane dumped out Grey’s pack in the clearing that night, and hadn’t a book fallen out? Now she remembered. Kane had tossed it into the center of the clearing. It had been useless to him.

“Finding that book gives me hope that he is still out there,” said Roman, still examining the chart absently. “But it also makes me feel like we might be too late. This is an unforgiving place. He could be dead.”

Kate watched him closely, her heart beating rather loudly in her ears. A fleeting image of Grey crossed her mind and she pictured him looking back down the path behind them in in the wood. Hadn’t he always been looking over his shoulder as though he thought someone was following?

“What do you think?” said Roman.

Kate looked up from the shabby book cover to see Roman looking over at her. “What do I think?”

“Yes,” he said, with a short laugh, “What do you think? Have you seen any other outsiders around these parts? I know this town is not nearly as hospitable to other people that come calling at the gates as you have all been to Moore and I. We are pretty lucky. Maybe he wasn’t so lucky.”

“No one else has come through here,” she said.

“Just that man down the hall, and no one else?”

Kate nodded.

Roman laughed again, and looked away. “Why don’t you trust me, Kate?”

“What?” she said, her heart jumping in her chest. “I…” But she just looked away, shaking her head, thinking hard.

“I spoke with Kane yesterday,” said Roman. He looked over at her let out a short laugh, rolling his eyes. She must have looked startled because he said, “Honestly Kate, you don’t have to look so freaked out. Look, Max told me about your run in with Kane and I thought he might know something about that,” he nodded to the book in her lap. “He didn’t remember it, but he did tell me the story of you and your friend.”

He waited for her to say something, but Kate was frozen. After a moment he shrugged and said, “Look, I get that you guys are suspicious. Outsiders aren’t exactly something you are used to, but you can trust me.”

“How do I know that?” said Kate softly.

Roman opened his mouth, and then frowned. “Uh, I guess you don’t. You’ll just have to take my word for it. All I want to know is if he is still here. If he is, you will see for yourself that he and I are friends when the storm is over. It’s been a long time, but I’m sure he has been expecting us to catch up eventually.”

“Then why didn’t he say anything about you?” said Kate, throwing all pretenses away.

Roman just shrugged. “He has always been a quiet man. I’m sure you figured that out by now. And he might not have wanted to scare you. I’m assuming from what I have been able to glean from Kane and a few whispered conversations here and there that he has been here for a while, and you all seem to like him. He has probably figured out that you don’t like outsiders all that much and didn’t want mention more people could be coming.”

Kate didn’t know what to say to that. It was a possibility. Grey had been confused by her reaction when he told her he was from the west. He could have noticed it scared her. And by now he had heard the stories of what happened here. He wouldn’t want us to think more were coming. Not again.

“Look,” said Roman. “I get that you are confused. But there is no reason for all this secrecy. He is an old friend of mine, and we have been looking for him for a long time. I can prove it too you, if you like.”

“How?” said Kate.

“Well,” he said. He scratched his chin thinking. “He is a little shorter than me. He has dark hair. His eyes are blue. Dark blue. He is quiet, but thoughtful. He listens to everything going on around him and he never forgets anything. To you it might have been a through away comment, but to him it meant something. He loves to read anything he can get his hands on, and…” he thought for a while longer. “He is the best metal worker I have ever known. That knife you carry; it belongs to him. I was there when he finished it.”

Kate stared at him, still not sure what to say or do. “He…” she began, but stopped. In all but a second she realized how little she knew about him. She still knew almost nothing about Grey. Everything detail Roman described she drank in. And it all sounded like it fit.

“Did he give it to you?” said Roman

“The knife?”

Roman nodded.

“No,” said Kate. “I borrowed it.”

“I see. What else,” said Roman, smiling at her bemusement. “He has a scar on his left hand. A really bad one. I remember the day he got it.”

“I never saw a scar,” said Kate

“No?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Next time you see him, ask him about it. It’s, uh, quite a story.” He smiled to himself, and then said, “Here, give me your hand.” He held out his own open hand and waited.

Kate hesitated. She looked around the room as subtly as possible but knew that no one else was around. She wished someone was. She slowly placed her hand in his. His fingers were warm and smooth, and he took her hand with both of his.

“So,” he said, looking down. She followed suit and looked down at their hands. “It starts right here,” he said, rubbing his thumb between the knuckles of her middle and third finger. “And it goes all the way up like this,” with one hand he traced an invisible line from her knuckles all the way up her forearm and bicep to her shoulder and then over onto her back. Her skin tingled as he did so. And a moment later he let go of her and sat back.

“That’s, uh,” she said, her hand still held out. She dropped it in her lap and went on. “That’s got to be a pretty bad scar. How did it happen?”

“I’ll let him tell you,” he said, and then he stood up.

“Where are you going?” said Kate, looking up at him as he brushed the wrinkles from his coat.

“I’m going to go find Moore,” he said with a quick grin, “Sorry about, well, I didn’t mean to make you so uncomfortable. I was going to talk to Max about it later, but judging by your nervous reaction I think I’ll just keep it to myself. Once the storm clears up we will figure everything out.”

“Oh,” said Kate. She felt relieved that he was leaving, but also confused. And maybe something else, too. She could not decide how she felt. This whole conversation had gone in all sorts of directions she hadn’t expected.

“I like talking with you, Kate,” he said, “I… well it was nice.” He grinned and shrugged. “I’ll see you later.” He headed past her towards the door.

Kate turned in her seat and watched him go. She still felt confused, but she was burning with questions. She stood up suddenly and blurted out, “Are you and Grey related?”

He had been brushing the wrinkles from his sleeves when she spoke but his hand faltered for a fraction of a second. He turned to looked at her again. “Am I,” he said slowly, “related to Grey…” He said it almost like a question but then hurried on with conviction. “No. We are not related. But I have known him a long time.” He looked towards the frostbitten window and blew warm air over his hands before saying, “What makes you think we were related?”

“It’s just that, on the first night you were here, you told us that your name is Roman Grey. A couple of people thought the two of you might be related somehow since you have the same name.”

Roman considered her for a moment and said, “We were something like brothers. A long time ago.” He looked seriously at her as he spoke, and then he turned and headed out the room. Kate watched him go and stood alone by the hearth for a long time afterward, thinking about everything that had just happened.

XI

Later on, Kate was heading up the steps to the second floor when she heard and loud thud, and felt the floor shudder. Her thoughts, until then trapped in a constant replay of the last half hour’s conversation with Roman, snapped back to reality. She heard angry whispers issuing from upstairs. Kate ran up the last few steps and turned down the hall to see Roman holding the much larger Moore up against the wall. He looked livid.

Moore glared back down at him with a sour expression on his face but did not respond to whatever Roman was growling at him. Before Kate had a chance to say a word, Roman caught sight of her and released his friend. “Kate,” he said breathlessly.

Moore huffed, smoothing out his coat sleeves and shouldered past Roman, heading towards her. Kate took an instinctive step back, but Moore lumbered by and headed down the stairs without looking at her once. She watched his bald head disappear down the steps and then turned to Roman again. He had not moved.

“What was…” She was cut off as one of the doors slid open with a bang just behind Roman. He jumped aside as Sasha came out into the hall, red faced and looking angrier than Kate had ever seen her.

Roman moved toward her but stopped immediately as she put up a warning hand. “Sasha I…” he began.

“You keep that pig away from me,” she said, through gritted teeth. Roman began again but she cut him off, pointing threateningly at his face. “He tries anything again and I’ll kill him.” She spoke in a cold whisper, biting into every syllable. Then she stormed down to hall towards Kate, whose mouth was still hanging open.

Before she could compose herself, Sasha grabbed her wrist and said, “Come on.” Sasha pulled her towards the lecture room. Kate stole one last glace over her shoulder at Roman before she was whisked away. He still hadn’t moved. He was watching her go, looking lost and upset.

XII

Sasha was fuming. But she wouldn’t say anything to Kate. She just led her into the lecture hall, slammed the door and locked it. Linda was already in there, and upon their loud arrival she looked up from her work and stared at them, eyebrows raised. Kate just shrugged, and after they both failed to get anything out of Sasha, the three of them passed the time in mostly silence.

Linda kept a steady stream of conversation going, but neither Kate nor Sasha had much to say. Sasha pulled a pearly white set of antlers from a cupboard and started hacking away at them, carving a new knife from the bone. Linda had been shaving wooden arrow shafts, and Kate decided to join her. But her mind was not really involved in what she was doing.

Half of the time, Kate’s mind was thinking that the reason Sasha was so upset had something to do with Moore. But she didn’t know what he had done. It must have been pretty bad though. The other half of her mind was stuck on the book resting on her lap. Grey’s book. She completely forgotten about it until she looked down to see it still clutched in her hands as she sat beside Linda.

She wanted to talk to Max. She wanted to talk to him about what she had found out. Grey did know these men after all. They were all from the west. Maybe this was the start of another raid. Maybe this time they would take all the woman, instead of just the men. There were no men left to take, after all. She felt tension in her body but didn’t know what she could say. Sasha was too upset to talk to. She waited for an opportunity to talk to Max all day, but none came.

Before she knew it, night had fallen. She, Linda and Sasha were sharing her room on the second floor. The other two seemed to fall asleep with no trouble but Kate laid awake in the dark, unable to stop a tangle of thoughts from lapping across her mind.

Eventually, she sat up and tried to look around. Blindly, she felt beside her bed until her hands found Grey’s book resting on her bedside table and then a small wood lantern beside it. She fumbled around until her fingers grazed the small piece of straw they used as a lighter and she got up out of bed.

The wood floor was freezing against her toes. She tip-toed to the door and slide it open a crack, exposing the lit lantern in the hall. She put the end of the straw into the lantern and pulled out a small flame. She slid the door shut, tip-toed back to her bed and jumped up onto the covers, careful not to let the end of the straw go out. Then she lit her lantern, bathing the room in a soft golden light. Long shadows appeared against the walls. Linda and Sasha’s silhouettes moved up and down shallowly as they breathed.

She watched them for a moment, making sure that they slept on, blowing into her cold fingers absently. Then she propped herself up against her pillows and wrapped herself in her blankets, picking up the book as she did so.

It was rather thin and light. Not like the books that Max had on his shelves. This one was much too thin. The pages were crusty and yellowed. She thumbed through them and inhaled the familiar smell of dusty pages.

She placed it gently back on her bedside table and scooted back against her pillows. She watched lamplight flowing over the faded cover for a while until her eyes landed on the knife leaning against the wall beside it. She crawled forward and picked it up. The bright metal reflected white beams from the orange glow of the lamp beside her. She glanced up at the white lights dancing across her ceiling reflected from the metal blade in her lap.

Thunder from the raging storm outside sent a shudder through the walls around her. The lamp beside her shuddered atop the bedside table. Kate ran her fingertips over the central ridge of the blade, feeling the cold metal against her skin.

The walls shook again and a small plume of dust fell from the cracks in the ceiling. She sighed, deciding that sleep would not be an option for a while, and stood up. She pulled on a pair of wool socks to protect her feet from the icy floor and took the lantern from beside her bed. She crept into the hall holding the lamp, the knife, and her bow, careful not the wake the others, and headed towards the lecture room.

Her socks slid easily over the polished wood floor. She jogged down the hall, the lantern bobbing up and down, hopped and landed smoothly on the wood floor, sliding six feet forward. Smiling to herself, she came to a stop right in front of the doors to the lecture room, which, to her surprise, where open. Light was coming out into the second-floor landing from within.

She walked into the room and saw a boy sitting alone with his back to her. He was at a desk bent over a book, reading by lamplight.

Her heart leaped at once, and for a moment she thought it was Grey. But the boy turned to see where the new source of light was coming from and she saw who it was.

“Kate?” said Roman, “Hi. What are those for?” He nodded to the knife and bow held at her side.

“Hi,” she said. “Uh, I just wanted to come in here and practice for a bit.”

“Practice?” he said, turning around in his chair to face her better.

“It’s a little late to be reading isn’t it?” said Kate, nodding to the book on the desk in front of him.

“It’s a little late to be ‘practicing’ as well, wouldn’t you say?” he said with a shrug. “I haven’t been able to sleep. I think my room is close to the outer wall of the building. The storm is pretty bad tonight and all I can hear is wind and thunder.” As he said this, the window shutters rattled noisily as wind buffeted against them. The storm was a great deal louder on this side of the house than it had been in her room down the hall.

“Come here,” he said, glancing at the rattling window shutters. “I want to show you something.”

Kate walked through the rows of desks towards him, placing her bow and knife onto a desk.

“Look,” he said glancing up over his shoulder at her, and he tilted the book resting on his desk towards her.

She looked down over his shoulder at a picture of a small cat with yellow eyes. The caption above it read Felidae. Just as she began to examine the small black cat, Roman flipped the page lazily with his hand. He continued to flip through the pages and Kate saw more pictures of cats of different sizes on colors.

Her eyes fought to catch the captions of the different pages: North American Bob Cat, Black Panther, Siberian Tiger…

“African Lion,” said Kate. Roman had stopped on a final page in the section. There was a picture of a large cat with a black mane of fur surrounding its neck snarling and bearing his teeth. “I have never seen any animal like that before.”

“I have,” said Roman. “I think this is the beast in your woods.” He traced the lines of one of the animal’s teeth as he spoke.

“How can you be sure?” said Kate.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I know this is it. This is what I saw. Big cats like this seem to be able to survive in mountains, plains, in snow or desserts. It was dark out there, and it was cold, but I’m sure this was it. I could see his hair. And his eyes. Bright yellow eyes…” his voice trailed off as he stared at the picture. Kate looked over his shoulder at the beast with its gaping maw and sharp eyes. The illustration was lifelike enough.

“Where did you find this?” said Kate, reaching over his shoulder and turning back a page to look at a large black and white drawing of a group of African Lions.

“I found it in a room downstairs. Someone had marked this section so I just started reading to pass the time.”

Thunder boomed outside, rattling the windows and walls again. Kate stepped back, picked up her bow from the desk beside her, and moved to the front of the room. “I guess that could be it,” she said. The animal looked fierce but somehow underwhelming. Maybe just putting a face to the beast made it a little less frightening.

“What are you doing?” said Roman, from behind her. She heard a muffled snap as the book shut, followed by the scraping of the desk chair as he stood.

She was grabbing a large straw target from the corner of the room. Kate kept it inside year round just in case of bad weather. During the winter, it was sometimes her only means of entertainment. She struggled with the heavy target, dragging it slowly into the center of the room. Roman placed a hand on it, stopping her. “Allow me,” he said.

“I can do it,” she said, but he had already put his arms around the square target and hefted it up onto his shoulder with a loud grunt.

He laughed, balancing the hay on his shoulder. “Wow, this is a little heavier than I thought. Where do you want it?” She instructed him to place it at the opposite end of the room atop a table against the wall. “So, you shoot at this thing? Inside?” he said, straitening the target as best he could.

From the opposite side of the room, Kate rummaged through a few different drawers and cabinets looking for practice arrows. There were usually a bunch left in there so that no one had to use up their good arrows while practicing.

“It gives us something to do,” said Kate, finding a dozen dusty arrows inside a drawer. She picked them up and stepped onto the stage where Max would deliver his lectures and looked down range at the target on the opposite wall. As she adjusted her bowstring, Roman moved towards her, weaving in and out of the desks spread haphazardly through the room.

“I have not seen this in a long time,” he said. Kate looked up from the chipped bone tipped arrow she was examining to see Roman holding Grey’s knife. He gripped it tight and looked down at it with a frown.

“How did you know it was the same one?” said Kate, thinking back to the first night, when Roman had recognized the blade as soon as she tried to leave the dining hall.

Roman did not look up from the blade as he said, “I could never forget this.” He walked towards her then placed the blade down on the desk in front of her as though it were made of glass. “His craftsmanship I mean. It’s very noticeable. He has a style that many people liked in Burk.”

“Did he make a lot of weapons like that?” said Kate. She notched an arrow and drew the bowstring back with a well-practiced motion. The feathers on the end of the arrow tickled her lips.

“Oh yeah,” said Roman, sitting on the edge of one of the desk and looking down range at the target. “That’s what he did in Burk for a long time. He worked in my father’s forges making all sorts of things. Knives, swords, chains, tools, jewelry. His work was very popular.”

Kate exhaled slowly, her index finger holding the arrow tip steady, and focused on the center of the target. “He worked for your father?” she said. She took a breath, unwrapped her index finger and released the bowstring, exhaling slowly. The arrow shot across the room silently and hit the target low and to the left.

“Not bad,” said Roman.

She grimaced and grabbed another arrow.

“Yes, he worked for my father. My father owned all of the forges in Burk. Every metal worker was working for him.”

Kate shot another arrow and missed high and right. She scoffed and grabbed a third from the pile sitting on Max’s podium beside her.

“What has he told you about Burk?” said Roman. “He obviously has said nothing of me, but he must have told you something.”

Kate drew back an arrow and fired without taking much time to aim. She hit high and right again. “He didn’t say much,” she said after a moment. “He said it was hot.”

Roman laughed. “It’s definitely hot. What else did he tell you?”

Kate fired another arrow and missed again. She took a deep breath through her nose and stared at the target, but all she was thinking about was, again, how little Grey had said to her.

Roman seemed to guess what she was thinking because he said, “Did he tell you anything?” She did not want to admit it. She had been avoiding his eyes, but after a moment she finally looked at him. His arms were folded, and his was looking up at her from his perch on the desk. “What do you want to know?” he said.

Kate looked back at the target and started to pull back another arrow, but she stopped halfway and relaxed. Roman chuckled and shook his head.

“How do you two know each other?” she said at last.

“How do we know each other,” he repeated, standing up. He crossed the last few feet between the stage and the front row of desk, looking down as though he were considering the question. “I met his when I was just nine or ten years old.” He took to the stage and leaned against the podium beside her. “My father’s men had found him reading a dirty old book in the barracks. Somehow, word got to my father and he decided that Grey would be a good fit as a sort of friend for me, so we took him in. He lived with us for a long time.”

“Wait,” said Kate, shaking her head and stopping him. “What do you mean your father’s men found him? Where was he?”

“In the barracks. Grey is,” he stopped as though trying to think of the right words. “Grey and I are not from the same class of people. He worked in the coal mines as a boy. He did for a few years.”

“He worked in a mine?” she said, incredulously.

Roman nodded. “It’s pretty common for younger boys to work in the mines. They need smaller people around to fit in the tighter spaces.”

“That’s awful,” said Kate.

Roman just nodded in agreement. “Yeah, well it wasn’t that bad for him for long. Once he started living with us, it was much better. I really hated reading and studying and all that stuff back then. It was just me, and I liked going out on the water and sailing and fishing,” he laughed at the memories and shrugged. “But when Grey showed up he got me on the right path. My father had him go to all of my lessons and he loved it. All he wanted to do was learn about new things and new places. He was a lot more talkative back then.”

“Did his whole family live with you?”

Roman shook his head. “No. It was just Grey. He had no family in Burk.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning.

“Things were great for a long time. I told people he was my brother. Whenever I found myself getting into trouble, he was right there with me, usually trying to stop me from doing something stupid. But as we got older things changed a little. I started working more with my father and Grey had to find other things to do. My father sent him to the forge to learn metal working. There were a few years where I barely ever saw him. But he started to get a reputation as one of the most amazing smiths in the forge and everyone was taking notice of him. I asked my father if he could get him something else to do. Something easier so he wouldn’t have such a hard life.”

“You talk about him like he had no control over anything,” she said. “Does your father have that much power over people?”

Roman just shrugged and yawned. “In some cases.”

“What do you mean,” she said.

He just waved a hand and said, “Well, anyway, my father commissioned a special piece from Grey. A knife. That knife.” He nodded to Grey’s knife sitting on the table in front of them. “Grey was told to deliver it in person and he did. My father accepted it from him, looked it over, and gave it right back. He told Grey that he would no longer be just a metal worker. He would be an overseer.”

“A what?” said Kate.

“A… well, it’s a pretty big deal for someone like Grey. My father basically gave him power and freedoms that he had never really had before.”

Kate frowned as he spoke. “What do you mean someone like Grey? Is he so much different than you?”

Roman let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair. “Look, Burk is different than this place. There is more than just a couple hundred people. There are thousands. And some people are better off than others. And not everyone is the same. My father is a very wealthy, powerful man. Grey is…” again he broke off as though looking for the right words. “Grey is different. But my father ignored that. He gave Grey a chance to be something more. Something better,”

Kate pondered that for a while. To cover the silence, she drew back her arrow again and focused in on the target. Roman said, “Relax your shoulder a little. Your arms are tense.”

She felt a small twinge of annoyance as he gave her advice, but she took a breath, relaxed her shoulders, and fired another shot. The arrow hit dead center. Roman just grinned. She leaned around him and grabbed another from the podium.

“Why did all of you leave?” she said, taking aim again.

“Hmm?”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him frown at her. She relaxed her shoulders again and let the bow string go loose and said again, “Why did all of you leave? Where are you going?”

“Oh,” said Roman. He looked at her for a long moment and said. “He really didn’t tell you anything.”

Kate looked back at the target and took aim. “He said it’s where he is supposed to be.” She fired and hit dead center again.

“There you have it,” said Roman.

Kate leaned around him again and grabbed another arrow, but as she turned away, Roman grabbed her hand. When she turned back he did not let her go. “Kate,” he said, looking down at her. Even in the dim light of their two lamps, she could still see the vibrant shade of sky blue in his eyes. “I know you feel like you know him. And I know you trust him. But Grey is not exactly what you think he is.”

“What do you mean?” she said in a soft voice.

“Haven’t you wondered why he says so little about where he is from? About who he is?”

Her heart was beating rather fast as she looked at him. His hand holding hers was gentle, and he was close enough for her to smell his old worn out coat.

“What are you saying?” she said, in an even softer voice.

“I’m just saying that there are still a lot of things you don’t know about him. And that, when this storm is over, I hope you have a chance to see him for who he really is.”

And with that, Roman let go of her and left the room. Kate stood stock still for a long time, listening to the windows rattle and the wind howl outside. She did not understand what had just happened. But what bothered her was that Roman was right. She still knew almost nothing about Grey. He had told her everything she knew about him. She looked at the arrow clenched in her fist and slowly hooked it against the string. She drew the bow back and took aim.

She closed her eyes and relaxed. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes and fired. The arrow missed the target, hit the wall and broke in two.

XII

Kate woke later than usual the next morning. After her talk with Roman she had not been able to sleep. Both Sasha and Linda were up and out of the room by the time she dragged herself out of bed. She ran her hands through her hair, feeling a few twisted knots, as she gathered her things and got dressed. When she slid the door open and entered the hall, she thought that the whole building seemed quiet. No soft howl of wind or rattling shutters broke the still morning.

As she neared the second floor landing, she began to hear voices coming up from the entry way. She hurried to the rail and looked down in time to see Sasha open the front door, revealing a brilliantly bright morning, and head out into the square with Max right behind her. She called after them but, the door swung shut.

The storm is over, she thought, hurrying down the steps. Just before she reached the entryway, Roman appeared from the hall behind her.

“Good morning, Kate,” he said with a smile.

“Good morning,” she said, stopping in her tracks on the second to last step.

“What do you think,” he said, nodding to the front door as he pulled on a pair of gloves. “Safe to go outside?”

“Uh, maybe,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” he said with a laugh. “If I have to stay in the house a second longer I might go insane. Why don’t we go together? Do you need a coat?”

She hesitated and then said, slowly, “Yeah, I left it upstairs.”

“Let’s go get it,” said Roman, walking past her and heading up the steps. She followed him, looking over her shoulder at the front door, wishing Max would come through. She needed to talk to him. She needed to tell him about Roman and Grey and Moore.

“You know, this is just about it for us, isn’t it?” said Roman, walking beside her.

“What?”

“Well, I mean, once we find Grey we won’t be here much longer. He will probably want to head out as soon as we can,”

“To Stonebrook?”

Roman nodded.

“But you can’t. We already told you about the Boneyard and…”

“I remember,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her room. “But I don’t think that will stop him. He has been trying to reach that place for a long time. Since I first met him I think.”

“Are you going to tell me what is so important about that place?” Kate slid the door open as she spoke and went in the retrieve her coat. She threw odd pieces of clothing around looking for her jacket.

“You see, that’s the thing,” said Roman. “I don’t care if I ever see Stonebrook. I never really have. And I don’t think Grey is going to find what he is looking for their.”

Kate found her coat and slipped it on over her shoulders. She saw Grey’s knife sitting on her bedside table and grabbed it instinctively. “And what is he looking for?” she said, strapping the knife to her side and turning back to face him. Roman was leaning against the door frame looking up and down her room.

“Let’s go and ask him,” he said.

“I’m asking you,” she said.

Roman sighed and turned his head side to side, cracking his neck. “I’ll tell you, but first tell me something.”

Kate just waited for him, her palm resting on the handle of Grey’s knife.

“Is there another way through the valley?” he said at last. Kate frowned at him, thinking. He went on, “Grey will be heading through those gates soon enough whether there is safe passage or not. So tell me, is he going to go through the boneyard or is there another way?”

The silence stretched as they stared at each other.

“I want to talk to Grey,” she said, picking up her bow and quiver from the foot of her bed.

“You think you will need those?” said Roman.

She pulled the quiver strap over her head. “Max wanted us to stay protected at all times with you around.”

Roman let out a small puff of air through his nose and said, “I understand that you don’t trust me. But I don’t understand why you all trust him so much,”

Kate walked towards the door, but Roman blocked her way. They stood very close to one another. He said, “Do you really trust him to tell you the truth? About Stonebrook? About his past? Tell me one thing about him, one thing, that you haven’t learned from me.” His face was calm and his eyes were bright, but his voice was low and harsh.

The same doubt that had been eating away at her for so long was floating to the surface again. She could not look away, and she couldn’t speak. She wanted to talk to Grey. She wanted him to tell her what to think about all of this. But what had Grey ever told her about anything. He almost said nothing. Ever. Not to her at least. He talked to Max. And Max said he talked to Elli.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” said Roman softly. “Is there another way through the valley?”

Kate blinked, the truth and the lie fighting to control her tongue. Roman’s blue eyes watched her closely, as she finally made an almost indiscernible nod. “Yes,” she whispered. She felt her heart beating in her chest and blood pulsing through her ears as she spoke.

For a moment Roman didn’t say anything, but then he leaned back, towering over her. “He is running away,”

“What?” she said.

“Grey is running. From me.”

Kate frowned at him and repeated his words, trying to catch up to what he was saying, “running away. From you…”

“He ran away from Burk and he knew I would follow him,” said Roman. “My father made him an overseer. Gave him freedom. He could go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted to do, and be whoever he wanted to be. My father gave him power. He gave Grey that knife and so much more,” Roman’s voice shook as he spoke and he moved closer to her as he spoke. Kate backed away from him into her room. “Grey did terrible things. He hurt people. People he knew. People that thought he was a friend. He beat them into submission, controlled them with a whip and drove them to burn the fire hotter. Harder. Faster. Longer.”

In a small voice Kate said, “I don’t understand you,”

“He hasn’t told you where he comes from because he is trying to escape what he did!” shouted Roman. “He is a monster! And I am here for him.” Roman was breathing hard, his nostrils flaring. “Don’t trust him Kate,” he said in a quiet voice. His tone might have been softer now but it somehow shook her more than when he had shouted. “You don’t know him like I do. You don’t know who he is. You don’t know where he comes from. You don’t even know his real name. You want to know where he is going now? Why he is trying to get to Stonebrook? He thinks he is going home. He can run all he wants. There is no home for an animal like him.”

Kate was taking slow, shaking breaths and watching Roman closely. Then she heard someone calling her name form far down the hall. She moved forward quickly, not looking at Roman, and shouldered past him into the hall. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said in a low voice.

“Kate, listen to me,” said Roman. “Whatever you think he is, you’re wrong.”

She hurried down the hall away from him. She could hear him following quickly behind her. She wanted to talk to Max. She wanted him to figure all of this out. Why hadn’t she found him the night before? Woken him from his sleep to talk?

As though in answer to her wish, Max appeared at the end of the hall by the railing, looking around. As soon as he saw her he called out to her.

“Max!” she said, louder than she realized. He looked taken aback as she hurried forward. As she reached him, he grabbed her softly by the shoulders and looked down at her.

“My dear, you look ill. Are you all right? What happened?” He looked over her head, and she knew he saw Roman coming towards them. “What happened?” he repeated in a harder voice.

“We were just talking,” said Roman. His voice was softer than Kate had expected. She turned to face him again, standing beside Max, and he looked at her with in a pained way. “Kate, I hope you see things as I see them. Soon.”

She just watched him, with Max’s arm wrapped around her.

“How’s the weather?” said Roman, breaking a long look between she and him and looking at Max.

“Fine, fine, I mean,” said Max, “That is to say, its better. But I’m not sure if now is the best time to be heading out. Perhaps a few more hours and then we can all head out together.”

“Where is Sasha?” said Kate, remembering the two of them leaving together a few minutes before.

“What, my dear?” he said, looking from her to Roman. “She, uh, must be downstairs somewhere. Why don’t we all head into my study and have something warm to drink before we go out and brave the cold. Hmm? What do you say?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw the front door downstairs open again, and she turned in time to see Moore disappearing into the bright morning.

“Come on, Max,” said Roman heading for the stairs. “I’ve been telling Kate I’ll go crazy if I have to stay in here another second, and now Moore has beaten us all outside. Let me grab my things and we’ll join him.”

“But,” Max’s hand was half raised to stop him, but he just stood there and let him go.

“Max,” Kate hissed through her teeth. He looked stressed, but his eyes snapped onto her. Roman was whistling as he hit the first floor and headed out of site towards his room in the back.

“They know each other,” said whispered.

“What?” said Max, his eyes now staring at where Roman had disappeared beneath them.

“Roman and Grey and Moore,” she said. “They all know each other!”

“They…” Max looked dazed now.

“Where is Sasha?” she said, shaking his shoulders.

He shook his head a little and said, “I sent her to head them off. I thought Grey would most likely head this way first thing, but I wanted Sasha to warn him about Roman and Moore. I said I would stall them until she got back, and told us what Grey had to say, but…”

“Come on now,” called Roman from the first floor. He looked up at them and grinned. In his hands was a black leather whip that he was coiling into a tight loop. “Let’s go!” He crossed the entry way, hooking the whip to his side, and threw open the door. Cool, fresh air came in as Roman held his hands up and took a deep breath of air through his nose. “It’s such a beautiful morning, isn’t it? Surviving a storm like that is all worth it for a moment like this,” He looked over his should at the pair of them, grinned, and said, “Come on Kate. Let’s go see what the Grey has to say for himself.”