CHAPTER NINE:
He didn't answer her question. Instead, he set his glass down and walked toward the hallway, and after a moment, Lyra followed.
The photographs lined both walls, floor to ceiling in places, more than she'd counted on her first pass through the house. Winter light on bare rock. A summer haze softening the peaks to something almost gentle. One frame, older than the rest, slightly yellowed, showing the mountain from a distance with a house at its base — small, wooden, smoke curling from a chimney.
Dimitri stopped in front of that one.
"I grew up there," he said. "At the base of that mountain. Not here. Not in this life."
Lyra hadn't expected him to just give it to her. She stayed quiet, the way she'd learned to stay quiet with nervous vendors who needed silence to keep tal
