Around noon the sounds in the corridor changed. The guards’ pace tightened; boots struck the stone in unison, keys no longer clinked idly. Lamp smoke drifted past the cell. The iron on my wrist felt cold and taut, the bandage across my belly held, and the wolf inside me crouched beneath my ribs like a beast before a storm: alert, motionless.
At the bars the two familiar figures appeared first—the scarred one and the younger one—then the cloaked man behind them, and finally the fourth, whose very presence yesterday had bent the air aside. They did not speak his name. They didn’t need to. The silver mark on his cloak flashed, and the whole corridor’s breath tuned itself to his movements.
“Open it,” he said.
The scarred man turned the key. The bars clanged and gave; the smell of iron crept
