18
Ruarc
Gormlaith came to him at the second day of the four.
He was on the eastern wall — the perimeter round he had been running every morning since the north wall assault, the full circuit of the territory's outer ring that was partly assessment and partly the physical work his body required when his mind had been too long in the same room. The rain had cleared overnight and left the world stripped and bright, the kind of cold clarity that made the basalt cliffs look carved rather than grown, the coastal light sharp off the wet stone.
She was waiting at the eastern stairs when he came down. She had the look she wore for conversations she had been preparing — not the impromptu quality of a woman arriving with urgent information, but the settled quality of a woman who has known someth
