Keep the Fire In

The first part of this story belonged to Cass, who drove the cart. She told it twice over the years, once in a tavern and once at a wedding, and no two tellings of anything ever matched with Cass. What follows is the part that stayed the same both times.

She was watering her horse at the east exit of Highmarch, the king’s city, when the big man walked out of the crowd. He didn’t say hello. He only asked if she drove the Long Mile.

“All the way to the end of it,” Cass said. “Only the one stop out that way, and that’s Greyhollow, and only if somebody’s paying. Nobody ever is.”

“Somebody is,” the man said.

“Where to, then? There’s an inn, if you squint at it. I wouldn’t.”

“The manor.”

That was two more words than she’d expected, and they were the interesting ones. Customers meeting Cass for the first time generally priced her wrong, which suited her fine. She was nineteen that autumn, thin as a whip, with fair hair pushed back under a faded headband and a driving coat cut for somebody bigger. She had been on that bench since before she could see over the footboard; the cart and the route had been her father’s, and both had come to her early, the way everything had. Men looked at her and saw a girl. Then they haggled with her, once, and learned better.

She looked him over like something that might be worth money. He was tall, six foot two if she had to guess, and Cass guessed the size of everything out of habit. Gray was coming in at his temples. He looked to be around fifty. Under the cloak he wore armor, and it wasn’t the bright sort knights wore in parades. It was the kind that had been hit. A lot. That was strange enough to matter.