Sella was on her feet again, which was a victory against the bench, against the Hunger, and against Korrin’s habit of carrying her up stairs without asking, and she went to the Mound on the second morning with her bone-wire kit in its oilskin and her jaw set against the pain in her chest.
The pain was a dull band under the ribs, like a cord drawn tight by someone who did not know when to stop. She had taken three of the Kitchen’s broths that morning and two of Osk’s loaves, and she could feel both of them in her blood, a thin warmth that did not reach as far as her fingers. Her fingers were the only part of her that still needed to be right. Everything else could go to the Mound and be negotiated with.
She did not take the path. She had been up and down it too many times in the last month to need its gravel, and her knees were a bonesetter’s knees, which meant she had long since learned to take the shortest line across rough ground. She went over the rise through the wet grass and the old lime ruts, past the garrison’s laundry and the new wall at the Mason’s Yard’s corner, and came to the grey stone with her breath short and her mouth dry.
