Chapter 573

Midwinter the seventeenth. The setting sun, like dripping blood, stained the border battlefield a bleak, bruised amber. Beneath the dying light, the shadows of withered branches were ruthlessly shredded across the chill, frost-rimmed bluestone pavement. A biting, drafty wind whipped the fallen leaves at the lane's end into a rustling chatter, sounding for all the world like the earth itself was weeping. Only the bronze bell hanging from the eaves swayed lazily in the dusk, chiming out a few lonely notes that made the old city's twilight feel like a silent jar of wine sealed away by the passing years.