What she had learned in Myrken Wood was that the autumn nights were often as heavy as iron: gray, stern, unfeeling, all of them a herald serving only to announce the death of summer at the hands of infringing winter. It was a time for woolen skirts, layers of smallclothes and petticoats, an opportunity again to line the sleeves and cowl of a dead man's cloak with knotted fists of fur.
But sometimes, the bowels of the Broken Dagger were too warm, and phantoms dancing in an unchecked mind stirred her limbs from their sleep. Gloria Wynsee crossed the lawn with tromping, indelicate strides, bearing two loads in the night -- the ninth-month burden bulging against the waistline of her common dress, and across a shoulder, a lumpy burlap filled with a harvest's bounty: apples, all recently fallen, with black, soft-spot eyes staring out from their skins. Imperfect. Meant for compost.
She used the edge of a mud-caked boot to coax open the door to the stables. The warm, horse-hot air greeted her with its odor of shit and wet hay. A nightlamp wanly flickered on a peg jutting out from a vertical beam. Shadows formed creases for her to step over and across.
She came to feed Caliir, her steed, her boy, but another task summoned her, too--
Thoughts could not be left too long to rot.
"Vara," she whispered into the stalls. "Vara, are you here? I sought you out in your room, but you didn't answer."
She dropped the sack of apples to the floor.