What Casimir Remembers

She found him on the east wall, which surprised her, because nobody walked the east wall in a winter this long except the watch.

He was alone at the corner turret where the wall looked north up the valley to the Gap, with his coat collar up and both hands in his pockets, and he turned when he heard her boots on the ice and saw the loose sheets in her hand and went very still.

“You’ve read it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Is it bad?”

Ilse considered the question with the care it deserved.

“It isn’t bad,” she said. “It’s large. I’d like to read it to you somewhere with a fire. And I’d like you to be sitting down, because I was.”

They went to the library. Rurik, passing in the corridor, looked at their faces and at the papers and went and stood outside the door, and Ilse…