This Askala, he stood to gain something from you being blamed. Everything. The word came out bitter as burnt coffee. A council already uneasy about a woman who refuses to bend. A cousin dead and grief looking for somewhere to land.
And a rival me, conveniently standing close enough to catch it all. She shook her head slow. Askala did not need to lift a hand against that young warrior himself to profit from his death. Grief does the killing work for a man patient enough to wait on it. You think he planned it?
The murder itself? I think, she said carefully. Each word measured like she'd turned this thought over a hundred nights already and still hadn't found its edges. That a man who loses a bride to her own pride does not simply accept the loss. Some men build a new plan instead.
Quiet, patient, waiting for the moment it can be dressed up as somebody else's doing. And the town just took you? After your own people already condemned you? My people did not hand me to Wolf Creek. Something bitter moved across her face.
I ran. Three days through country I know better than any white man's map. I thought I could outrun a story once it started. I was wrong. Somebody in this town already knew I was coming before I arrived.
Knew. And was ready. Whit thought of the rope. Knew. Pale.
Bought special days before. Like somebody already knew there'd be a need for it. That rope, he said slowly, wasn't old rigging somebody grabbed in a panic. She went very still. Somebody planned this, he said.
Planned it before you ever set foot in that square. Neither of them said Voss's name. Neither said Bragg's. But both names sat there in the room anyway. Alongside the fire, alongside the wind.