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have brought a sacrifice; one of her goats had dropped a kid the night before. They liked young sacrifices, it was said. But the blood would have been noticed. The village snoops wouldn’t have stopped until they’d found out who had made the sacrifice, and why. She forced her thoughts back to her petition.
    “Gods of fire and storm, hear your daughter. Of your kindness, keep my family safe. Keep the warlord’s men from them, keep them whole and happy.”
    She took out her knife and cut off a lock of her hair at the roots near her nape and laid it on the rock.
    “Take this offering as a symbol of my reverence. Use it to bind safety around my family. Use it to bind me more surely to your service.”
    The hair stirred in a breath of air that Bramble couldn’t feel. The gods were testing her sacrifice. The eddy of air turned and ruffled the hair on her head. In her mind she felt the tickle that meant the touch of the gods and, as always, the world spun around her as they tasted her thoughts. She rocked between joy and a holy terror that was completely different — cleaner — than the fear she had refused to the warlord’s man. When her sight was clear again she saw that the hair on the rock had disappeared. The gods had accepted her sacrifice.
    She let out a long breath of relief. There was nothing more she could do. Slowly, she got up and backed away. It was probably just superstition that said it was bad luck to turn your back on the gods, but she wasn’t willing to risk bad luck just now.
    She realized the gods had listened when at home she found her mam and da reading a letter from Maryrose and her husband, Merrick, inviting them all to come and live in Carlion. Mam had learned to read from her mother, who had been a waiting woman to the old warlord’s wife, and she had taught her husband and both the girls.
    They had talked about moving before, in a casual way, during the preparations for Maryrose’s wedding, but now it was time to decide.
    “They say they’re building the new house big enough to fit all of us,” her da said. “Merrick must be doing well.”
    “You should go,” Bramble said. The memory of the warlord’s man came up to confront her — his threats and the menace she’d read in his eyes — and it had made her voice harsh. She thumped some rabbit carcasses down on the table. “Get yourselves into a free town, where you’re safe from the warlord’s men.”
    They were startled.
    “They’ve never bothered us,” her father said.
    “But they could. Anytime they want to. In Carlion you only have to worry about the town council.” She tried to smile, to turn it into a joke. “Who knows, maybe you’ll end up a councillor yourself!”
    “It’s a big shift, to leave everyone we know. All our friends,” her father said, but he sounded excited by the idea of change. Mam sniffed.
    “There’s a few I’ll not miss,” she said, then paused. “And a few I will. But Maryrose is there . . . and any grandchildren we’re likely to have will be Carlion born and bred.”
    From that moment, Bramble knew it was decided, although her mother wondered aloud how Bramble would cope with town life.
    “For you’re always in the forest,” her mam said.
    Bramble felt herself start to shrug, always her answer to that old complaint, but stopped. It was probably the last time she would ever hear it. “Don’t worry about me,” she said, eyes passing from her mam to her da.
    But of course they did. They kept discussing it endlessly over breakfast. Bramble wished her grandmother was still alive. She would have forced them to admit they all wanted to go. No patience for dithering, her grandam. Bramble sighed. It was clear to her that the only thing holding them back was the thought that she would be unhappy in Carlion. She knew that as soon as she left they’d be packing up to make the move. She didn’t try to explain that she probably wouldn’t be with them. That would just lead to more questions,