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brushed them together into a small pile. There were only a few, but it
     was as though the roan were with her, encouraging her.
    Unpacking the bones was next. She slid her fingers gently over the curve of his skull, a secret caress, and the only one she’d
     ever have. Enough. She drew out the bones as though they were just anyone’s, and laid them on the scarf, placing the skull
     over the roan’s hair, to keep it safe. It was the first time she’d looked at the bones closely in the light, even in the poor
     candle glow. They seemed ridiculously small.
    “I had to leaves the leg bones behind,” she said, almost in apology to Acton. “I couldn’t fit them.”
    Baluch crouched next to the scarf and put his hand out to touch the skull. His hand shook. “Acton,” he whispered.
    But of course there was no answer. Bramble turned aside. She knew too much of what Baluch was feeling, and it unsettled her.
     She wondered how much he had changed, living his life in snatches, moving from time to time for a thousand years at the whim
     of the Lake. His smile hadn’t changed, or his eyes. Or that voice.
    Ash was staring at the bones like a rabbit stares at a weasel, eyes wide and stuck.
    “
Ash
,” Bramble said sharply. He blinked and turned to her in relief. “Sing,” she said.
    “I’m not sure…” He looked at Baluch and lowered his voice. “She’s given me a kind of pattern of song, but not the words
     and not the exact melody.”
    Baluch nodded. “There are some songs which must be sung new each time. You will have to find your own version of what she
     has given you.”
    Bramble wondered if “she” were the Lake, but the men clearly weren’t going to say. Fair enough. She had secrets of her own.
    Ash fished his belt knife out of its sheath and held it a little uncertainly, and began to sing.
    The first notes, harsh as rock grating on stone, startled Bramble and made her deeply uneasy. She’d heard this sound before,
     when Safred tried to heal Cael. It was the sound of power, which should have been reassuring given what they were trying to
     do, yet it wasn’t. It just felt wrong.
    Ash seemed to feel that, too, because after a moment he fell silent, shaking his head. “It’s not right,” he said.
    “That song felt old to me,” Baluch said mildly. “I think you have to make it new.” His head tilted to one side as though he
     were listening to something, someone, else. “You have to make it
yours
,” he added.
    Ash nodded, and knelt down beside the bones. He put his hand out, hesitating, over the skull, then slid it sideways and rested
     his palm on the curve of the collarbone. “Acton,” he said quietly.
    Bramble remembered something and dug quickly in the bottom of the other bag for Acton’s brooch. She had always meant to give
     it back to Ash at some point. This seemed like a good time — it might help him as it had helped her.
    She knelt beside him and put the brooch down next to Acton’s skull. Baluch gasped. His grandfather had made it, Bramble remembered.
     Eric the Foreigner had made it for the chieftain Harald to give to his wife, who had given it in turn to her daughter Asa,
     Acton’s mother. And Asa had given it to Acton. Acton’s murderer, Asgarn, had ripped it from Acton’s cloak as he lay dying
     and given it to his accomplice, Red, the traitor. And from there, who knew whose hands it had passed through before it came
     to Ash? A thousand years of ownership. This brooch had come to their time by the long road, as though it had walked slowly
     through the undergrowth of a forest, while Baluch had, as it were, jumped from tree to tree.
    Bramble weighed the brooch in her hand as if it should have grown heavier with each year. She placed it on the scarf, next
     to Acton’s skull.
    “I give this back to you,” she said, not sure if she were talking to Ash or to Acton.
    Ash nodded gratefully and put his other hand on the brooch, shivering slightly as his fingers touched the cold