The morning after Fatima he found Edda at the training ground.
She was alone. The flat stretch of dirt behind the hut that she had cleared herself — pulling the stumps with her bare hands, leveling the earth with a flat stone, drawing the boundary lines in the dirt with a sharpened stick.
She was wearing a skirt. It was the first time he had seen her in one.
Brown linen, mid-calf, paired with a simple undershirt that did not fully contain her muscular frame.
She stood at the center of the clearing with a wooden sword and her back straight and her white hair tied up and she looked like what she was — a fifty-year-old dragon slayer who had been thoroughly broken and had gotten up and resumed her function.
She heard him coming.
She turned.
She bowed. "Sir Lord."
"Your grandson," he said, stopping at the edge of the clearing. "Is alive. He is on the mountain range east of the dead zone. He has a mission for me to complete. He will not return for some time."
