I will have to tell Arrin, she thought, and she would have laughed if her throat were not in ruins.
There was a dragging, scuffling sound. Snow listened to it coming closer.
Something was crawling across the floor toward her.
Not the old woman. Please, not her. She must be dead. I am probably going to die anyway, but please let me have taken the old woman with me.
Something touched her elbow.
The pain took her breath away — or would have, if she could breathe — but Snow turned her head.
It was Ashes.
The little sow’s eyes were glazed with pain and her breath was ragged, but she had crawled across the floor to Snow. As Snow watched, she tilted her head so that her snout fit under Snow’s elbow, and she nudged it upward, so that Snow’s hand laid against her skin.
Snow smiled. In all the world, there were only two living creatures, and perhaps neither of them would be living for much longer.
The darkness closed in around her eyes, until she seemed to see Ashes at the end of a long tunnel, and the two of them lay on the floor in the earthen den and waited for death to come for them.
When Arrin returned to the boar’s den with Puffball and Greatspot, the house was dark and cold.
The boars moved more quickly than he did. Arrin swung off his mare and had one foot on the ground when he heard a squealing cry of dismay.
The huntsman’s mind was full of the king’s words, and when he heard it, he did not run immediately toward the den. Instead he bent his forehead to his mare’s neck and failure engulfed him.
The king had not been kind.
But Arrin was a good and responsible man, so he pushed himself away and hurried to the den.
“We didn’t know how to move her!” Hoofblack was saying miserably. “What else could we do? We can’t make her eat wild garlic until she throws up or pack her with mud and what else is there?”
“You should have gotten a human!” roared Puffball. “Humans need human medicine! If they could take boar medicine, they wouldn’t be so damnably fragile!”
“But — ”
“Both of you, be silent!” snapped Greatspot, and slashed at them with her tusks. The boars fell quiet and backed away.
Juniper was lying alongside Snow, embracing the girl awkwardly. “She’s still warm,” said the sow. “And still breathing. I don’t like the look of her throat, but I can’t do anything about it.”
“What happened?” asked Arrin. He went to his knees beside Snow. Juniper rolled a mild eye up at him. There were no obvious wounds, she was not bleeding, but her throat was red and violet and hideously swollen.
The little white pig, the one whose name he couldn’t remember, was lying across her feet.
Hoofblack tossed his head. “That happened,” he said contemptuously. “That thing over there. It stinks of magic, what’s left of it.”
Arrin turned to the bundle of cloth. There was something sticking out of it that looked like the dried claws of a bird of prey. It took him a moment to realize that they were hands.
He flipped the cloth back to see the face, and looked immediately away.
“It’s the queen,” he said.
“You can tell that?” asked Hoofblack.
“It’s the gown. The embroidery. She was wearing it the day that she sent me … never mind.”
It came to him distantly that the king would be relieved, and also a trifle annoyed. “I’ll see that witch hanged,” he’d said, “or burned. She bewitched me once, but she’ll not do it again.”
Well. The queen had placed herself beyond his vengeance. Now it fell to Arrin to place Snow beyond his fears.
“I’m not saying you did the wrong thing, leaving her in the woods,” the king had said, so quietly that his voice was almost lost in the snap of banners overhead. “But perhaps it would have been better that way. I shall disinherit her, but distaff heirs have a way of turning up and making trouble.”
Arrin had said nothing. He had been too shocked. Even when the king slapped him on the shoulder, he had said nothing.
“Perhaps she died in the woods,” said the king. “Eh? We’ll keep an eye out. Hard to survive a winter out there — no, I’m not blaming you. Worked out for the best, I expect.”
Arrin, who had said nothing about the boars, or Snow’s current whereabouts, had found voice to say “As you say, my lord.”
He had slipped away after dinner. If it had occurred to the king that Arrin might carry word back to his first wife, he did not act on the thought. The pigs had been waiting in the woods.
And now here was Snow, perhaps dying.
Perhaps it’s her way of making it easier for him, Arrin thought.
He examined the thought for an instant, no more — and pushed it away.
“The convent,” he said. “They know her there, and they’ll protect her. If the queen is dead, it’s only the king to fear, and he’ll be glad enough to see her go into orders.”
The boars looked at him, then at each other.
“Human stuff,” said Greatspot. “Get her up. You’ll take her on your horse, hunter-man?”
Arrin nodded, picking Snow up in his arms. She was heavy and solid, not ethereal as princesses are said to be. He walked to his horse.
Greatspot nodded. “Puffball, stay here. You’ve gone far enough today. Juniper, with me.”
“You’ve gone just as far,” said Puffball mildly.
“Yes. One of us should see this through, and I don’t trust you to speak for us. You’ll crack a bad joke at the wrong moment and these nuns of Snow’s will chase you out with a broom.”
It was awkward mounting with his arms full, but Arrin managed it, using Puffball as a mounting block.
He turned his horse, glancing back toward the den. The little white pig stood in the door, held up between two larger fellows. She was limping, but she met his eyes.
“Take care of her,” she said,
