The Element of Fire, page 178 by Martha Wells
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other." After a moment she seemed to shake off the recollection and pulled her blanket more closely around her. "The weather will be worse tomorrow. Grandier wouldn't have spared us the snow."
Thomas hadn't missed the hurried change of subject. He wondered why she had told him so much. He asked, "Spared us?"
Kade looked up at him.
"When did it become 'us'?"
She turned from the window and started to walk away, but stopped after a few steps. "Do you remember me?" she asked.
Because of the intimacy of standing here in the shadows watching death come out of the north, or just that he was becoming used to her way of speaking, he knew what she meant. He said, "Not the way you looked, not really. Not very well."
"I remember you."
He didn't reply. The silence stretched, and Kade faded back into the shadows.
Thomas turned away from the window and went down the stairs and back to the map room. The weather was one more thing to worry about, one more factor to take into account. At least a freeze would put off the possibility of a plague brewing up among the unburied dead in the east quarter of the palace, and the rest of the city.
As he neared the open door of the map room, he saw an outline of a long cloak or robe silhouetted by the edge of the firelight. Someone was there. Thomas stopped in the doorway, feeling an inexplicable chill that had nothing to do with the cold.
But a flare-up from the fire showed him it was only Galen Dubell warming his hands near the hearth, his stooped shoulders shivering faintly underneath his heavy robe.
Stepping into the room, Thomas said, "You're awake early, Doctor."
The sorcerer looked up and smiled. "It's a trifle cold for my old bones." He shook his head. "I'll begin work on counter-measures against this weather as soon as it's light. You realize it is not natural."
"Kade told me." Thomas lit the candlelamps with a twig from the fire, and began to go through the maps stacked on the table, looking