As Bijara waited outside the bronzewood meeting-hall door, listening to the voices inside fall silent, it seemed the world held its breath with her. The new moon shone palely on the little village of Meata as it huddled around the river, a thread of light in the vast, brooding forest. Down by the pier, boats sighed under their cargo of furs and carved amber, then fell quiet for an instant. The wolves had ceased their howling this past week, as if there were not enough of a moon to be worth singing to. They prowled Bijara's dreams, waiting and hungering, pressing in on her like the trees pressed up against the village walls.

What would the Elders do with her? Would they sell her downriver, as the Master threatened when she'd been caught listening at the Guardian's window instead of tending to her proper tasks? Or would they work her so hard she'd never have a moment to think about the Meata wolves or anything else? Why had the Guardian herself taken an interest in a mere bond-girl?

Bijara took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. At sixteen, she was almost as tall as a man, with broad cheekbones and sandy hair so different from the dark, wiry villagers. When she first came to Meata, half-starved and still numb from the loss of her family, the place seemed like any other forest trading town, safe enough on the surface, but in truth living only at the sufferance of the wolves. Then she'd emerged from her grief enough to realize that these wolves might howl as fiercely as they had in the south, but they never breached the flimsy town walls, not even in the full of the moon. Strangers who dared to travel through the nearby forest were always safe. People said it was Guardian's magic that kept the wolves away, they said--

Suddenly the meeting hall door opened, spilling out firelight and the smell of spiced wine. Bijara caught a glimpse of the Elders inside. Although she'd scrubbed the hall many times since the town bought her bond, she'd never been allowed inside when it was in use.