Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay Read Free Book Online Page B

instructions about that, printed in her usual green ink. Ned saw a smiley face at the bottom of the card. He was pleased to see he wasn’t the only one she did that to.
    He rode back with Greg in the van, changed into a faded-out grey T-shirt, and shorts, clipped on his water bottle and pedometer, put the iPod in its armband, and went for a run. He had essays to write here, and a training log to complete for his track coach. Both were homework, really.
    The running was better.
    Melanie had told him the night before that if he went down their laneway and turned right at the road instead of left towards town, then kept going as it curved back uphill, he’d end up eventually where the road ended at some area where people biked and jogged in the countryside. She said there was supposed to be an old tower up there to look at.
    It irritated him, as usual, that she was organized to the point of planning his training routes, but he had nobetter idea where to go, and there wasn’t a good reason not to try that path.
    It was a steep downhill on their little road past the other villas, and then steadily back up for a long, winding way along the ridge above. Up-and-down was good, of course. Ned ran on the cross-country team, this was what he needed.
    He’d begun to think he’d gone wrong before he finally came to the car barrier. On the other side of it he found the trail. There were arrows on a wooden pole pointing one way towards a village called Vauvenargues and in the other direction to that tower Melanie had mentioned. Someone went by on a mountain bike towards Vauvenargues. Ned went the other way.
    The tower wasn’t far. The trail continued down and around it towards the northern edges of Aix, it looked like. Ned didn’t like to stop during a run, no one did, but the view from up here was pretty cool and so was the round, ruined lookout tower. He wondered how old it was.
    This whole place was just saturated in the past, he thought. Layers and layers of it. It could get to you, one way or another. He took off the earbuds and drank some water.
    There was a low, really lame fence around the tower. A sign said it was dangerous to cross and a bigger fence had been authorized and was coming, but there was no one in sight now so Ned went over the railing and then he bent and stepped into the tower through a crumbled opening in the honey-coloured stones.
    It was dark inside after the sunlight. There was no door anywhere, just the one broken opening. He looked up in a high, empty space. He could see the sky a long way above, a small circle of blue-black. It was as if he were at the bottom of a well. There were probably bats, he thought. There must have been a stairway once, winding up, but there was nothing now. He wondered what this had guarded against, what they’d been watching for up here.
    He felt himself cooling down too much in the shade, not good. You pulled muscles that way. He stepped back into the sunshine, blinking, and gazed down at the city. There was an aqueduct in the distance, on the far side of Aix, vividly clear. After a moment, Ned spotted the bell tower of the cathedral in the middle of town, and that brought him back to this morning. He was nowhere close to wanting that.
    He turned and started running again, back the way he’d come, but with the stop and cooling down and jet lag, he had lost his rhythm. He found it harder going than he should have, past the car barrier and downhill now along the road. It was a good jogging route, though, had to give Melanie credit. Next time he could go the other way at the signpost, keep going, log his proper distance.
    He was halfway back up their own steep road, leading to Villa Sans Souci at the top, when he realized something.
    He stopped running, having actually shocked himself.
    Why now? he had said, and the man in the grey leather jacket hadn’t replied. Maybe Ned had ananswer, after all. Maybe it even mattered, for the first time, that when she was alive his