The crossbow hung on the wall above the window.
Resk Thornvane had put it there on the third day after his return to the Kobold quarter — not as a display, not as a memorial, but because there was nowhere else to put it and because putting it in a trunk felt like pretending it didn't exist. So it hung on the wall. He saw it every morning when the light came through the window at the angle that meant it was time to get up and go to the carpentry workshop. He saw it every evening when the light went the other direction. He had not touched it since the wall.
He was twenty years old. He had fought a war. He lived in his grandfather's house, which now echoed because his grandfather had died the winter before Resk came home, and the house contained four rooms, one window in each room, and the specific quality of silence that filled spaces where sounds used to live.
