Chapter 4: The Court of Hours

The Court of Hours sat under nine pillars, one carved for each hour of the day.

I stood alone in the middle of its floor, with the Crown on my brow and the Atlas shut under my arm.

My father sat on the high seat with his dark circlet on.

My sisters sat to his left, Thessaly at their head, and Perrin sat at the end of the row with his bandaged hands in his lap.

Half the court had come to watch.

"Daelan Sunward," my father said. "You took the Dawn from your sister by force. What do you say?"

"I say it was the heir's to take."

"By what right?"

"The right of the Atlas. And she shut the sun behind a gate to make me kneel."

"She was upset," said the sister of Noon.

"The whole Mortal World stood in the dark for an hour."

"Because you wouldn't apologise," Thessaly said.

A few voices in the gallery agreed with her.

I let them finish.

"I would like to call a witness," I said.

My father frowned. "Who?"

"The head housekeeper of the Sun Court."

She came out of the side door slowly, an old goddess in a brown apron, with a thick book held against her chest.

She did not want to be there, and she did not look at the High King.

"You keep the household ledger," I said. "Where does the sparrow sleep?"

Perrin looked up.

For one moment his soft face went completely blank.

"In the east wing, my lord," the housekeeper said.

"Whose rooms are in the east wing?"

She was quiet for so long that someone coughed in the gallery.

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