Chapter 24: The Table

"No," I told my son. "It will never need paint."

Rowan considered this with his whole face.

"Good," he said. "Can I have jam?"

Three months later, I sat at the head of the long table in the east hall with the morning sun coming through the windows.

It was the same room where Delphine had once asked me, over a cup of tea, whether I would carry another child.

The table was the same. The chairs were the same.

I had moved the high seat from the dais to the head of it myself, with Torin's help.

We had sanded the Brandreth crest off the back.

The wolf of Ashenfell was carved there now, and the old elder had cried when he saw it.

He sat at my right hand today.

Eight elders sat along the table, in gray, with their plates in front of them.

Three of them had sat on the Brandreth council once, and had asked to stay.

I had said yes, and watched them, and they had behaved.

"Alpha," one of them said, with his mouth full. "The harvest tithe."

"After breakfast."

"It's rather urgent."

"So is the jam," I said.

Rowan, on my left, had a smear of it down his chin and across one ear.

He held his toast up to the light like a prize.

"Mama," he said. "Mama, look. I made a face."

I looked.

It was a lopsided face made of jam and crumbs, with the toast for a nose.

"That's a very good face."

"It's Uncle Torin."

"I heard that," said Torin, from the far end.

He had ridden over from Greywater at dawn to complain about the eggs.

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