Chapter 13: The Wine at the Council Table

Nobody got up until I went down the rows and made them.

I took the old man by the elbow, and then the woman beside him, and said please until it stopped sounding like a request.

Corwin walked the other side of the yard and did the same, without saying anything at all.

That worked better.

When the last wolf was on its feet, Alaric turned to his enforcers.

"Nobody kneels in this yard again," he said. "Not to her, not to me."

His voice was steady. It was the first time I had heard it that way in ten years.

Two hours later the cold had settled in the yard for good, and Beatrix still had not come back.

Perrin found her at the tree line, and he carried her in.

Her lips were blue, and her braid had frozen to her coat.

She was awake. She stared past all of us at the beams of the ceiling.

"Put me down," she said.

"Ma'am, you can't stand."

"Put me down."

I took off my sweater and held it out to her.

She looked at it, and then at me, and I watched her decide.

She took it.

She didn't say thank you. She pulled it over her head with stiff hands and let Perrin carry her to the infirmary cot.

Alaric was in the next bed.

He had sat up when she came in, and he didn't look away from her, and he didn't go to her either.

"Bea," he said.

"Don't."

"I'm not going to say anything. I wanted you to know I'm here."

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