Chapter 7: The Mill

Garran's sister ran a mill on the River Dun, a day's ride north of the inn.

She was a broad, floury woman with Garran's moustache in a softer shade.

She took one look at the four of us and said, "Loft. Then breakfast."

She did not ask who we were.

She did not ask why a princess in a grey coat had white wolf hair on her sleeves.

She hid the archer boy behind forty sacks of barley and put a bowl of porridge in his hands.

She told him to eat or she would sit on him.

He ate.

I sat on a flour barrel in the mill house with my braid half undone.

Corwin Fell stood across the room with his back to the wall.

He had found a spare shirt somewhere.

It did not hide how the hawk brand showed through the open collar.

"Well?" I said.

"Well what?"

"You're from Highcrest."

"Yes."

"You said you were a recorder."

"I am. I was." He rubbed his face with the ink-stained hand.

"I was a soldier first. Eight years in the Highcrest guard, under the prince."

"Alaric."

His whole body went still at the name.

"Yes," he said.

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I was told to come and look at you."

"At me."

"The woman who broke the peace," he said.

"My orders were to take a post in your court and send word to the prince's mother."

"That's a spy."

"It's a scribe who writes more than he's asked."

"And what did you write about me?"

"That you were loud," he said. "And stubborn. And that you said you'd rather lose a crown than sign a lie."

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