Chapter 9: The King's Word

I went straight to the forge yard and told Anke what the ironmonger had said.

She listened with a hot knife in her bare hand, and her face didn't change.

"Then I'd better make them good," she said. "She'll want to look hard at something worth burning for."

"I'm serious."

"So am I." She set the knife down on the anvil. "I've been a witch since I was nine, Highness. I know how it ends."

"It doesn't have to end like that."

She looked at me oddly.

"He never said things like that," she said, and went back to work.

The king's messenger came up the valley road ten days later.

He was a careful young man in royal blue, with mud to his knees and a leather case under his arm.

He bowed to me in the hall exactly as far as the rules said and no farther.

"From His Majesty, Highness. I'm to wait for your answer."

The letter was short and written by a clerk.

Only the signature at the bottom was in the king's own hand, big and pressed hard into the paper.

His Majesty has heard that his son is alive, it said, and that he keeps the witch who stabbed him in his house.

His son will hand her to the Finders for burning before the month is out.

If he doesn't, his name will be struck from the royal line, and his allowance and title with it.

I read it twice.

Anke was standing in the kitchen doorway behind the messenger, with flour on her hands.

She had heard every word he said to me, and she could see my face.

"Pen," I said to Gerd.

He brought me one.

The messenger cleared his throat.

"His Majesty bids me take your answer in the usual way, Highness."

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