Chapter 9: The Seal

"The king answers to the Moon Court," Evander said, and his voice cut across the shouting. "Not to a man on a horse."

"Then answer it," Torin said.

"At noon. In the open court, before every judge in Highcrown."

"Why not now?"

"Because I have a claim to answer to first."

He did not look at me when he said it.

The king's guards had been filling the wall behind us for a quarter of an hour, and Torin had finally counted them.

Two hundred spears.

Forty wolves against two hundred spears.

"Noon," Torin said at last, and wrenched his horse around. "And if the court finds you armed Elspeth, I'll have your crown for it."

"You may try," Evander said.

Torin rode off with his wolves behind him.

Cullen Dacre stood alone in the road with the ledger in his arms, and nobody in Greywater's ranks looked back for him.

"Bring him inside," Evander told a guard. "He's under the Crown's protection."

He turned to go down the stair.

I did not move.

"Maeve."

"No," I said. "Don't touch me right now."

His hand stopped a hand's width from my sleeve.

"Then walk with me, and don't."

We went down the stair, through the palace and into the study, where the lamp was still lit from the night before.

I shut the door myself.

The silence was louder than the gate had been.

"You said you needed her alive to find her supplier," I said. "You knew her supplier. You were the supplier."

"Yes."

"You sent Elspeth Dray four thousand marks of silver."

"I sent her four thousand marks of coin," he said. "She bought the silver."

"That's the same thing."

"It isn't," he said, "but it will look like it to everyone at noon, and I know that."

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