Chapter 29: The Garden

The garden at Roark Keep was a walled square of herbs and pale roses, hanging on the cliff edge over the sea.

Ambrose had never eaten in it.

He said so, standing at the head of a long table that Wystan had dragged out of the kitchen, and Linus laughed at him.

"Seven years you owned a garden," he said.

"I owned a fever," Ambrose said. "The roses were a coincidence."

The lamps came on one by one along the wall.

Wystan carried out a roast bird and a dish of beans.

The bread had come up the cliff road from the baker in the ward, in a basket.

The note with it said only: For the one who stood.

Perrin came last.

He was thin and grey-faced, with his right arm in a sling.

The faint gold still moved under the skin of his neck.

He stopped at the gate with his good hand holding the post.

"I can go," he said. "If it's too soon."

"It's soon," Linus said. "Sit down."

Perrin sat at the far end, on the edge of the chair.

For a while nobody said anything useful.

Wystan carved.

Ambrose passed the beans down the table to Perrin without being asked and without looking at him, and Perrin took the dish with a hand that shook.

"It's glowing," Wystan said, with great interest, nodding at the sling.

Perrin looked down.

His shoulder was lit faintly gold through the bandage and the shirt, and getting brighter.

"It does that when I'm embarrassed," he said. "I don't know why."

"The fire keeps what you feel," Linus said. "It'll settle."

"Will it go?"

"Slowly. Do you want it to?"

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