Chapter 23: Twelve Names

The twelve women stood in a line in the yard of Greywater Keep.

They wore plain travelling dress, with their hands clasped in front of them.

They had come from fishing villages and farm roads and one from as far as the salt flats.

None of them had worn grey in a year.

The Watch stood in ranks behind them, all six hundred, with Edda at the front.

Theron stood on the step of the training hall with a long white scroll in his hands.

Beside him stood the oldest of the river lords.

She wore the seal of the six houses on a cord at her neck.

Valerius knelt in irons at the foot of the steps.

He had been tried that morning in front of the lords.

The women had testified, and the dead captain's card lay on the table.

He had not spoken once.

"By the six houses of the river," the old lady said, "Severin Valerius is stripped of rank and name."

She waited.

"He is sent to the quarries at Stonefall for the term of his life."

The tall captain, kneeling beside him, began to weep.

Valerius did not.

Linnea stood close enough to hear him.

There was nothing in his head but a whining loop.

It isn't fair. I was good to them. It isn't fair.

She felt no pity at all.

"Take them away," said the old lady.

The sergeants hauled him up.

At the gate he turned his head and looked at the line of women.

Not one of them looked back.

Theron unrolled the scroll.

"The Watch roll of last Harvest," he said, in his clear, level voice, "has been corrected in ink by the six houses."

He looked down the line.

"I will read the names of the twelve who were failed."

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