Chapter 20: The Verdict

The square went quiet, waiting for him to say it.

Corvin stood on the fountain's rim with his arm hanging and his mouth open, ready to throw my price at the crowd.

I did not let him.

I walked up to the stone beside him, in Maud's cloak with my feet bare, and I turned to face the masks.

"I'll say it," I said. "I've known it longer than he has."

"Six silver, paid to my father by a trader with a cart."

"Nine, to a miller who beat me."

"Twelve, to a tavern keeper. Eight, to a dyer. Fifteen, to a landlord's widow."

"Seven, to a man who gave me to his son. Eleven, to a salt trader."

"Twenty, to the last one, who put the brand on me."

Nobody laughed.

"That is what I cost," I said.

"It's all on a paper now, in a vault, with a king's seal and a boy's blue wax."

"Corvin, you were wrong about one thing. Those numbers never bought anything of mine."

"They didn't buy my name, and they didn't buy my wolf."

"They did not buy the woman standing here. You only ever sold a little girl."

Corvin's mouth worked.

He had nothing left to throw, and he knew it.

A woman at the front of the crowd took off her mask and spat at his feet.

Then a man did, and a girl with a lantern, and then the whole front row.

He crumpled onto the stones, and the guards in gray took him by both arms.

He did not even cry.

The Court of Judgment sat at noon the next day, in the throne hall, under the broken-glass dome.

Every pack in the capital was there, and the doors stood open to the street so the lower city could hear.

Corvin stood in the prisoner's rail with his arm in a splint and his Highmoor blue torn off at the collar.

Rosamund stood two paces from him in a plain gray dress, with her hands tied in front.

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