His Loyalty Test Became My Pack's Funeral novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Stone House
I read Joss's note again and did not tear it up.
Noon was two hours off, and the Warden would not move the trial for it.
So they tried Sabine in the square where she had held a knife to Maud, and I stood in it with his words in my pocket.
The Warden had a table dragged out onto the cobbles and a witness bench set around it.
The well was still there, and the rope that had been meant for Maud lay coiled beside it.
Nobody had moved it.
Sabine stood in the middle with her wrists bound in front of her.
Her red-gold curls were matted with dried blood and her freckles stood out on a face gone paper white.
The ring was gone from her thumb, and she kept rubbing the bare place with her other hand.
Every survivor of Dawn Watch had come to watch.
The old women who had beaten her sat in the front row with their sticks across their knees.
I stood with Corvin at the edge of the crowd.
"I don't have to be here," I said.
"No."
"I want to be here."
"I know."
The mark on my wrist stayed quiet.
He had a hand at the small of my back, and he did not press.
The Warden read the charge.
"Sabine Orrin. You are accused of coaching thirty wounded men to cry a false word at Moonwatch's gate. You are accused of knowing that four hundred were chained inside Redcliff and of saying nothing. You are accused of holding a knife to the throat of Maud Ferris."
"I did what he told me," Sabine said.
"Who?"
"Joss! He told me everything. He told me what to say and when." Her voice rose. "I was only his hand!"
"You were his lover," the Warden said.
"Yes!"
"You ate at the table with the families of the four hundred. You held their children at the naming feast."
Sabine swallowed.
A woman in the front row stood up.
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