Chapter 11: The Thaw

By morning, the valley was running with water.

I stood on the gatehouse wall in Phlegon's coat and watched a black river cut through the snow.

Green was coming up along its banks.

It was the wrong color for a place that had been white for twenty years, and it was beautiful.

Below me, the whole northern court knelt in the courtyard.

The lords, the soldiers, the cooks in their aprons.

The old regent was at the front with her forehead on the stone.

Phlegon walked out onto the steps without his cane.

He didn't need it.

I had seen the limp ease overnight, one step at a time.

"Rise," he said. "I won't be knelt to in my own yard."

They rose slowly.

Outside the gate, three hundred Sun Palace soldiers had been waiting since dawn.

They had not left at dusk.

A sentry had told me at dawn that Aethon sat his horse in the dark all night, deciding something.

Now the iron gate swung open by itself.

My brothers rode in alone.

Aethon sat very straight, with his gold armor grey with frost melt and his eyes on the river.

Eous didn't look at anything.

They dismounted in the middle of the yard.

A girl carrying firewood stopped to stare at them, and then walked quickly away.

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