Chapter 24: The Boat That Stayed Up

Astrid's POV

Crispin Ponsonby stood up when I came into the cell, and the guard shut the door behind me.

He looked older than twenty-four.

The good gray suit was gone, and he wore the prison wool.

The ink was still on his cuff, because he had asked for pen and paper and been given them.

"Your Majesty," he said.

"Astrid," I said. "You called me that on the dock steps."

He closed his eyes.

"I have the list," he said. "I wrote it from memory, the way I wrote my reports."

He held out four sheets.

"Forty-one names. Riverbend children Edmund sold after you, over five years. I carried the paper for twelve of them."

"You told the hall that."

"I told the hall what I was asked. I didn't say I'd kept the rest."

I took the sheets.

The handwriting was fine and small, a scholar's hand, and I read every name without speaking.

"Why now?" I said.

"Because you never asked," he said. "You came in with a badge and you never asked me why."

"I didn't need to."

"My mother was dying," he said.

"Edmund paid the only healer in the dock district. He said he'd send him if I held a thumb to a paper."

"You were eleven."

"I was eleven."

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