Chapter 17: The Mark

The soldier who volunteered was the same grey-haired sergeant, because nobody else in the hall would meet the Queen's eye.

He had a hex burn on the back of his neck, three days old, the size of a coin and the black of soot.

He knelt on the flagstones in front of the dais and pulled his collar down.

"Do it, Lady," he said. "Somebody has to be first."

Yui looked at Brunhild.

Brunhild stood eight paces away, between two of the Queen's guards.

She nodded once.

"Let her see," she said.

Yui went down on her knees beside the sergeant, and put two fingers on the mark.

She had not let the light rise in six days.

It came up at once, warm and gold under her hand.

The burn melted off the old man's neck.

He gasped, and put a hand to the clean skin.

Nobody else in the hall moved.

All of them were looking, not at the sergeant, but at Brunhild.

"Roll back your sleeve, Commander," the Queen said.

Brunhild unbuttoned her left cuff and folded it up slowly to the elbow.

On the inside of her forearm, in the middle of the old white scars, a black coin-shaped mark was coming up through the skin.

It darkened as they watched, from grey to black, and it had the same round edge as the one on the sergeant's neck.

A murmur ran around the hall.

The Queen came down from the dais and crossed the floor and stood in front of Brunhild.

She took the forearm in both hands.

She turned it to the light, and touched the mark with her thumb, as a nurse would.

She held it for a long time.

"It is warm," she said, unsteadily.

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