Chapter 15: The Ring in the Sluice

Lucan's POV

Linnet rode beside me the whole way back to the keep and did not say a word to me.

I did not mind.

I had spent a month learning what her silence cost me.

I was learning to hear what was inside it.

At the gate Perrin met us with mud to his knees and a face.

"I found it," he said.

"The ring?"

"In the third sluice below the south wing, where the kitchen slops run to the Tarn."

He held up a wrapped cloth.

"It took two days and four guards with rakes."

Linnet got down from the grey mare and looked at the cloth.

"I told you she'd drop it down a drain by noon," she said.

"You did."

"I said it to be rude."

Perrin unwrapped the ring.

It was a plain silver band with a flat blue stone.

The stone opened on a tiny hinge, over a hollow no bigger than a lentil.

Inside the hollow, caked green and dry, was a pinch of powder.

I smelled it from where I stood.

"Mark on the inside of the band," said Perrin. "A smith's stamp. A hammer over a wheat ear."

"That is the Marwood smith's mark," Linnet said slowly.

"I know."

"Then ask the smith who ordered it."

"The smith is dead," said Perrin, "these eight months. His widow kept his book."

I put the ring back in his hand.

"Then we see the widow," I said. "And first we see the maid."

The freckled maid was in the laundry loft with her arms round her knees.

Perrin had found her there on the second day, curled under the dirty linen, and had not frightened her.

He had sat on a barrel and counted the sheets in a calm voice until she cried.

I sat down on the same barrel.

I do not shout.

I have found that most people are waiting for it, and are already braced when it comes.

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