Chapter 15: The Answer He Would Not Give

Voss had asked Lucien for a declaration in writing, and Lucien had given him his shoulder at Aquas's side instead.

Now Voss wanted Aquas to stand in the forge-hall and defend that silence, as though the prince's refusal were a debt Aquas owed the assembly.

Aquas turned from the open ledger with his blackened palm still flat on the page.

'Name the next speaker,' he said. 'Before the crew.'

Voss's mouth tightened. He had not expected to be asked anything.

The hall waited on the elder, and the elder did not like it.

'The assembly will hear your defense of the prince's silence,' Voss said. 'Before any other matter.'

He said it to the gallery, not to Aquas, the way a man reads a charge he has already decided.

Aquas lifted his hand off the ledger.

The smear stayed where his palm had been, black over the crossed-out name.

'I won't defend it,' he said. 'He never asked me to. The choice was his.'

The silence that followed had a shape to it. The prepared hearing had nowhere to land.

Somewhere in the gallery a smith exhaled through his teeth.

Voss recovered fast.

'Then answer for what you have brought into this hall,' he said. 'What is that substance, and where did it come from?'

Aquas reached into his coat.

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