A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Torn
The Master of the Scales read his writ in the Gilded Scales at noon, in a voice that wanted every merchant in the hall to hear it.
Lenore sat beside me in the front row in her dark green gown, with her hands in her lap.
Corwin stood across the aisle with a strongbox at his feet and a pleasant, mournful face.
"A holder who breaks a witnessed term loses the pledge," the Master said. "The guilds witnessed three. I call the first witness."
The groom from my stable came down the aisle.
He was the young man with the clean collar, and he would not look at me.
"My lord was in the yard," he said. "He had me against the stall door with his teeth at my throat."
A sound went through the hall.
"Then Captain Holt pulled him off, and the lady came in." The groom swallowed. "She pushed up her sleeve. When I looked back from the gate, there was blood on her wrist."
"The lady's wrist," the Master said, and he smiled at Lenore. "Miss Rooke, did the holder drink from you?"
I felt her go still.
She stood up.
"I gave it," Lenore said. "It was my term. I broke it."
"The term binds the holder, miss. Not you." The Master spread his hands. "The law does not ask what you wanted."
He was right, and every lawyer in the hall knew it.
Corwin bent and lifted the lid of the strongbox, so that the coin showed.
"Forty thousand crowns, my lord Master. The Rooke debt, paid in full."
"With the pledge void for cause, the surety returns to her brother," the Master said, "and the coin redeems the notes."
Lenore turned to look at me.
It was the same look she had given me from the dais on the first day, flat and level and asking nothing.
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