Chapter 13: The Envoy

The forty riders stopped at the bottom of the mill lane and did not come any farther.

One man rode on alone.

He wore a dark coat with a green sash, and he sat his horse in the middle of the yard without being asked to.

Rosalind came down off the porch with Perrin on her left.

Dorian stood at her right, unarmed, in his shirtsleeves, three paces back.

That was where she had told him to stand.

"I speak for Ansel Lowell, Alpha of Ironwood," the envoy said.

Nobody in the yard answered him.

"Greywater has no oath," he went on. "Everyone on this hill knows it. The Alpha of Greywater has lost his voice and his pack in one night."

"Then why are you talking to him?" Rosalind said.

The envoy looked at her for the first time.

His eyes went over her coat and her thin wrists.

"You must be the invalid," he said.

A growl went around the yard.

"Lord Ansel is a generous man. He will take the hearth, the Stone and the three hundred of you under his roof. He will feed every child."

"And the Luna?"

"The Luna can have her mill." He smiled. "Her grandmother will need the company."

Rosalind said nothing.

She had decided in the night that she would let him finish.

"There is only one condition," the envoy said. "Your Hartwell gets down on the ground and kisses Lord Ansel's boot, and your wolves watch him do it."

Behind her, Dorian drew a breath.

She felt it more than heard it.

"The woman who saved two hundred and twelve of you is a cripple," the envoy said, pleasantly. "She should be glad of a roof."

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