Chapter 16: The Witness

I didn't sleep.

The steward had found us two rooms over the palace stables, because my old rooms belonged to somebody else now.

Before dawn I gave up and went down into the stable yard in Erwan's sheepskin.

He was already there, sitting on the edge of the horse trough in his shirt.

He had his father's name on a scrap of paper in his hands.

It was the line I'd written for him to carry into the hall.

He'd folded it so many times the folds had gone soft.

"You should be asleep," he said.

"So should you."

"I'm a pardoned man," he said. "I've never been one before. I wanted to see if it felt different."

"Does it?"

"The ground's the same," he said. "The air's better."

I sat down on the trough beside him.

The yard smelled of hay and wet stone.

A stable boy came out with a bucket, saw us, and went back in again.

"I'm sorry about your father's name," I said.

"You asked for it," Erwan said. "In front of two hundred lords who wanted you dead by spring."

"He said no."

"I heard him," Erwan said. "I also heard you ask."

He turned the paper over in his fingers.

"Nobody's said my father's name out loud in that hall in twenty-four years," he said. "You did."

"Nobody's ever stood beside me in that hall," I said. "You did."

He looked at me then.

It was the first time since Aven Ford that he'd looked straight at me for more than a breath.

"Maela," he said.

I'd told him on the hall steps that he could call me that if he ever earned it.

I didn't remember which of us was supposed to be doing the earning.