Chapter 5: Second Thread

My fever broke at the third bell.

It did not break all at once.

It drained out of me, and every time I breathed, the silver mark on my wrist hummed.

The guards walked me back to the tower after the Court rose.

I lay on the cot and turned my arm over and over in the lamplight.

The crescent was no longer black.

It was thin and pale and silver, but it was not Brogan's silver.

Brogan's mark had been warm, a flower opening.

This one was cool and strange.

I did not sleep.

At midnight I stood up, tied my braid back, and put on my plain grey riding coat.

The guard outside my door was a boy of eighteen with a spot on his chin.

"Highness, you can't," he began.

"I need the privy, and then I need air," I said. "You can come and watch."

He went red to the ears.

Ten minutes later I was in the lower corridor with him trailing behind, studying the floor.

The Rolls Room was at the end of the east wing.

A line of light showed under the door.

"Wait here," I said.

"Highness, I'm supposed to..."

"Then stand outside the door and think of your mother."

I went in and shut it.

The room was long and low, lined with shelves of scrolls, and smelled of dust and old ink.

At the far end, Corwin Fell sat at a slanted desk with a lamp, writing in a ledger.

He did not look up.

"I thought it would take you until morning," he said.

"I couldn't wait. The guard is eighteen and will say anything I tell him."

I stopped in front of the desk.

"What did you do to me?"

He put down his pen.

For a moment I saw the whole of his face in the lamplight, the black beard, the grey eyes, the tiredness under them.

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