Chapter 4: What the Envoy Heard

Corvus went over Seren before he could move.

He caught the blade through the canvas with his bare hand, around the back of it, and pulled.

The whole wall of the tent came down with it, and the man holding the knife came through after.

It was the second clerk, the one with the lantern.

He had dropped the lantern somewhere outside, and it was burning in the grass.

Corvus put him face down on the floor with a knee in his spine.

The knife was in Corvus's fist now.

Blood ran between his fingers where he'd grabbed the edge.

"Don't," Seren said.

Corvus already had the point under the clerk's ear.

"He came through the wall at your head."

"I know where he came at. I want him alive."

Corvus looked at him over his shoulder, breathing hard, his shirt still pulled out of his belt where Seren had done it.

"I want him talking in daylight," Seren said. "In front of everyone. A dead clerk is my brother's story. A live one is mine."

For a moment he didn't know which way it would go.

Then Corvus took the knife away and stood up.

"Garrow," he said, not even loudly.

Garrow was already in the torn doorway with his crossbow up and half the camp behind him.

"Tie that," Corvus said. "Nobody touches the chamberlain. He's under a white flag."

He turned his bleeding hand over and looked at it.

"For now."

Seren tore a strip off the bottom of his shirt and wrapped the general's palm.

His hands weren't steady, and Corvus watched them the whole time.

"Not while I'm counted," Seren said under his breath.

"Shut up," Corvus said, very softly, "and tie it tighter."

At dawn the whole camp stood on the riverbank.

The chamberlain stood in the middle of them, with his white staff and his velvet hat, pale and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.

His carriage was hitched and waiting in the shallows.

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