Chapter 16: Midwinter Table

"Something suitable," Kerensa said. "What does she think you own?"

"One good dress," I said. "Blue wool. It was hers."

"And him?"

We both looked at Morvran.

He was on the hearthrug in his socks, rolling his shoulders the way I'd shown him, to loosen the new-set bones under the skin.

"I could eat the envoy," he offered.

"No eating the envoy."

"I could eat a little of the envoy."

"You're coming as my guest," I said. "You'll use a fork."

He looked deeply betrayed.

Tremayne House sat on the coast road three miles west of Lowtown, gray and tall and cold, with a gull carved over the door.

I hadn't been home in a year.

The snow had come in the night. We walked, because I wouldn't take the carriage our mother sent.

Morvran went up the front steps sideways, both hands on the rail.

"I hate this house," he said. "It has the stairs."

I knew which stairs he meant.

The ones my sister had dropped his stone down when she was twelve.

The great hall was lit with a hundred candles and hung with holly.

Our mother's guests were the houses from along the coast, in velvet, with their beasts curled at their feet.

The dragon house envoy sat at our mother's right hand. He was an old man in gold and black with a ring on every finger.

Leofric sat at his right. Aveline sat at Leofric's.

There was a place for me at the very end of the table, by the door, where the draft came in.

There was no place for Morvran at all.

A footman brought a stool.

Morvran looked at it, then at me.

"I'll stand," he said, and stood behind my chair with his hands folded, very tall and very black, like a carved door.

Two of the coast ladies stopped eating to stare at him.

I didn't blame them.

The soup came. The goose came.

Our mother was charming. She laughed with the envoy. She touched Aveline's hair.

She didn't look at me once until the pudding.

Then she stood and lifted her glass.

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