He Signed the Exile Order, So I Took the Wards North novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Warden's Roof

At Highwater Hold, Ronan reads the order aloud and houses her by law, and a rider brings word that Greyfell's east wall broke in the night.

Highwater Hold opened its gate for me at dawn, and the man standing behind it did not look surprised.

He was tall, in a dark coat, with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow.

"Catriona MacNair," he said. "You walked."

"Nobody offered me a horse."

"The exile roads are fourteen days on foot."

"I know how far it is," I said. "I walked every day of it."

Hester coughed beside me, and I stopped glaring.

The man stepped aside to let us through. "Ronan Hask. Warden of the Northern Territories."

So this was the man whose name stood on every exile order the Concord had sent north in twenty years.

I had been seeing that name my whole life.

I had never seen his face.

Inside, the hall was already full, because news of an exile travels faster than the exile does.

Two hundred wolves stood along the walls in grey wool, watching a woman with a satchel and a cloak crusted with road salt.

Ronan took the seal-stamped order from my hand and unfolded it.

"Exile law says I read the order aloud to my hold," he said. "So listen."

He read it in a flat voice, without hurry.

"Catriona MacNair, of Greyfell. Exiled to the Northern Territories for a year and a day. By the Alpha's own hand."

He stopped.

"Signed Corvin Sterne, before seven territories."

A murmur ran down the hall.

"That's the Alpha who holds the Greyfell border," someone muttered at the back. "He exiled his own mate?"

"He exiled his own wife," I said clearly, "and he did not read the page first."

The murmur turned into a laugh.

It was not a cruel laugh. It sounded like surprise.

Ronan's eyes moved from the page to me.

He looked at me for a long moment, and his expression softened, then settled.

"By the Concord's law," he said, "an exile serves her year and a day under the Warden's roof. Mine."

He raised his voice. "She is under Highwater's protection, and anyone who touches her answers to me."

Nobody in the hall moved.

I did not know whether I had been sentenced or adopted.

"Your tower is the only dry wing," he told me as he led us up the stairs. "The room beside mine is free."

"Beside yours."

"The rest are leaking," he said. "Or full of grain."

Hester made a sound that might have been a cough.

The room was small and bare, with a hearth, a narrow bed and a window that looked north over the snow.

I put my satchel on the bed.

Ronan stayed in the doorway, one hand on the frame.

Then he stepped inside, closer than he needed to, and bent his head toward my hair.

I felt his breath on my neck.

He drew in one long breath through his nose and went rigid.

Then he stepped back and turned his face away, fast, and stared hard at the wall.

I knew what that meant.

I smelled like fourteen days of road, wet wool and woodsmoke.

"Sorry," I said. "I haven't had a bath since the river."

"Bath water is downstairs," he said, still not looking at me. His voice was rough. "I'll have it sent."

"Thank you."

"It's the law."

He left, and I heard him go down the corridor and stop at the next door, and not go in.

Hester sat down on the end of the bed and looked at me.

"That man did not read the order the way he reads an order," she said.

"He read it like a man reading an order."

"Catriona. I'm sixty-three and I'm not blind."

"He didn't like how I smelled."

"Mm," said Hester.

Water came an hour later, in two steaming buckets.

I scrubbed my palms until the scars shone pink, and the grey wool I borrowed from a cupboard smelled of cedar.

When I came downstairs for bread, the kitchen went silent.

Cooks, scullions and a boy with a bucket all stood still.

Then a woman in an apron said, "You're the one who turned off Greyfell?"

I stopped with the bread in my hand.

"That's what they're saying on the road, Warden's guest. The wall went dark all at once."

"I did that," I said.

"Good," said the woman. "Their tribute collectors robbed us for years."

Somebody laughed, and somebody else put a bowl of soup in front of me.

I was halfway through the soup when the hall doors banged open.

A rider stumbled in, mud to the thigh, his horse blown outside.

He dropped to one knee in front of Ronan, who had come down the stairs behind me.

"Warden. Word from the south road. Greyfell's east wall broke in the night."

My spoon stopped.

"Hunters came through the gap before the dawn watch," the rider said. "They took eleven wolves, and the Alpha was too slow to stop them."

Ronan did not look at the rider.

He looked at me.

"The Alpha," the rider added, "says it was you."

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