Chapter 4: Twenty-One Days

The collar of the shirt Dorrie brought him came up to his jaw and hid the bites.

It did not hide the way he walked.

"Eat what you're given," she said, doing the top button with her thick old fingers. "Say as little as you can."

"You don't like me much."

"I don't have to like you."

She looked at him a long moment, and her mouth worked.

"He's not himself since the old king died," she said. "Mind that."

She went out before he could ask what she meant.

Ewan came for him at seven and walked him down himself.

The dining hall at Redhorn Lodge was built for forty, with a roof of black beams and a fireplace a man could stand inside.

Six wolves already sat along one side of a long oak table, and every one of them stopped talking when Kit came in.

Ewan put him in the chair at his right hand.

Garth Overton took the seat opposite and gave Kit a flat look over a glass of whiskey.

"These are the Council of the Crown," Ewan said to the room. "You know why he's here."

"Do we?" said a mild voice at the far end.

The man who had spoken was thin and silver-haired, in a charcoal suit with a gold pin at the lapel.

He had pale blue eyes and the gentle manner of an old family doctor.

"Merritt Lund," Ewan said to Kit. "My father's oldest friend."

"Your Majesty honors me," Merritt said. "May I say how glad we all are that the animal is caught."

"He has a name."

"Does he? He never gave it to the Crown when it asked."

The soup came.

Nobody touched it.

Kit lifted his spoon, because Dorrie had told him to eat, and breathed in the steam, and under the steam he caught something else.

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