Lucia novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Greywatch

Greywatch Fort sat on the pass.

We reached it at midnight.

The gate opened onto a yard of frozen mud and a line of men with their hats in their hands.

Three bodies lay on the stones under white cloths.

Tobin got off his horse and walked to them without a word.

He knelt by each one, and each time he said a name.

The men watched him, and nobody spoke.

I stood by my horse with Pia and understood in a new way what he had meant by a cold fort.

There were no fires in the yard.

The men's coats were patched thin, and their cheeks were hollow, and one boy of maybe nineteen had his boots tied on with rope.

At the gate stood a flour wagon with its driver half asleep on the bench.

"He turned back," a sergeant told Tobin in a low voice.

"The Chancellor's office won't pay for the last six loads."

"He can't unload without coin."

Tobin shut his eyes.

"How much?"

"Forty crowns, Captain."

"We have eleven."

I stepped forward.

I reached up behind my neck and undid the clasp of the emerald necklace my father had given me for the betrothal feast.

It was a heavy thing, green stones in old gold, worth more than the wagon and the horses.

"Driver," I said.

He woke with a start and nearly fell off the bench.

"Highness?"

"Unload the flour," I said. "Take this."

I laid the necklace in his palm.

He stared at it, then at me, then at the necklace again.

"Highness, this is worth three hundred crowns."

"Then bring the change back with the next wagon," I said. "And the one after that."

For a moment nobody in the yard moved.

Then the boy with rope on his boots started to laugh, a weak, cracked laugh.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Lucia from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.