Chapter 11: The Winter Assize

The Winter Assize sat in the old market hall at Aven Ford, a stone barn with a timber roof and a dirt floor.

Half the town had pushed in to watch.

The king's judge sat at a table on a platform at the far end in a red robe.

He was over seventy, with a face like a dried apple.

He turned his left ear toward whoever was speaking, because the right one didn't work.

The River Lord sat beside him on the platform as the host of the assize, with a bandage at his throat under his fur collar.

Below them stood a lawyer in my brother's blue and silver, holding a roll of charges.

The guild masters sat together on benches near the front.

Nine of them wore new coats.

Katell sat at the end of their bench with her arms folded, and she wouldn't look at the coats.

I stood in front of the platform with Erwan behind me and twenty of his men along the back wall.

They'd left their bows at the door, because the judge's guards had made them.

"The prince's charges against the Lady of Penhal," the lawyer read. "First, the theft of the crown's grain from the crown's collector."

The tax collector stood up from the front bench.

He had new boots.

He told the judge how I'd sat on his grain, broken open his strongbox and turned his own soldiers against him.

He made it sound as though I'd done it with an axe.

"Is that true, my lady?" the judge asked, with his good ear turned to me.

"Most of it," I said.

People laughed.

The judge didn't.

"Penhal's debt is due at the Spring Court, my lord," I said. "Not before."

"Tax is taken at the quarter, under the king's seal," I said.