Chapter 6: The Baker's Wife

The Merchants' Hall holds three hundred people on a bad day.

On the second morning after Verity, it held every merchant in Silverreach and a crowd on the stairs besides.

The guildmaster's niece was being honoured.

I knew that because the baker's wife told me on the way over.

She was a small woman with flour in the creases of her knuckles, and her hands were wrapped in her apron.

Nine days earlier the Registry had written to her husband.

An error had been found, the letter said.

His true fated mate was a merchant's niece, and the niece would be arriving that week.

"He cried," the baker's wife told me. "But he believed it. The paper had the seal. We've been married eleven years."

The niece had moved into the bakery that night.

She slept in the bed.

She wore the baker's wife's second-best shawl and sat at the shop counter and smiled at customers.

"And he thinks she's me?" I said.

"He thinks she's his wife," the baker's wife said. "He thinks I'm a madwoman who used to work there."

Cassian, across the carriage, said nothing.

He had a way of going still that I'd learned to read.

It meant someone was going to lose a charter.

The Guild Moot sat under a gilded roof.

The guildmaster stood at the lectern, a heavy man in green velvet.

His niece stood beside him in a pale gown with her hand held up for the crowd.

A silver crescent shone on her wrist.

The baker stood at the foot of the dais with his arms hanging.

He looked like a man who had been hit on the head and was waiting to be told by whom.

"My niece's bond to the baker is the Moon's own gift," the guildmaster said.

"The Registry has certified it. We ask only that Silverreach treat her kindly."

I walked up the centre aisle with the King of Orrenmoor behind me.

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