Chapter 12: Read It Aloud

I stood up with the paper in my hand.

The lanterns stopped in a half circle around the Queen tree.

Maud lifted hers until the light hit my face.

"Well," she said. "The thief came home. In the middle of the night, robbing my orchard."

"My father's orchard."

"Mine. Ask any magistrate."

She smiled at the men with the axes.

"Take her. There's fifty crowns on her head. Tie her to the pear for now."

Two of the timber men stepped forward. Big men, with sawdust in their beards.

Cassian pushed his hood back.

The lantern light fell full on his mane, his horns and his amber eyes.

The two men stopped so fast that one of them walked into the other.

"Good evening," Cassian said.

Nobody answered him.

Somewhere behind the wall a dog started barking. Then another one.

A window banged open in the house next door.

"What's all that noise?" a woman's voice shouted. "It's past midnight!"

Lamps were being lit up and down the lane.

A gate creaked, and feet crunched on the gravel.

Our neighbors.

The widow from next door came through the side gate in her nightcap with a poker in her hand.

Behind her came the baker from the corner and his two sons, half dressed.

The baker held up his lamp and squinted at me.

"Is that Clemmie Merriwether?"

"It's me," I said.

"Good God, girl. They said you'd gone off and married a monster." Then he saw Cassian and his mouth fell open. "Oh."

"Hello," Cassian said.

Maud's face had gone tight.

"Go back to bed, all of you. This is a private matter. The girl is a thief."

"I'm not a thief," I said loudly. "And I'm not a liar. And I can prove it."

I held up the paper.

"This is my father's will. His real one. He hid it in the Queen tree before he died. I just found it."

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