Chapter 9: Ashes

He went out to the black field after midnight, and I followed him with a lantern.

Darian had ridden out at noon with his whole shining troop.

Garrick had said nothing since.

He had put the sealed paper inside his coat and gone through the afternoon.

Now he stood alone in the middle of the burned barley.

There was nothing in the field but a blackened fence post and the wind.

The paper was in his hand.

He had broken the seal.

"You'll catch cold," I said.

He didn't turn.

"It says to ride to the Rhenmark line at dawn," he said.

"It says not to come back until I'm sent for. It doesn't say why."

"You don't have to go."

"I do. It's a royal order."

"It's a piece of paper."

"Sigrid." His voice was gentle and flat. "I don't know what I'd be, if I stopped following them."

I set the lantern down in the ash.

"I lied to you," I said. "The first night."

He turned then.

"I told you the marks were only scars," I said.

"I can read them. I could read them from the first minute at the altar."

"I'm sorry."

He was quiet.

"What do they say?" he asked.

My mouth was dry.

I had practiced this on the way across the field.

"I don't have all of it. My name is written over and over, and so is the word my brother uses."

"And a charter on the chapel wall matches your back, line for line. I copied it."

I touched my gown where the folded page lay.

"It's an old oath, a binding. The man who wears it obeys the house that cut it."

"It is made so that he never feels the leash."

Garrick didn't move.

He looked at me for such a long time that I thought he had stopped breathing.

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