Chapter 18: The King's Healer

I could not answer him.

If I opened my mouth for anything but the note, Jorund's heart would stop under my hand.

"Speak up, General," the Chancellor said gently.

"The silver is in his blood, and every minute it goes deeper."

"I have the one tincture in Varnmark that draws it out."

"I made it myself, for the king, who didn't need it."

"Give me the crown, in writing, before the Court, and your Alpha lives."

Caelan stood with Jorund's head against his shoulder, and I felt him shaking.

"Brenna," he said, very low.

"Whatever you choose, I'll carry him."

I shook my head, once.

The eldest elder of Redmoor tottered forward.

He was eighty years old, and he walked across the square.

He took the vial out of the Chancellor's fingers with a dry little hand.

He pulled the stopper and smelled it.

Then he looked at the Chancellor for a long moment, with the contempt of a man who has smelled every poison there is.

"Water," he said.

"A little bitter root to colour it, and a pinch of silver dust."

"This would finish him in an hour."

The Chancellor's face did not change.

But he took one step backward, and then another, and I knew the elder was right.

"Take them," he said.

Roof tiles rattled.

Archers rose along the edge of the square in a ring, with their bows already drawn.

I heard a hundred hooves behind us, striking sparks on the old cobbles.

The captain of the Chancellery guard rode into the square at a gallop, with forty Host riders behind him.

He pulled up in front of the archers and turned his horse broadside.

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