Chapter 8: Leash

Corisande was the first to speak.

"Lord Morvaine was court mage thirty years ago," she said. "He was the youngest the crown ever had."

She stood up from the bench.

"I have the castle watch at dawn." She stopped in the kitchen doorway with her back to them. "Don't read that line to anyone else."

Then she was gone, and the door swung shut on the cold.

Ryota put the notebook back in the box and the box under his own bed, and slept the wrong way round under the drip.

Nine days later, Asako sat at the end of the Copper House kitchen table, peeling turnips badly.

She was the only hero who hadn't sworn the leash, so nobody could order her to stay in the east wing.

She'd come down every day since.

That morning the older archer brother had hit a target in the yard for the first time in his life.

He'd cried, and she'd hugged him.

He was still out there shooting at it, just to hear it thunk.

Then the street outside went quiet.

Ryota looked out through the kitchen hatch.

Tsubasa Mikami was walking down the middle of the Lowmarket street in his silver breastplate, with the gold-hilted sword on his hip.

People stepped back into doorways to let him pass.

He stopped in front of the Copper House and called through the open door.

"Nomura-san. Lord Morvaine wants you back at the castle. Now."

Asako put the turnip down.

Ryota went out first.

The street was full of people who had stopped to watch, carters and stallholders and the candle-seller with her basket.

"She's peeling turnips," Ryota said in Ardescan. "She'll be back by dark."

"I wasn't talking to you, Discount-kun."

"You're standing in front of my kitchen."