Chapter 5: The Prince's Price

They gave me one hour to wash my face.

Then six guards walked me and Jory up the palace road, and I forgot to be afraid of the guards.

The palace of Eldmark sat on a hill of white stone, with a hundred windows lit on a grey morning.

Hettie had my stall and my son's second pie.

I had left Jory with her, because he was five and I would not walk him into a room full of swords.

He had waved at me from the lane with flour on his nose.

The throne hall was long and cold.

The King of Eldmark sat at the far end in a plain iron crown, an old wolf with white hair and his son's grey eyes.

Alaric stood at his right hand.

He had changed into black.

He looked at me once when I came in, and the corner of his mouth moved.

Then he looked at the floor.

To the King's left stood the court healer.

She was a thin woman in a violet robe who held herself.

"Your Majesty," she said, "I examined the prince this morning. He is stable."

"He is more than stable," the King said. "He ate breakfast."

"A passing remission."

"He has not had a remission in two years."

"The Greying does not remit," the healer said, "and nothing sold on Wolfless Row will touch it."

She turned and looked at me down her nose.

"This woman has no wolf. She cannot channel, she cannot heal, and she cannot have done what the prince claims."

I felt that burn flare on my shoulder, old and familiar.

I had heard "no wolf" so many times in Vandeleur that my back straightened on its own.

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