Chapter 8: What the Herald Carried

The herald left at a gallop, with the torn writ in his saddlebag at my insistence.

I wanted the Chancellor to read every piece.

Jorund Segrave did not watch him go.

He stood in the middle of the courtyard looking at his own hands.

"Walk with me," I said.

He followed me up to the east wall, where the wind could carry our words away.

Caelan came, too, and I did not stop him.

He leaned on a crenel a polite distance off, and pretended to study the weather.

"Say it," I said.

Jorund drew a long breath.

"Eleven days before the truce was sealed, the Chancellor's riders came to Redmoor by night.

"They took my three eldest advisers out of their beds.

"They were seventy, seventy-four, and eighty.

"The youngest of them taught me to track when I was six."

His voice was perfectly level.

That was how I knew how bad it was.

"They left a note.

"It said the elders would be kept as guests of the crown until I did what the Chancellor asked."

"Which was?"

"Come to the Hall of Hollin when summoned.

"Stand where he put me.

"Bond the woman he named, and bring her south."

I felt the wind on my face and the cold stone under my palms.

"The truce," I said.

"The truce is his.

"He made the peace so he'd have a reason to put us in the same room."

"You knew," I said, "when I called the Trial."

"I knew in the Hall that I'd been told to marry you.

"I didn't know until your Trial that I'd want to."

He said it flatly, an embarrassing fact.

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