The common room of the Wild Heron was dim after the glare of summer morning, so it took me a moment to see the four men seated at a corner table: the sheriff, two soldiers in red livery, and a dark-haired man in black, who had his back to me.
Rowan noticed me first. His expression did not change. One of his companions touched the arm of the dark-haired man, who whipped his head around. Darzid. I thought I might vomit.
He remained seated, his shiny boots resting on the table, as he inspected me. “Well now, my lady, you’ve come up in the world, I see. From sorcerers to pig farmers. What next? Gravediggers? Cutpurses?”
“What do you want of me, Captain?” I said, forcing my voice even.
“Only word of your safety and health to carry back to your friends and family. Your brother grieves for your company.”
“Rubbish.”
“Also, you have something that belongs to your king.”
“Impossible.”
“Ah, dear lady, only by his sufferance do you live.”
“I’m sure I’m very grateful.” What kind of game was this?
“Gratitude is not enough. There’s a price for the king’s parole.”
Parole . I caught my breath. “He wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh, yes. The first day of autumn is only three weeks away. This exemplary sheriff has been charged with the responsibility to see that you fulfill your duty on Sufferance Day in this and every year of your life.” I started to speak, but Darzid raised his finger. “You’d best not compound your past offenses with treasonable words. Such an example it would be. And from a duke’s daughter, one whom rumor claimed was to be our queen! Do the good people of this place realize the honor to which they are privy, having such an exalted personage in their midst?”
One of his companions nudged him and said, “Not from her dress, would they, Captain?”
Darzid chortled merrily. “Perhaps not. But her manners are so fine. I’m sure she curtsies to the swine, or perhaps she discusses fine points of law with the sheriff here.” He waved Rowan and the men in livery toward the door. Then he stood and straightened his dark purple tunic and vest. “Have you any message for your brother, my lady?”
As I was awash in the bitter implications of his news, it took me a moment to realize I was not to accompany him.
He propped one boot on a chair and used the hem of his cloak to flick away imaginary dust. “Quickly, madam. If we stay here too long, we’ll begin to stink. A message for the duke?”
A message? For Tomas the executioner? Even in the moment’s relief, my hatred boiled over. “Tell my brother he cannot wash them enough.”
Darzid crinkled his eyebrows in puzzlement and shrugged. “As you wish. Don’t think to run away again.” With mock solemnity, he wagged a finger first at the sheriff and then at me. “It would go hard with anyone who’s given you aid. And the first day of autumn—on your life and the lives of everyone in this charming sty, do not forget.” Darzid and his soldiers left the tavern without closing the door behind them.
* * *
The autumn equinox—the Day of the King’s Sufferance. The law stated that on the first day of autumn all those who lived by the king’s sufferance must appear before him and swear they had not trespassed on his favor during the past year. The event was a favorite of those who enjoyed displaying moral superiority without fear of rebuttal or retribution. Observers could question the petitioner about anything, whether related to the past crime or no, and the penalties were severe if one answered untruthfully. A horrid custom. Humiliating.
At dawn on the last day of summer, I met Graeme Rowan at the Dunfarrie Bridge to make the daylong trek to Montevial. He waited on the seat of a rickety farm cart. A lantern gleamed from the seat beside him, revealing, among other things, a gray smudge in the center of his forehead. No surprise to discover he was a pious man, one who would pray at the shrine of Annadis before a journey, marking himself with earth to remind the god of earth and sky that he was his servant no matter where he traveled.
I climbed into the seat without a greeting, and the sheriff put out the lantern and slapped the mule. Only after half a league of the bone-jarring ride did Rowan first break the silence. “I’m sorry this isn’t the kind of carriage you’re accustomed to,” he said after a particularly hard jolt.
“You have no idea to what I’m accustomed.”
“Those men told me of your crimes.” His eyes were fixed on the road ahead—or perhaps the mule’s rump.
“And are you properly appalled at the affront I am to lawful society? Afraid of my arcane connections? Afraid Jerrat will send a lightning bolt to strike me while I’m sitting next to you?”
“I thought it right you should know.”
“You have a highly developed sense of honor—for a sheriff.” For a man with so much blood on his hands.
Jacopo had told me how the sheriff had come by his office. Rowan had saved our local lord’s life while serving in Evard’s first Vallorean campaign back in King Gevron’s time. That campaign, of course, had included the slaughter at Avonar. I glanced at Rowan’s hands that gripped the mule’s reins—short, work-hardened fingers, wide backs with a layer of wiry, reddish hair. Ordinary enough. But I could not look at them without imagining those hands binding women, men, and children to the hastily erected stakes, throwing piles of sticks at their feet, waving the blazing torches close…
Rowan slapped the reins hard. I didn’t think the beast could go any faster. “It’s true I have no rank, neither dukes nor earls nor even a lowly knight in my pedigree, but I manage to keep some sense of right and wrong about me.”
“Do you think that’s why I’m allowed to live? Because of my rank? Does that offend your belief in the law?”
“I’m not your judge—”
“I think I’m glad of that.”
“—but I tired long ago of those who take or leave the law at their will.”
“Rest easy, sir. I would not think of challenging your sense of right and wrong while in your charge. Any man who burned the children of Avonar would surely have no mercy on a depraved soul such as my own.”
His features might have been carved from the oaken planks of that cart. He said no more. In fact, we traveled the entire day without twenty more words between us.
We arrived in Montevial after nightfall. Rowan had started fidgeting a league from the walls. As we pressed through the travelers crowding across the Dun bridge, trying to get across the sluggish river and past the city gates before they were closed for the night, his eyes flicked from side to side, and he moved almost imperceptibly toward the center of the wagon seat. The flickering torchlight made the lines about his eyes and the creased scar in his cheek seem deeper. Once he stopped the wagon, jumped down from the seat, and spoke quietly to a constable who was patrolling a street of shuttered shops. When we at last came to a halt in the muddy stableyard of a cheap riverside inn, he kicked the crowding beggars away from us and snapped an epithet at a ragged girl. The sheriff seemed to think she was trying to steal the mule, but she had only come to take the beast into the rickety stable. I don’t know which of us was more relieved that the journey was over.
When Rowan appeared at my door the next morning, he wore his usual sober garb of tan breeches, a country man’s canvas leggings, and a dark blue coat, cuffs frayed and thin at the elbows. We walked through the city in a mournful drizzle, the crowds growing thicker as we neared the palace. Rowan started at the bump and jostle of the passersby and gripped my arm tighter the farther we walked, as if I might be tempted to run away now I was in the bastion of Leiran aristocracy.
I tried to keep my eyes away from the palace towers that dominated the cityscape and the red banners with gold dragons that swelled limp and heavy from the walls, but as Rowan’s firm hand steered me toward the center of the city, my steps slowed.