Mireille told her brother she was going to Sallowmere in the courtyard by the bakehouse door, because it was the only place in the Hold where nobody could pretend not to hear.
The yard was narrow and walled on three sides, and the fourth side was the bakehouse, which breathed out warm air and the smell of scorched flour every time its door was opened. There was a stone trough under the window, full of rainwater with a skin of pollen on it. There was a bench that someone had carried out of the Hall and had never carried back. There were the goats, who were not allowed in the yard and had found their way in anyway, and who stood at the far end with the untroubled air of creatures that had been counting the Hold’s bread for a long time and had decided it was theirs.
Idrin was standing by the trough. He had come out of the gatehouse with the pen still in his hand, and he had not yet noticed that he was holding it, and Mireille did not tell him. She had watched him all morning from the Hall’s high window. He had sat at the Chamber table with his sleeve pushed up and the mark on his arm showing above the wrist, and every time someone spoke to him he had turned his head very slightly, as if the words had come from somewhere behind his left ear.
