Ossane rode out of the Hold on the morning after the Oath, on the grey horse with the white blaze, with the Chancery’s copy of the Regent’s signed sentence in a leather case strapped to her saddle and her clerks trailing behind her in a neat line. She did not glance back at the gate. She had never liked looking back at gates. They were the one kind of building she had ever been paid to remember, and she had found, over the years, that a remembered gate was a very poor companion on a long road.
The Sallow road ran east from the Hold’s bar for two leagues, down through the willows, and then turned south across the marsh on a causeway of raised black earth, with the water lying flat and silver on both sides of it. Ossane rode slowly. The horse did not like the wet ground, and she did not like the smell of the marsh, which was thick and sweet and full of rot, and she let the grey pick its own way across the causeway’s humped back while she read the Chancery’s notice aloud to her clerk, in a voice that carried well over the water.
