The Silverspire carriage came up the valley road in the middle of the afternoon, black-lacquered and so clean that the dust did not stick to it.
Captain Hoff saw it first. He stood at the gate with his thumbs in his belt and watched it come.
He did not move to open the iron leaves until the driver had stopped the horses a full pace from the posts.
“Silverspire,” said Hoff, to nobody. “They have a nerve.”
Calen had come out of the hall to meet it. He stood on the top step and watched the door of the carriage open. A man in a long grey coat stepped down first. Behind him came a thin man with a leather case, and two clerks with ledgers held flat against their chests.
The last man out was Calloway. He had a fresh bruise along one cheekbone, yellow at the edges, and he did not look at the Keep. He looked at the ground, and then at his own boots, and then at the back of the grey coat in front of him.
The man in the grey coat looked up at the Keep’s walls.
“Director Lucan Varrow,” said Sarne, from the gatehouse door. He said it the way a clerk reads a name off a list. “Of Silverspire. He has come to see the girl count.”
