The line in the dirt was still there in the morning. Someone had swept the yard in the night and missed it, or had swept around it on purpose. Calen did not ask which.
Breakfast had been bread and water. Nell ate hers in fours, and Tobin sat beside her with his cup held in both hands and did not drink. Neither of them spoke about the wall.
Calen did not speak about it either, and he thought that was the right way to keep it.
Kade came out of the lodging at the first bell with his shirt buttoned to the throat. He moved slowly. He had slept sitting up again, and the bruise had turned yellow at the edges overnight, which Tobin had named before anyone else looked.
Kade walked to the line and stopped on the near side of it, with his jaw set and his eyes on the stone. Nobody in the yard spoke until he did.
“The Duke is ready,” he said.
“Set your feet,” said Calen.
Kade set them. His front foot went down on the stone. His back foot went down a hand’s width wide of the line. He lifted his hands to his chest and let them hang there, low and open.
