At two minutes before the twelfth bell, the long brass horn above the North River Gate blew its three rising notes across the valley, announcing that the Knight of the White Rose had crested the chalk road.
From behind the polished oak bar of the River Lantern, Jon Hale listened to the town of Harth wake into its familiar, doomed festival clamor. Down in the market square, weaver’s apprentices and wharf boys went running toward the highway gate with armfuls of late-autumn willow boughs and marsh marigolds. Iron-shod hooves clattered across the cobbles in a brisk, disciplined trot—six Royal Oath Guards in blued steel breastplates clearing the lane ahead of Sir Cael Ardent’s white banner, followed by the heavy iron-tired traveling carriage of the High Assize and the pack mules of the bridge shrine.
In the kitchen behind Jon, Elin wiped her hands on her clean linen apron, checked that the horn-hilted border knife (#5) was riding hidden beneath Jon’s waistcoat skirt, and stepped into the doorway beside the cider barrels where she could watch every face that crossed the threshold.
“Remember what Sister Oda told you in the last run,” Elin said quietly from the shadow of the archway. “His battle record holds only what his seal marks as a threat to the mission. To him, this morning is a clean sheet of paper.”
