When Elin’s footsteps faded into the kitchen above, the cellar returned to the rhythmic dripping of river seepage along the north foundation.
Sir Cael Ardent remained standing beside the salt cask, his boots planted wide, both gauntleted hands locked around the dented pewter mug. The steam rose into his tangled blond beard, condensing in tiny, shining beads on the copper rivets of his gorget. He tilted the cup back, drinking the scalding chicory in three heavy, audible gulps that rattled his throat.
As he tilted his head, the coarse linen neckband of his arming doublet pulled away from his collarbone.
Jon stood five paces away by the trestle table, his eyes adjusting to the low tallow light. Through the gap in the knight’s linen, the flesh above the right clavicle was visible—and it looked like meat that had been left three days on a butcher’s summer block.
The skin was not pale or weathered; it had turned the color of bruised elderberries, dark and mottled with purplish-black rings that radiated outward from a central depression. In the middle of that discolored hollow, right where the collarbone joined the sternum, the flesh had been gouged away in crude, jagged strips. Deep, cross-hatched scars scored the bone, crusting with a thick, blackened fluid that had seeped into the padding of his gambeson.
