Before Jon could take three paces toward the cellar stairs, Cael Ardent’s iron-shod boot struck the flagstones with a sharp, commanding crack.
“Hold, Hale,” the knight said, his voice regaining a fraction of its accustomed military snap. He rose from the meal chest, the sheathed broadsword held horizontally before his belt in both gauntlets. “I have agreed to the nun’s examination, but I do not surrender my sidearm. A knight of the imperial retinue does not unbuckle his sword in a border province. Not for an apothecary, and not for a tavernkeeper.”
Jon stopped on the second riser, his hand resting on the smooth pine stringer. He turned his head slowly, looking back down into the gloom of the lower aisle.
“Then you had better mount your warhorse and ride back through the marsh ditch, Sir Cael,” Jon said, his voice flat and unyielding. “Because Sister Oda will not lay a single strip of warding iron while you are wearing three feet of forged steel at your hip.”
Cael’s nostrils flared, the color rising in his sallow, fever-flushed cheeks. “The weapon is sheathed! The peace-tie can be knotted through the guard ring with hemp twine. That satisfies municipal assembly laws in any shire between here and the sea.”
