The ink on Lady Signe Lorr’s ledger dried slowly in the damp afternoon air of the River Lantern.
The imperial Observer sat with her wrists resting on the edge of the trestle table, her horn pen laid precisely parallel to the sheepskin binding. She had not moved since Sir Cael’s boots had pounded down the stone steps into the orchard road. The leaded window behind her caught the dying light of Day 4, throwing a lattice of pale grey shadows across her cheekbones and the high, stiff linen of her collar.
Jon stood by the hearth, holding an iron poker in his blistered hand. The fire had burned down to a mound of red coals covered in grey ash, giving off little heat and smelling of wet birch bark.
“He was right,” Jon said. His voice was low, flat, scraped clean of defensive pride.
Signe turned her head toward him, her sharp grey eyes studying him with the dispassionate, clinical interest of a coroner examining an incision. “In what particulars, Master Hale? Sir Cael offered several vigorous indictments before he departed.”
“In all of them,” Jon replied. He pushed the iron poker into the heart of the coals, stirring up a small shower of red sparks that died before they reached the hearth-stone. “I spent five years watching him ride out alone. Every time he made a secret pact, every time he moved grain without telling the bailiff, every time he burned a mill to save a bridge, I wrote…
