The iron horn at the North Gate sounded two short, brassy blasts that cut clean through the midday rain.
Jon Hale stood under the covered porch of the River Lantern, oiling the iron hinges of the courtyard gate with a goose quill dipped in mutton fat. Across the muddy yard, the heavy oak doors of the carriage shed stood open, showing two empty baggage wains and four barrels of cured salt pork covered with damp sacking. The wind had swung to the northeast, carrying the chill of the high moorlands and the sulfurous reek of distant peat bogs.
Hoofbeats clattered over the wet limestone cobbles of the bridge approach. The sound was ragged, uneven, the heavy, stumbling gallop of an exhausted mount pushed far beyond its endurance.
A bay mare turned into the courtyard, her flank caked in dried gray clay, yellow foam dripping from her iron bit. Her head hung low, her nostrils flaring crimson with each ragged heave of her chest.
In the saddle sat Tobin.
The boy was sixteen winters old, but under the mud-streaked wool of his courier’s hood, his face looked twenty years older. His gray cloak, stamped at the right shoulder with the crowned white rose of the High Chancellery, was soaked through to the lining, sodden and heavy with road grease. His lips were blue from three leagues of river mist, his teeth chattering against each other in involuntary, rhythmic spasms. Across his chest, buckled with two heavy brass hasps, hung the stiff…
