The loft of the north gatehouse smelled of wet horse blankets, iron scale grease, and the sharp, medicinal odor of sheep’s tallow and wintergreen ointment.
Tobin sat on a three-legged stool near the small charcoal brazier, his right riding boot pulled off and resting on the rough floorboards beside his knee. His woolen sock was stiff with dried blood at the heel, where the stiff leather counter of his boot had ground through the skin during four days of hard riding. Sister Oda’s salve, which the innkeeper had told him to fetch from the bridge shrine, felt cold and soothing against the raw flesh, taking the throbbing fire out of the blister.
Across the low pine trestle table, Sir Cael Ardent sat on an overturned grain cask, leaning close to the yellow flame of a tin lantern.
The knight had not slept. His dark hair was pulled back with a strip of black leather, revealing the hollows beneath his cheekbones and the pale, bloodless line of his mouth. On the table between them lay the open leather mail satchel, its brass buckles unfastened to reveal four separate rolls of parchment wrapped in oiled linen.
Cael had already broken the red wax of the primary Chancellery dispatch, his long fingers smoothing down the curling edges of the royal vellum.
