“The Lady Fliad,” Rangen agrees, but he doesn’t look relieved, and Gragor puts his head in his hands. We’re all coated in snow now and none of us cares. “But her testimony is damning.”
I glare at him until he says more.
“She claims he killed them. Out of spite. For an insult to your person as a knight.”
“What insult?” I ask.
“The other knight made a coarse joke about you searching in the snow for Lady Iva. Lady Fliad claims that Gragor killed the snow kittens as retribution.”
I let the air gust from my lungs. I’m exhausted. I’m cold through. My belly is a gnawing hole within. I feel unequal to the task of unraveling this.
Two nobles – the knight and the lady – with testimony against one vassal. Fourteen-year-old Gragor. If they demand him whipped and I don’t agree, then I will have to fight the knight. That, I would do. But the lady is another matter. She will bring it up with her grandfather. If she does that, then anyone present here will have to pay the honor price. Which could be our lives. Not just mine, but all my vassals.
“He wants you flogged?” I ask Gragor and to my surprise, the boy breaks.
I’ve seen him in battle. I’ve seen him freezing by the fire. I’ve seen him starving. I have not seen him sob like this. I look away, aghast. I don’t want his back marred, but I did not think to see him take the suggestion so hard.
Rangen clears his throat. “He wants his head. Tonight.”
My gaze snaps to his and we share a heartbeat of understanding.
It’s Gragor or all of us.
Everyone knows it.
Something hot and red burns through my thoughts even as I try to form them. I grasp at them but all I find are the ashes of panic.
Deep breaths.
Take deep breaths.
I slow myself down. I grasp my helpless rage and draw it into that hidden place next to my spine.
“Where is he?” I ask.
Rangen tips his head. He’ll lead the way.
“Gragor,” I say, and his head snaps up. “Help Rhurc with my horse.”
He scurries away as if running to the stable can let him flee this. Best to keep him out of whatever comes next. I wish I could run, too.
I enter the inn forcefully. I must present myself as a firm wall or my vassals will suffer for my weakness.
The common room is just a small room with tables and stools and a long bar on one side with a door set in the wall behind it – likely to the kitchens. I see a face I don’t know peering from the shadows of the door. The innkeeper, probably. He doesn’t want trouble.
There are stairs just past the bar to the rooms above. I don’t know if my men bought any rooms or if we sleep in the barn tonight, but no one lingers on the open stairs. The common room is empty except for Lady Fliad, who has a hand on Hessa’s head, and a man I do not know.
My eyes flicker first to Hessa. She’s smiling at me in her doggy way. Not hurt and not in danger. Something loosens in my chest. She sits back on her haunches and whines, but Lady Fliad doesn’t remove her hand and Hessa won’t move until she does. That’s just dog manners.
I swallow and turn to the man. He’s perhaps twenty and five, a full hand taller than me, and well-muscled. Still, I’d fight him for Gragor were it not for Lady Fliad. The death of a knight, I might cover up, though it would haunt me. The death of a lady would be impossible to disguise.
She watches me with a penetrating gaze. He, with a calculating one. Beside him, the corpses of his young cats are laid out on the table beside his supper. A curious way to treat anything to which you’re attached.
“You call a claim on my vassal,” I say without preamble.
“You must be Sir Oakensen,” he says, spreading his hands in greeting and smiling widely. It’s the smile of a man who has never known death or doesn’t care. The latter is more dangerous, but the former can bite harder in ignorance than he would if he understood. “I am Sir Rainside the Younger, and yes, I have a claim on the life of your vassal Gregor. He has killed my brace of snowcats.”
“You’re not at the front,” I say. I can smell tonight’s dinner, but hungry though I am, it only turns my stomach.
