Chapter X | No One Important
Rowan left before the house fully woke.
Not in silence. Nothing in Greyharbor was ever truly silent. Somewhere below, water ran through stone channels. A floorboard complained under a careful boot. Someone muttered in sleep behind a closed door. A kettle hissed too softly to be called morning.
But no one made ceremony of his leaving.
That helped.
Nadeen stood in the lower passage with the satchel open on a narrow table. The forged order lay beside it, folded, tied, sealed, ordinary enough to frighten him. In candlelight, the wax did not glow red. It looked dark, almost brown, like dried blood pretending to be ink.
Rowan watched her hands. They did not tremble. His did, so he folded them under his arms.
She closed the satchel and pushed it toward him.
Rowan slung the strap across his shoulder. It sat heavier than before.
Husa'an waited by the passage gate, arms folded, broad shape nearly filling the arch. His usual grin was absent. He looked down the stair behind Rowan, then back the way they had come. Only after checking both did he speak, low.
Kaelen stood apart from them, half in shadow, cloak fastened, sword hidden beneath it. He had the look of a man already elsewhere in his mind.
Rowan wanted to ask where he was going.
He did not want to sound like a child.
So he asked anyway.
Kaelen's eyes moved to him.
That was worse because it was true.
Rowan nodded, though his jaw tightened.
Kaelen did not answer at once.
Husa'an glanced toward the upper corridor, listening. Nadeen noticed the glance. She noticed the silence too. For a heartbeat, her eyes sharpened, but she said nothing.
Kaelen stepped closer to Rowan and adjusted the satchel strap by a finger's width.
That closed the door between them gently, but it closed.
Rowan swallowed the next question.
Kaelen looked him over one final time.
Rowan stared at him.
Kaelen's voice lowered further.
It should have comforted him.
It did not.
Husa'an opened the passage gate. Damp air rolled up from below, smelling of moss, old stone, and the deep belly of the city.
Rowan stepped through.
No one said farewell.
That helped too.
The gate shut behind him with a soft wooden click.
Kaelen waited until the sound settled into the walls.
Then he turned to Husa'an.
Neither spoke for a moment.
Husa'an crossed to the side door and opened it a crack. He looked into the corridor, then upward toward the stairwell. Kaelen moved to the small window and lifted the ragged curtain with two fingers. The yard outside was empty. A woman passed beyond the far wall carrying a basket of rope scraps. She did not look their way.
Husa'an closed the door.
Only then did he speak, barely above breath.
Kaelen's face did not change.
Kaelen's eyes narrowed slightly.
Husa'an nodded.
Darin the Know-It-All. That was what half the safe house called him when he was not present. Not because he knew everything, but because he always found a way to sound as though he did.
Routes. Prices. Names. Who drank where. Which clerk took bribes. Which guard liked dice. Which widow bought grain twice a month and never asked from where. Darin collected information the way rats collected crumbs.
Useful, until he was not.
Kaelen looked toward the closed passage gate, then back to Husa'an.
Husa'an did not answer quickly.
That alone said enough.
He rubbed a hand over his beard, angry at himself before anyone else.
Kaelen said nothing.
Husa'an looked him in the eye.
The words stayed quiet. They did not need force.
Kaelen held his gaze for a moment, then looked down at the harbor sketch half-hidden beneath the larger map.
Husa'an's mouth tightened.
He pulled the sketch free and smoothed it flat.
For a moment, the room seemed older around him.
Kaelen listened.
Husa'an looked at him sharply.
Husa'an let out a breath through his nose.
Husa'an tapped the charcoal sketch. Not elegant. Useful.
Kaelen studied the sketch.
Husa'an's expression hardened.
Kaelen did not look up.
The words did not echo. The room was too small for that. They simply stayed there.
The south passage spat Rowan out where the city forgot to pretend.
There were no carved signs here, no lanterns with painted glass, no salt-mark symbols tucked into doorframes. Just a wet stone mouth beneath a collapsed storehouse and a road that had once been paved before wagons, rain, and neglect chewed it into a long wound.
He stepped into gray morning with mud up to his ankles before he had taken ten paces.
Good.
Mud made him look tired. Mud made him look local. Mud made him angry enough that he did not have to pretend irritation when he reached the first ditch crew.
Three men stood beside a cart loaded with broken stones. One leaned on a shovel. One smoked something that smelled like burned rope. The third was older, with a wool cap pulled low and eyes that missed little.
Rowan kept walking.
He stopped this time, but slowly, as if the stopping itself cost him patience.
The old man looked him up and down.
Rowan's heart kicked once against his ribs.
He let his face sour.
The man with the burned-rope pipe snorted.
The older man spat into the ditch.
That got a laugh from the smoker. The old man waved him on.
Rowan went.
Only after the road bent and the ditch crew vanished behind a line of alder did he let his breath out properly.
His first question on the road, and he had lived through it.
That should have made him feel better.
It made the rest of the road feel longer.
Greyharbor's customs house did not look like a place where men vanished.
That made it worse.
It stood near the lower quay, square-built, practical, with its stone washed clean by sea wind and its windows narrow enough to discourage thieves without making the place seem fortified. Clerks came and went with tablets under their arms. Dock captains argued at the front desk. A boy carried a tray of ink bottles through the side door and nearly tripped on a coil of rope.
No one screamed.
No one looked afraid.
Kaelen hated places like that. Cruelty in ruin at least had the courtesy to smell like rot. Cruelty behind desks smelled of wax, wool, and dry ink.
Husa'an walked beside him under a brown workman's hood, shoulders hunched to hide their breadth. He carried a crate marked for tariff records, empty except for a length of rope, two wrapped clubs, and a pry hook.
They passed a pair of dock guards sharing a heel of bread. One looked at the crate, not at their faces.
Husa'an grunted.
The guard made a face.
He let them through.
The side passage was cooler. Quieter. Shelves crowded both walls, stacked with ledgers tied in faded cord. Each spine bore numbers, initials, stamps, the dull language of men who believed control improved when written down.
Halfway along the passage, Kaelen heard it.
Not Darin's voice.
The absence of it.
Darin always spoke. Always filled rooms with useful lies and useless truths. If he was silent now, fear had already put a hand around his throat.
Husa'an set the crate down near a stairwell and bent as though tying his boot.
His whisper barely moved the air.
Kaelen looked at the stair. One guard at the bottom, visible between the rails. Helmet off. Young. Spear resting against the wall. Not lazy, just underprepared for the idea that danger might come dressed as work.
Behind a closed door beyond him, voices.
One calm. One nervous.
The nervous one was Darin.
Kaelen touched two fingers to the wall. Wait.
Husa'an stilled.
The calm voice spoke again, clear enough now.
Darin answered, thin and shaking.
A sound followed. Not a scream. A struck table, perhaps. Or a fist against wood close enough to make a frightened man imagine bone.
Darin began talking quickly.
Too quickly.
Kaelen's jaw tightened.
Husa'an's eyes closed for half a breath.
The young guard at the bottom of the stairs shifted, suddenly uncomfortable with what he was hearing.
Kaelen moved.
Not fast enough to slap sound against stone. Fast enough that the guard only understood the danger when Kaelen's hand covered his mouth and the knife touched the soft place below his ribs.
The guard tried to jerk back. Husa'an was already there, catching the spear before it clattered. A short, ugly struggle followed, all elbows and breath, ending when Husa'an struck the guard behind the ear with a wrapped club.
The young man folded.
Kaelen lowered him carefully to the floor.
Alive.
For now, that mattered.
Inside the room, the calm voice paused.
Kaelen and Husa'an looked at each other.
The calm voice sharpened.
Husa'an kicked the door in.
By the time the sun cleared the low hills east of Greyharbor, Rowan had mud on both knees and a stitch in his side.
The old drainage road did not behave like a road. It wandered, dipped, forgot itself under reeds, reappeared as two pale ruts through wet grass, then became a line of stones no sane cart would trust.
He followed it anyway.
South passage. Old drainage road. Second shrine. Cart ruts. River road. Courier gate. Brenwick. Say little. Leave.
He repeated it until the words lost meaning.
At the second shrine, he stopped only long enough to drink from his skin.
The shrine had no face. Whatever god once stood there had been scraped away by weather or anger. Someone had tied three bits of cloth to the branch above it. One blue. One white. One so stained he could not tell what color it had been.
Rowan did not pray.
Praying felt too much like asking someone else to do the walking.
He moved on.
Near midmorning, the drainage road met a wider route where wagons had chewed the mud deep. A cart stood half-tilted near a narrow bridge, one wheel sunk almost to the axle. Two oxen stood in patient misery while a woman cursed them, the mud, and every ancestor of the man who built the road.
A messenger sat on a stone nearby, boots off, rubbing one foot through a hole in his sock. His horse cropped wet grass beside him. The man's leather satchel bore three different seals and enough stains to suggest he had outrun both weather and wages.
He noticed Rowan's satchel.
Rowan slowed because the bridge was blocked anyway.
The messenger laughed, tired but real.
Rowan stood a few paces off, not too close. Couriers probably stood near other couriers. Boys on secret missions probably avoided everyone. He chose something between both.
The messenger pulled his boot back on with a wince.
Rowan shrugged.
He said it lightly at first, then glanced toward the woman with the cart, toward the empty fields, toward the road behind them.
Rowan caught the glance.
The messenger leaned closer, lowering his voice by habit more than decision.
Rowan's face wanted to move.
He kept it dull.
The messenger rubbed his jaw, then continued, quieter.
He gave a bitter little smile.
The woman at the cart shouted as the wheel finally lurched free, mud sucking at it like a mouth. The oxen stumbled forward. The bridge cleared slowly.
Rowan should have left.
But the messenger kept speaking, as men did when the road was long and fear needed somewhere to leak.
Rowan looked at him despite himself.
The messenger nodded, as if the disbelief was the only sane response.
His voice dropped so low the words almost vanished under the creak of the freed cart.
The fear arrived immediately after. He looked at Rowan as if only now remembering he had spoken to a stranger.
Rowan felt the answer rise in him, hot and honest.
Yes.
Worse than lunatic.
Monster.
But he was not Rowan of Brennor on this road. He was a tired boy with a satchel. A boy who wanted no trouble. A boy who might repeat a dangerous sentence if someone scared him enough.
So he let disgust enter his face, not toward the king, but toward the messenger.
The messenger's mouth closed.
For a moment, the messenger studied him.
Then he looked away.
Rowan stepped onto the bridge as soon as the cart cleared it.
He did not look back.
He hated how well it had worked.
The room under the customs house was smaller than Kaelen expected.
Small rooms were worse for fighting.
A table. Two chairs. A brazier in the corner. Darin tied to one chair with his hands bound in front of him, face wet with sweat. A Crown clerk stood behind the table with a writing board tucked under one arm. Not a soldier, but not harmless. His eyes were pale, clean, and patient.
The moment the door broke inward, the clerk stepped back and reached for a bell cord.
Kaelen threw his knife.
It pinned the cord to the beam, slicing through the clerk's sleeve and cutting skin. The man hissed but did not panic.
That was unfortunate.
Husa'an crossed the room in two strides and drove a shoulder into the clerk before he could shout. They struck the wall together hard enough to rattle dust from the ceiling.
Darin made a strangled sound.
Kaelen reached him and put one hand over his mouth.
Darin nodded so violently the chair creaked.
Husa'an and the clerk struggled near the wall. The clerk was smaller but trained enough to be difficult. He drove two fingers into Husa'an's wounded side, then twisted free and drew a short blade from beneath his writing board.
Of course.
Men who wrote orders always liked to pretend their hands were clean.
Kaelen cut Darin's wrist binding, shoved a knife into his hands, and pointed at the ankle rope.
The clerk lunged.
Husa'an caught the blade on his forearm guard, but the angle was bad. Steel skipped and opened his sleeve. Blood darkened the cloth.
Kaelen stepped in from the side, grabbed the clerk's wrist, and drove him back against the table. The writing board fell. Papers scattered. One sheet slid near the brazier and curled from the heat.
The clerk's face remained calm, even with Kaelen's forearm against his throat.
Darin froze with the ankle rope half-cut.
Husa'an's eyes flicked toward him.
The clerk noticed.
Even pinned, even breathless, he smiled.
The room changed.
Not visibly. Nothing moved. But suspicion slipped in like cold water through a boot seam.
Darin whispered:
The clerk's smile widened by a fraction.
Kaelen struck him once.
Not to kill.
To end the shape of the moment.
The clerk sagged, stunned. Husa'an caught him before he dropped loudly and lowered him to the floor.
Darin finished cutting the rope and stood too quickly. His knees failed. Kaelen caught him by the collar.
Husa'an looked at him with an expression that had no laughter left in it.
Footsteps sounded in the passage above.
More than one pair.
Kaelen retrieved his thrown knife and cut the bell cord fully through.
Husa'an grabbed Darin by the back of the coat and pushed him toward the far wall, where a rusted grate sat low behind stacked crates.
The first shout came from the stair.
Kaelen lifted the pry hook from the crate.
The grate did not move at first.
Then it screamed.
Rowan walked until the messenger's words stopped sounding like someone else's voice.
Asterfall.
A mountain passage blocked from both sides.
Prices rising while the Crown called it false.
A colosseum before the White Keep.
He tried to imagine it and could not. A ring of stone for blood and cheering, raised while villages sagged under taxes and mud. It felt too stupid to be real. Then he remembered the Mirefield Yard, the posters, the king's words nailed above hungry people, and stupidity no longer protected anything from being true.
The road widened near a cluster of leaning buildings that called itself a rest stop by force of habit. A stable with no horses. A well with a cracked lip. A shed selling boiled eggs, black bread, and ale thin enough to see regret through.
Rowan should have kept walking.
His feet disagreed.
He bought one piece of bread with a copper from the pouch Kaelen had given him and stood beneath the edge of the shed roof, eating in small bites. Couriers ate quickly, he thought. But hungry boys ate quickly too. He slowed down.
The shed keeper, a narrow woman with arms like rope, looked past him toward the road.
Her face changed.
Not much. Enough.
The air seemed to learn stillness.
A man entered the shelter.
Broad shoulders. Dark hair. Travel-stained coat. Right arm wrapped in gray cloth from wrist to elbow.
Rowan forgot how to swallow.
The Officer did not look like fire now. He looked like a man who had learned to bank it.
That was worse.
His face bore faint scars where smoke and heat had kissed skin. His eyes were tired, but not dulled. A short sword hung at his side. Not military issue. Personal. His wrapped right hand rested near the hilt, fingers stiff beneath the cloth.
When he placed coin on the counter, metal clicked faintly under the wrapping.
Rowan looked at his bread.
He was mud. He was cold. He was no one.
No one.
The Officer took a cup and drank before speaking.
Rowan's chest tightened.
He looked up with the dull annoyance of someone interrupted mid-meal.
The Officer studied him.
Not recognition. Assessment.
The Officer's gaze dropped to the satchel, then back to his face.
Rowan shrugged with one shoulder.
A faint smile touched the Officer's mouth. It held no warmth.
Rowan's fingers wanted to curl.
He made them hold the bread instead.
The shed keeper stopped wiping the counter.
The Officer's eyes sharpened.
For one horrible second, Rowan thought he had been too clever.
Then the Officer laughed once, low.
He reached into his coat with his left hand and tossed a copper onto the counter near Rowan.
Rowan looked at the copper.
He knew refusing it would mean something.
He took it.
The Officer leaned closer.
His voice dropped.
The name settled like ash.
Edric.
Rowan nodded once, bored enough to live.
He stepped away before his legs could betray him.
He did not run.
He did not look back.
He walked until the rest stop vanished behind the rise.
Then he left the road.
The rear drain beneath the customs house was not built for men.
That did not stop men from using it when the alternative was capture.
Husa'an shoved Darin through first. Darin cursed, slipped, and vanished halfway into the dark with a wet yelp.
Boots hit the lower stair.
Kaelen turned as the first guard came into view. This one had his spear ready. Older. Awake. The spear thrust came fast enough that Kaelen had to twist hard, shoulder scraping the wall.
He caught the shaft under his arm, stepped in, and drove his knee into the guard's thigh. The man grunted but held on. Better trained than the first.
Husa'an was half in the drain, one hand gripping Darin's coat to keep him from crawling the wrong direction.
The guard drew a knife with his free hand.
Kaelen let go of the spear and took the cut across his forearm rather than his throat. Pain flashed hot. He used the closeness to slam the guard's head into the stone edge of the doorway.
Once.
Twice.
The man dropped.
More voices above.
Kaelen kicked the spear into the room, grabbed the clerk's writing board from the floor, and wedged it under the door handle as the next guard reached the bottom stair.
It would hold for breaths, not minutes.
Breaths would have to do.
He crouched and entered the drain.
The cold hit his knees first, then his hands. Saltwater, old refuse, harbor filth. The passage was barely wide enough for shoulders. Stone scraped his back. Ahead, Darin crawled too loudly, breath hitching near panic.
Behind them, the wedged door cracked.
Husa'an crawled last, dragging the crate rope behind him. Blood from his forearm darkened the water in thin ribbons.
The drain sloped downward.
A beat.
Despite everything, Husa'an gave one breathless laugh.
The door behind them gave way with a distant crack.
Kaelen pushed forward faster.
Rowan crouched behind a broken wall in a field that smelled of wet nettles and sheep.
For a while, all he could do was shake.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. His body simply refused to keep pretending nothing had happened. His fingers trembled. His stomach clenched. The bread he had eaten sat inside him like a stone with teeth.
He pressed his fist against his mouth until the feeling passed.
Edric had looked at him.
Spoken to him.
Paid him.
The copper lay in Rowan's palm now, dark and ordinary. It had warmth from his skin. That disgusted him most.
He wanted to throw it as far as he could.
He almost did.
Then he stopped himself.
Noise mattered.
So Rowan closed his fist around the copper instead.
He would throw it later.
Or spend it on something useful and hate that more.
He leaned his head back against the damp stones and forced himself to breathe through his nose.
South passage. Old drainage road. River road.
The words came too fast. Too thin.
He changed them.
Courier gate. Brenwick. Say little. Leave.
Better.
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, checked the road from behind the wall, and waited until a hay cart passed. Then he joined the road behind it, letting its slow creak hide the sound of his steps.
He did not feel brave.
Good.
Brave would have got him killed.
The drain opened above the quay through a grate half-blocked by seaweed.
Darin reached it first and began pushing at it with the panic of a man who believed panic counted as strength.
Husa'an shoved past him as best he could, braced one shoulder beneath the grate, and pushed.
Nothing.
Above, footsteps crossed the quay. Voices. Dock workers, not guards, perhaps. Or guards pretending to be dock workers. Kaelen could not see enough to know.
Husa'an pushed again. His wounded arm slipped.
Kaelen moved beside him, placed both hands against the iron, and felt the cut in his forearm reopen.
They pushed.
The grate shifted with a groan.
A shout came from behind, echoing through the drain.
Darin whimpered.
They pushed again. The grate came loose enough to lift.
Darin scrambled out first, rolling onto wet stone behind a stack of fish barrels. Husa'an followed with less grace and more cursing. Kaelen came last, dragging the grate partly back into place behind them.
They emerged into a strip of quay between the customs house wall and a row of storage barrels. Fog still clung low over the harbor. Men shouted somewhere beyond the stacked cargo. A gull screamed as if offended by everything below it.
Darin tried to stand.
Husa'an shoved him back down.
They moved low between barrels and crates until the quay opened toward a narrow lane. Two guards burst from the customs side door behind them, one pointing toward the drain.
Kaelen drew his sword an inch.
Husa'an caught his wrist.
The guards had not seen them yet. Not clearly.
Across the lane, a fishmonger argued loudly with a woman over the price of eels. A cart blocked half the way. Beyond it, a blue cloth hung from a second-story window.
Safe route.
Maybe.
Kaelen shoved Darin forward.
Darin, to his credit or shame, understood immediately.
He lurched into the lane with the miserable grace of a man thrown out of a tavern before noon. Husa'an followed as the angry friend dragging him home. Kaelen came behind with his hood low, one hand pressed to his bleeding forearm beneath the cloak.
The customs guards reached the lane.
One looked their way.
Darin belched loudly enough to turn three heads.
Husa'an slapped the back of his head.
The fishmonger laughed.
The guards looked away.
Kaelen did not relax until they reached the door beneath the blue cloth and vanished inside.
The road to Rivergate became busier after noon.
Rowan felt the town before he saw it. More wheels. More voices. More impatience. The smell of river mud mixed with horse sweat and smoke from cheap coal. Somewhere ahead, a bell rang every few minutes, not solemnly, but with the bored regularity of tolls being counted.
Then the road crested.
Rivergate spread below him along the bend of the river, smaller than Greyharbor but tighter, clenched around the bridge that gave it meaning. Barges crowded the muddy banks. Warehouses leaned over the water. A stone garrison sat above the north road like a fist set on a table.
The bridge was busy with carts, soldiers, drovers, two priests, and a flock of geese that had more courage than anyone around them.
Rowan joined the line.
No one looked at him long.
That was good.
A woman selling turnips complained that the price of salt had doubled. A man behind her said loudly that prices had not risen, because the Crown notice said so. The woman told him to eat the notice with his supper then.
Everyone laughed too softly.
Rowan kept his head down.
At the far side of the bridge stood a public pump. He stopped there and drank from cupped hands. The water tasted of iron and old pipes, but it was cold.
He considered washing his face.
Then he looked at the clean clerks passing near the garrison road, their collars stiff, their boots polished, their eyes trained to notice difference.
He wiped only his mouth.
Mud could stay.
A courier gate sat east of the main garrison entrance, smaller and less proud. Its arch was low enough that tall men had to notice it. A guard leaned beside it with the exhausted posture of someone paid to distrust boredom and losing the battle.
He saw Rowan approach and sighed before speaking.
Rowan held up the tied order, seal outward, without offering it fully.
The guard looked at him.
Second time.
Sharper place.
Rowan let his shoulders sag.
The guard snorted despite himself.
He reached for the order.
Rowan let him take the edge, not the seal.
The guard's fingers paused.
Rowan said, flatly:
The guard looked at the seal. Then at Rowan. Then back at the seal.
He clearly imagined explaining broken wax to someone who enjoyed titles.
He let go.
The guard opened the gate.
Rowan stepped inside.
The safe room beneath the blue cloth smelled of onions, lamp oil, and wet wool.
Darin sat on the floor with his back to a barrel, hands shaking around a cup of water. Husa'an stood over him like judgment given boots. Kaelen bound his own forearm with a strip torn from a flour sack.
No one had spoken for several minutes.
That was rare for Darin.
At last, he could bear it no longer.
Husa'an laughed once without humor.
Darin turned toward Kaelen, desperate.
Husa'an stepped forward.
Kaelen lifted a hand.
Not yet.
Darin saw the gesture and understood enough to keep talking softer.
Husa'an's face darkened.
That was the poison. Not Darin's fear. Not even what he had almost said. The poison was the question left behind.
Who had pointed?
Who had known?
Who had sold what, and for how much?
Kaelen finished binding his arm and flexed his fingers. Pain answered. Manageable.
Husa'an looked at him.
Darin nodded quickly.
Kaelen looked toward the shuttered window. Outside, Greyharbor carried on, unaware or pretending to be.
Husa'an stared at him.
Darin lowered his eyes.
Kaelen moved toward the door.
He stopped.
Husa'an lowered his voice.
Kaelen's hand rested on the latch.
He stepped out into the narrow lane.
His mind went briefly, unwillingly, to Rowan.
By now the boy would be near Rivergate.
If all went well, he would be tired, muddy, overlooked.
If all went poorly, he would be alone.
The inside of Rivergate's garrison smelled of smoke, damp wool, and old ink.
Rowan followed the left wall as instructed. Not too quickly. Not too slowly. The order was back in his satchel now, flat against the panel. His shoulder knew exactly where. His face pretended not to.
Men moved through the courtyard with the bored urgency of military places. A pair of soldiers carried spear bundles. A clerk hurried past with a stack of tablets hugged to his chest. Somewhere a sergeant shouted about missing boot nails as if the war might be lost through footwear alone.
Rowan noticed exits.
The courier gate behind him.
A stable arch to the right.
A narrow stair near the kitchen smoke.
A drainage channel with an iron cover too heavy to lift quickly.
He hated that he noticed these things.
He was glad that he did.
The clerk's desk sat beneath a covered walkway. The man behind it had ink on his cuff, a long nose, and the expression of someone who had been interrupted by existence itself.
Rowan almost answered.
The real answer reached his tongue.
He bit it.
The clerk did not care.
Rowan drew the sealed order and set it on the desk, seal up.
The clerk's irritation shifted into caution. Not fear. Worse, procedure.
He examined the seal without touching it at first. Then lifted the order by its edges and checked the cord.
Rowan let his eyes wander toward the courtyard, bored, though every nerve in him had leaned across the desk.
The clerk sniffed.
He stood, carried the order through a door behind him, and vanished.
Rowan's hands were empty.
That felt wrong in a new way.
He sat only when the guard nearby jerked his chin toward the bench.
The bench was hard. Good. Comfort might have made him shake.
From behind the office door came muffled voices. One clerk. Another man, louder. Not shouting, exactly. Performing authority for the walls.
Brenwick, probably.
Rowan stared at a crack in the floorboards and tried to look like a boy annoyed at waiting.
A guard across the walkway yawned.
Another did not.
That one watched everyone.
Rowan looked away from him first, because only guilty people tried to win staring contests with guards.
Minutes dragged.
The door opened.
The ink-cuffed clerk stepped out.
Rowan stood.
For half a breath, he felt the road behind him, the mud, the messenger's fear, Edric's coin, the broken wall where he had almost come apart.
Then he let his shoulders sag.
He wiped his nose with his sleeve.
He stepped through the door like a boy who wished important men would stop making their errands everyone else's problem.
No one important entered the commander's room.
