Chapter 13

The next twelve days went faster than any twelve days of my life.

On the first morning, the King’s clerks arrived from the city: three thin grey Lycans with ink on their cuffs and the patient, hunted look of people who had spent their whole lives reading other people’s mistakes. They took over Gareth’s study and laid every roll in Ashgrove out on the floor in rows. By noon, they had found two more pups never registered with the Crown, a warrior paid twice, and a tithe to the Crown that had been short by a fifth for eleven years running.

By the afternoon of the second day, the oldest of them, a man called Quill with spectacles on a ribbon, had come down to the cellar with his hat in his hands and asked whether the copyist would be so kind as to show him where Gareth kept the books he didn’t show guests.

I showed him. I showed him everything. I sat at his elbow in Gareth’s study for ten days with my sleeves rolled up and a pencil behind my ear, reading out Gareth’s h