Chapter 134

CASPIAN

Odette’s stool stands fourteen inches from the flags. I measured it the first week, because I wanted to know exactly how far down I had been put. It is a good height for reaching a dresser shelf, and a bad one for a man of my size to sit on from seven until the lamps, looking up into faces he has ruled for a thousand years and never once seen from below.

I have taken the surrender of three kings in my life. None of them gave me as much trouble as Mistress Harrow over a copper.

***

They came all that winter. The pack is old, and does not trust a new door until it has seen someone go through it and come out whole; so they came one at a time, then by twos, and by Midwinter there was a bench along the dresser where they waited.

A ward of nine called Dilly wanted to know why she could not learn her letters when the boys in the same room could. The schoolmaster said it had always been so. I asked him since when, and neither of us knew, and Dill