Chapter 143

Rhys broke the seal in the kitchen, by the range, and read it once to himself. Then he held it out across the table to Caspian, and Caspian, without taking it, said, “Read it to her,” and Rhys read it to me.

It was in the eldest’s square hand, and it was short, as everything she wrote was short.

To the King, wherever this finds him. On the fourth day of this month, at noon, a herald came to the north gate of Vaelmoor under a white flag, wearing the Chancellor’s green. He read, before the gate and the watch and as many of the town as had come out to look, a declaration of war upon the Crown of Vaelmoor, in the name of Malachai of the Black Lake and of those lords of this council who withdrew in November. The terms of peace are one. He asks that the Crown deliver up the daughter of Liane. He did not say for what. He waits in the gate-house under the old law of the flag for the King’s answer, and will wait until the full moon. I have given him a fire and a guard and noth