Chapter 157

They held it in the garrison yard, because Rhys said a man who had sent people down a hole ought to be tried on top of it.

I had heard that yard for three and a half years and never seen it. It was smaller than it had sounded. Stables down one side, the back wall of the council hall down the other, the garrison gate at the end, and in the middle of the cobbles, under a skin of trodden snow, an iron grate the size of a tabletop, with the dark going down under it.

I walked out and stood on it. Nobody had told me to. My feet found the bars through my boots.

***

The pack stood round the walls in the snow, on the stable roofs, in the open gate. No benches. No table. The eldest stood by the pump with her staff, because she said she would not sit while the rest stood, and the cold made her face look carved. Brenna had the intercepted letters in their leather case on the cord round her neck, and Rhys stood with his back to the hall wall, and Rowan stood at my left sh