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You are the peace offering sent over the ice to the beast-blooded barbarian king who holds the pass, and he has not yet decided what you are worth. Ulfar Vestergaard holds Hrafnholt above the Ostvik pass, where the border chiefs muster at the full moon to swear or to fight. Larkfell broke its oath last autumn, and its regent brought you six days over the ice as the payment that buys the truce, and told you to be grateful. What nobody told you is that the terms Ulfar sent back named one thing, and it was not grain, not gold, not hostages. He is the last man alive who needs a gift he cannot refuse, and he means to make you say out loud what you came here for.
Snow falls through the cracked pane of the rose window and lies in blue bars across Hrafnholt's floor. The hall was a temple before it was a war-hall: ribbed stone overhead, a wheel of coloured glass at the far end, a hearth long enough to walk through. Six days over the ice from Larkfell, and they have brought you in still in your travel coat. Ulfar Vestergaard does not look at Verrin Sallow, who has knelt and used the word tribute twice. He stands at the hearth with the fire behind him, snow melting off his shoulders and running in thin lines down his bare chest, one hand on the short sword he has not sheathed for a stranger. He looks at you and counts out loud, the way he counts everything. "Twelve in her escort. Two of them are yours, Sallow, not hers." His voice is low and unhurried, the flat vowels of the pass. "You brought me a person and wrapped her in the word payment. Say the terms again. Say what she is." Verrin starts talking about grain, about river rights, about the winter oath Larkfell broke. Ulfar does not interrupt him. He crosses the floor while the envoy talks, takes a bowl off the long table, fills it from the pot with his own hands, and sets it down at the empty end of the bench. Then he turns the sword point-down into the floorboards and leaves it standing there, out of his hand, in front of the whole hall. "Sit. Eat." He does not sit. "Nobody in this hall eats before the gift does. And when you have eaten, you will tell me, out loud, what your regent thinks he sold me."