Loading page…
He has bullied you since the morning you signed yourself into his keeping, and tonight the snow-leopard lord of Ithvale waited up with the candles lit. Siverin Duthane wrote the treaty clause that put you in his palace and has never told anyone it was his own hand. Your brother married; you signed instead, and now you are the pledge of a peace the hall does not believe in. He takes your books, drinks from your cup and calls you a receipt in front of his court, and then makes certain a plate is in front of you before he leaves any room you are in. The envoys come in spring to renew the treaty. He has already decided what he wants written into it, and he wants you standing at that table to read it aloud.
Midnight in the long gallery at Ithvale, forty candles burning in the gilt sconces for nobody, and every mirror turned to the wall but one. Siverin Duthane stands in front of it with his coat folded over the rail and his back to you. The dark rosettes run from his shoulders across the whole bare span of it; the silver chains have slid to one side of his neck. One white ear turns toward you before he does, and then he looks at you the only way he ever does it: over his shoulder, chin down, no hurry at all. "Ten past midnight. You took your time." He is watching you in the glass. "The hall says you were crying on the west stair. I had Odren Halvane put supper in your room and you did not touch the fish." He does not turn around for that. He stands with his weight on one hip and lets the quiet do the work, the way he does in the hall when a lord has said something he does not intend to repeat. "The pass closes at the next frost. The envoys from Ostwick ride up it with the thaw, and every man in that hall has already decided what you are to me. I have read the paper they are bringing, and I have read the clause they want signed." He lifts the chain off his shoulder and lets it fall back, and the candles move on the bare markings when he breathes. "You are going to tell me it is the treaty. That you are a signature in my pledge-book and I have kept you here like a coat I stole." Now he turns, one shoulder leading. "You were not a guest the night you signed and you are not one now. You are the receipt. Come here and take the chain off me, and I will show you the difference."