I got out of the court with the scale in my fist and my heart still knocking.
Behind me, Lysa Mern's voice came down the corridor like a bill pushed under a door.
Lysa: Sorrel. A word.
She caught me by the stairwell, where the tax office keeps its cold and its clerks.
Up close her coat smelled of ink and money.
Lysa: Your father's maps. The office will take them off your hands.
Lysa: Call it charity. The court is fond of charity.
She said charity the way other people say vermin.
I did the sums behind my teeth. The maps were the last thing in that house that still had his hand on it.
Sorrel: No.
Lysa: No? A beggar with a taste for fine things.
Sorrel: The maps are not for sale, and neither am I. You already wrote my name in your book. Be content.
Her eyes went to my fist. I closed it tighter until the edge bit my palm.
Lysa: Then keep your dragon's leavings. They will not pay a single sum.
A clerk behind her laughed. Two men on the stairs stopped to watch a Mern put me in my place.
So I gave them the show they wanted. I looked her in the eye and did not step back.
Sorrel: Fenn's bond stays with Fenn.
Lysa: For now.
That was the best threat she had, and she used it the way a cook uses salt.
I walked out into the bridge market with my chin up. Under my coat my hand was shaking, so I gave it work and held the rail.
At the ferry steps I hid the scale in the lining of my coat, where the seam had come loose years ago.
It lay against my ribs like a coin dropped there by someone else's hand.
Then it grew warm.
Not the warmth of a stone left in the sun. The slow heat of a hand that has rested on your skin and does not move away.
Sorrel: Not here.
I took the long way home, past the rope walk and the tanners, and the warmth climbed with every step.
By the time I reached our door it was hot enough to feel through the leather.
Fenn was still out on the crew, so the house was mine and the fire was low.
I pulled the scale from my lining and set it on the table, and it steamed in the cold air.
It was black, and it held the light the way deep water does, and it was warm as a living thing.
I thought of amber eyes at the back of the court, and my skin went hot where he had looked. My wrist most of all.
The scale warmed further. Under it, the table grain began to darken.
Sorrel: All right. I am listening.
The lamp guttered. Not wind. The room simply got darker, the way a room does when something passes over the roof.
I went to the window with my heart in my throat.
A shadow went across the water and up over the bridge houses, wide as a sail, and it made no sound at all.
Then it turned and came back.
I stood with my hand on the cold glass and watched it circle, slow and patient, like a man walking around a locked door.
It was not looking for the scale. The scale was on my table. It had already found what it came for.
On the table the scale cooled all at once, like a breath let out.
Sorrel: You could knock.
The shadow circled once more and did not leave.