I went to the tax office at first light with my brother's name in my mouth.
Fenn walked beside me, and Cedric came behind, because Vareth would not let me come alone.
Fenn: You keep pulling at your cuff. It is only paper.
Sorrel: Paper is what put us here.
The hall was full for a debt reading, and Lysa Mern smiled slow when she saw me.
Lysa: The dragon's bought woman. I wondered when you would crawl back to be counted.
Lysa: Fenn Mern's bond is open, and this office will have it today.
Lysa: Tell the hall, does he put it in you, or does he only want your hand on him like a nursemaid?
Laughter rolled along the benches and came back for a second pass.
I reached for the ledger, and her guard bent my wrist back until the bone creaked.
He shoved me into the rail, and the wood split my lip against my teeth.
Fenn: Get your hands off her.
Lysa crossed the floor and slapped him across the mouth, flat and quick, and his lip opened and ran red.
Lysa: Boys who speak in this hall get their bonds read out loud.
Lysa: Dredge boat, ten years. They fish what is left of a boy out of the shallows in pieces.
Fenn's face had gone white, and I believed her.
Sorrel: Touch him again and I will break your hand myself.
Lysa: With what? Your dragon is not here, bought woman. Sign, or the boy is taken today, and you can hear him scream from the bridge.
The doors at the end of the hall opened, and the air changed, warm and dry, like a hearth being fed.
Vareth came up the aisle with Calder behind him, and the crowd made room without being asked.
Lysa: My lord. The office is honored. We were only settling a bond.
Vareth: You were putting your hands on what is mine.
He pulled me back against his chest, one arm locked around my waist.
Vareth: Say it again, clerk. Whose is she?
Lysa: She is a bought woman. Your coin, your property, my lord.
He turned my face up and kissed me in front of the whole hall, and I kissed him back because my body decided first.
My hands fisted in his coat, and every bench in that room went quiet.
His heart was going fast under the dark wool.
Vareth: She is under my fire. Say her name again and you will say it to me.
Vareth: Cedric. Read the order.
Cedric: By the lord's seal, the tax office of the Merns is closed. Its ledgers go to Glasshold. Its clerks are dismissed.
Lysa: You cannot. My family has held this office forty years.
Vareth: Then you have forty years of books for my steward to read.
He put his palm flat on the ledger, and the leather smoked and curled, and the Mern seal ran like wax.
Lysa stepped back with her hand at her throat. Nobody laughed at her now.
Cedric tore Fenn's bond in two and put the pieces in my brother's fist.
Fenn: It is done?
Sorrel: It is done.
I stepped out from under his arm, and the hall saw that too.
Sorrel: You did not have to put your mouth on me in front of them.
Vareth: No. I chose to.
Sorrel: You made me yours in front of a room. That is not protection. That is a signature.
Vareth: Ask me on the last night, and I will answer.
Sorrel: You always say that.
He looked at my wrist, where the guard's fingers had left four red marks, and his face went still and dangerous.
Vareth: Who held you?
Sorrel: You do not get to be angry for me. Not after that.
I walked out with my brother's torn bond in my hand and no idea which of us had won.