Seize her.
Nah froze.
Her hands were black with blackthorn resin.
It was enough to drop a warhorse in minutes.
It could send 34 panicked animals into the crowd.
Someone had strung the wire here at the paddic gate while the citadel slept.
And now the finger was pointing at her.
Lord Kais was already marching down the steps.
She was seen at dawn.
Seize her now.
The crowd turned.
Every face had already decided.
Nah hadn’t done this, but no one was going to ask.
Behind her in the stable stood the alpha king’s warhorse, Eclipse, 700 kilos of black muscle watching her.
You saw who did it, she thought.
Of course I did, Eclipse answered.
The question is, will you live long enough to ask? Nah straightened slowly.
Her fingers were still dark with resin, which she understood looked exactly as bad as Kais intended.
11 weeks ago, she arrived at Snow Peak Citadel.
She carried a canvas bag, a case of dried herbs, and a letter.
She had read that letter until the creases turned white.
The Alpha King’s Warhorse was dying.
That was what the letter didn’t say, but what every word of it implied.
Eclipse has shown progressive deterioration in the left foreg.
Four Imperial veterinarians have assessed the condition as irreversible.
You are requested at the king’s command to present yourself for evaluation.
At the king’s command, not an invitation, a summons.
Nah had packed her bag and gone.
Eclipse met her at the stall entrance.
It felt like a retired admiral meeting a new recruit.
700 kilos of black warhorse.
His coat was glossy.
His dark eyes measured her with patience.
He was an animal who had decided long ago he would not be impressed.
“You’re smaller than I expected,” he said.
His voice landed in her mind like a stone dropped in still water.
Clear, low, faintly contemptuous.
The last one they sent wore perfume.
I bit him.
I don’t wear perfume, Nah said.
Good.
A long pause.
The straw in the eastern stall is damp.
I’ve mentioned this 19 times.
I am not a cart horse.
I’ll have it changed.
Eclipse watched her for a long moment.
His dark eyes didn’t blink.
You’re not afraid of me, he said.
It wasn’t a question.
Should I be? The last one was.
He smelled like fear and cheap soap.
I made him cry.
Nah looked at him.
700 kilos of warhorse.
Teeth like chisels.
Hooves that could crack a man’s ribs like dry twigs.
You’re in pain, she said.
Pain makes things honest.
I don’t fear honest things.
Eclipse went very still.
Then slowly he lowered his head.
Not much, just enough.
The bone feels like splinters, he said quietly.
For 3 years, every step.
I told Rowan it was nothing.
He has enough wars.
Nah stepped closer.
She didn’t reach out yet.
You’ve been lying to him.
I’ve been protecting him.
Same thing with a different name.
Eclipse ears flicked back, then forward.
annoyance, but not at her.
You talk like someone who has lost people.
Nah didn’t answer.
She put her palm against his shoulder.
Just rested it there.
Warmth.
Silence.
After a moment, Eclipse exhaled, a long, slow breath that seemed to come from somewhere deep.
The others don’t listen, he said.
The veterinarians, the grooms, they look at my teeth and my legs and write numbers on paper.
They don’t listen.
I’m listening.
I know, a pause.
That’s what scares me.
She pressed gently, felt the old tension in his muscle, the way he held himself unevenly to protect the left fore leg.
Years of habit, years of hiding.
You don’t have to protect him from this, she said.
You’re no good to him lame.
I’m no good to him dead either.
Then let me work.
Eclipse was quiet for a long time.
The stable was dark around them, lit only by a single lantern swinging in the draft.
Shadows moved across his black coat like water.
Rowan doesn’t trust easily, Eclipse said finally.
He won’t trust you.
I don’t need his trust.
I need his horse to stand.
A sound from Eclipse.
Not quite a snort.
Almost a laugh.
You might be interesting.
I’m not here to be interesting.
No.
Eclipse agreed.
You’re here to do what no one else could.
That’s worse.
He shifted his weight for a moment.
just a moment.
He let his left fore leg bear full weight.
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t lift it back up.
“Begin,” he said.
Nah placed both hands on his leg and closed her eyes.
She crouched beside his left forehead and pressed her fingertips along the bone.
The moment she touched him, she felt it, a roughness under the skin like riverstone, the tissue calcified and unyielding where it should have been supple.
The Imperial veterinarians weren’t wrong.
Working from the outside, this looked like the end of something.
But she wasn’t working from the outside.
You’re actually listening, Eclipse observed with mild surprise.
The perfume man poked me twice and wrote things in a ledger.
You’re listening.
You have to coax bone back, Nah murmured.
You can’t force it.
H.
The sound was non-committal, but not unkind.
She heard the footsteps before Eclipse’s warning arrived.
Clean, precise strikes against stone.
The footsteps of someone who had never needed to hurry because the world arranged itself around his schedule.
She pressed her thumb one final time along the tendon line, noted the extent of the damage, and stood.
Alpha King Rowan filled the entrance to the stall.
Full formal armor, black and silver, catching the morning light and throwing it back like a challenge.
Two guards flanked him.
His chief adviser, Lord Edmund, hovered at his left shoulder, clutching a leather ledger and wearing the expression of a man who hadn’t slept in several days.
Rowan looked at her the same way he seemed to look at everything, steady, assessing, measuring the value of what stood before him, without revealing anything himself.
He had dark hair, shoulder length, and gray eyes that didn’t move from her face.
“Oh,” Eclipse said in the tone of a theater critic settling into his seat.
the black and silver again.
He wore it last Tuesday.
Does he think I don’t notice? My left shoulder certainly noticed when he hauled himself up like a man fighting a piece of furniture.
Nah pressed her thumbnail into her palm.
Handler.
Nah.
Rowan’s voice was precise.
Not warm, not cold.
Report.
She met his gaze without stepping back.
The calcification in the left fore leg has dropped 15% since my preliminary assessment.
The right hind shows comparable improvement.
He’s bearing full weight on both legs.
She paused.
Your Imperial veterinarians told you this was irreversible.
They were working from the surface.
Rowan’s eyes moved to eclipse, then back to her.
And you aren’t.
The decay responds to warmth and directed pressure.
You have to remind the bone what it knew before it forgot.
She held his gaze.
I’ll have a full assessment in the treatment ledger by evening.
He’s impressed, Eclipse announced.
He will absolutely not say so.
He would sooner eat the damp straw, but observe the jaw.
That’s impressed.
A silence.
Continue the treatment, Rowan said.
I’ll observe the evening session.
He turned and left.
Lord Edmund cast Nah a brief exhausted glance of pure sympathy before disappearing after him.
She let out a slow breath.
“You’re welcome,” Eclipse said for the warning.
“Thank you, Eclipse.
My left shoulder still remembers Tuesday.
He came that evening.
” She hadn’t entirely believed he would.
King said many things.
Between morning and sundown, they usually had 17 other priorities.
But at the seventh bell, when the stable had gone quiet and she was working by candle light, she heard those footsteps again.
This time he came alone.
No guards at the entrance.
No Edmund with his ledger.
Just Rowan in his formal jacket without the armor, his sleeves rolled to the elbow in a way that seemed almost accidental, as if he’d done it without thinking.
He settled on the low stool at the edge of the stall and watched her work with the quiet, focused attention of someone who had come to learn something.
Nah’s hands moved through their familiar rhythm, the dried compress soaked in mineral water from the northern springs.
The slow circular pressure along the bone, her palms warm against Eclipse leg, coaxing the faint heat inward.
She had never been able to explain it in a way that satisfied anyone.
It wasn’t magic.
It was more like listening with her hands.
She searched for the place where the body had forgotten how to heal.
Then she whispered the memory back into it.
Eclipse stood perfectly still.
For Eclipse, that was the equivalent of a standing ovation.
“He’s watching your hands,” the horse noted.
Nah kept her eyes on her work.
“How did you learn this?” Rowan asked.
His voice was quieter than it had been this morning.
Less formal without being soft.
“My mother kept goats,” she said.
One of them broke a leg when I was eight.
The village healer said to put her down.
She pressed her thumb gently along the cannon bone.
I sat with her for three nights and did this.
She walked fine after 2 weeks.
A pause.
And the animals.
You understand them? Not quite a question.
She looked up.
His gray eyes were on her face, steady, intent, the way she imagined he read a map before a campaign, memorizing terrain.
Yes, she said.
What is he saying right now? Tell him.
Eclipse offered.
That his posture has improved marginally since he stopped wearing the ceremonial puldrons.
Marginally.
Don’t let it go to his head.
He says your posture has improved.
Nah said carefully.
Something shifted at the corner of Rowan’s mouth.
Not a smile, the controlled brief suggestion of one.
High praise.
He qualified it with marginally.
The almost smile lasted a full second longer this time.
“Of course he did.
I like her,” Eclipse announced in the tone of a man reluctantly admitting a restaurant was acceptable.
“She doesn’t embellish.
” Nah reached for the second compress.
Rowan’s hand arrived at the folded cloth at the same moment as hers.
His fingers were warm.
She felt the contact like a small current there and gone, and moved her hand back without comment.
He passed her the compress without comment either.
But he didn’t step back.
The royal stable hands had despised her from the first day.
Breeder, they said it like a slur.
The first week they slammed feed buckets against the stall doors.
Loud, deliberate.
The second week they went silent whenever she walked past.
She was used to this.
She had been used to this her entire life.
The third week, a grey mare named Frost came up lame during morning training.
The headgroom, a broad-shouldered man named Colt, who had served the royal stable for 15 years, declared it hoof rot.
He was already preparing the bleeder’s tools when Nah walked in and crouched beside Frost without asking anyone’s permission.
She placed both hands on the mayor’s right foreg.
She closed her eyes and listened.
A long moment, then she stood.
Not the hoof, she said.
ligament left hind one thumb above the hawk.
Old injury at least two months.
It was never set correctly.
Colt laughed.
Nah had already moved.
Her fingers found the exact point.
She pressed gently.
Frost let out a breath like a sound she had been holding for 2 months.
Her whole body releasing the held tension of an old unagnowledged pain.
Colt stopped laughing.
By afternoon, they were calling her master Nina.
Three weeks for them to see the truth.
Eclipse observed that evening.
For humans, that’s actually fast.
You’re extraordinarily generous, Nah said.
I know.
Don’t thank me.
The weeks developed a shape.
Mornings.
She worked alone with Eclipse.
She documented his progress in the treatment ledger, changed the compresses, assessed the slow patient improvement of tissue that had once been written off as dead.
Eclipse provided running commentary on the quality of the morning light, the inadequacy of the stable boy’s brush work, and occasional unsolicited analysis of the political situation.
“The Northern Lords are posturing again,” he told her one morning while she worked his right hind.
“I can always tell.
Rowan carries it in his left shoulder when he rides, like something he hasn’t put down yet.
” “You notice a great deal,” Nah said.
“I have carried him for 11 years.
A pause with the gravity of a man who has seen things.
I notice everything.
Evenings, Rowan came.
Not every evening.
Three times a week, sometimes four.
He would arrive at the seventh bell, roll up his sleeves, and sit on the low stool with an ancient text on equin meridian therapy sourced from the Imperial Archive.
He asked precise questions, and when she answered, he listened with complete attention.
the kind of attention that made her feel uncomfortably like the most important person in the room.
They talked about bone structure and mineral compounds and the old knowledge that the Imperial veterinarians had dismissed as folklore.
They talked about Eclipse’s history, his campaigns, the injuries he’d carried and healed.
Once late, when the candle had burned low and the stable had gone very quiet, Nenah said something about supply line vulnerability in the northern border situation that made Rowan go still and reach for his ledger.
He reached for it across her, his sleeve pulling back, and she noticed the scar before she could look away, a jagged white line running along his inner forearm.
Not a blade mark, something older.
The Northern Campaign, she asked quietly.
The day Eclipse took the fall for you,” Rowan instilled.
He looked at the scar with an expression she hadn’t seen on him before.
The measuring control gone, replaced with something older and quieter.
“He is more than a horse,” he said.
In that chaos, he was the only living thing that didn’t consider leaving me behind.
The stall settled into a different kind of silence.
She understood suddenly that when he spoke about Eclipse loyalty, he was describing something he had not found in men and had stopped expecting to.
Tell him, Eclipse said quietly, that the eastern flank assessment was correct.
The western approach is the vulnerability.
I’ve been saying this for 2 years.
Nah relayed it.
Rowan was quiet for a long moment.
He’s right, obviously, said Eclipse.
The evenings stretched, the candles burned down.
She learned that Rowan took his tea without anything in it and tapped his thumb against his knee when he was working through a problem.
She learned that he had read every text in the Imperial Archive on animal husbandry, not from duty, but because Eclipse had been dying, and he hadn’t known how to stop it, and that had been to him completely unacceptable.
She learned that he wasn’t cold.
He was contained.
The difference mattered.
You like him? Eclipse observed one morning when she was alone.
He’s my employer, Nenah said.
That is not what I said.
She didn’t answer.
She pressed her palms against Eclipse forle and focused on the warmth, on the slow, patient work of coaxing broken things back toward wholeness.
“He likes you, too,” Eclipse added in the tone of a man setting a document on a desk and walking away.
“For what it’s worth,” which coming from me is considerable.
Eclipse stood on all four legs for the first time in 3 months on a Tuesday morning in pale autumn gold.
He did it quietly.
No ceremony.
He simply shifted his weight, found his footing, and stood.
Nah sat back on her heels and looked at him.
“Well,” Eclipse said after a moment.
“Obviously.
” She laughed.
It came out unsteady.
She was still sitting on the stable floor, hands in her lap.
When Rowan arrived, he stopped at the entrance, took in the scene.
Eclipse standing.
Nah on the floor, laughing quietly to herself.
He’s standing, Rowan said.
Yes.
He crossed the stall and crouched in front of her, which put them at eye level, which she had not anticipated.
His expression was still controlled, but there was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“You did this,” he said.
“Eclipse did most of it.
He’s extremely motivated by his own dignity.
Accurate, Eclipse confirmed.
Rowan looked at her for a moment, then quietly.
Thank you, Nina.
Not handler, Nina.
Not a title, just her name in his voice in the morning light.
She felt it settle somewhere in her chest like a warm stone.
You’re welcome, she said.
The Grand Mister happened 3 weeks later.
Every pack in the five territories sent representatives.
The great courtyard of Snow Peak Citadel transformed into a ceremonial parade ground.
Banners snapping in the cold air.
Nobility filling the tiered viewing stands.
The royal string of 34 war horses arrayed in full ceremonial regalia.
Tradition and politics dressed up as pageantry.
Nenah’s role was the prester inspection.
Every horse checked, every piece of tack verified, every hoof assessed.
She had done it a dozen times in preparation.
She knew the route in her sleep.
She found the first wire at the southern paddic gate.
Thin, nearly invisible, strung at fetlock height across the entrance, coated in something dark and oily.
She recognized the moment her fingertip grazed it.
Blackthorn resin, contact poison, enough to lame a horse within minutes of exposure.
Enough.
If 34 horses panicked in a packed ceremonial ground, the air hit her before she fully processed the wire.
Something wrong in the smell of the stable.
Too sweet.
Underneath the straw and grain.
Eclipse warning arrived simultaneously.
Someone has released a sedative into the air.
They want the entire string sluggish.
I can feel it.
The others are already affected.
Nah moved before she finished thinking.
She grabbed the concentrated peppermint oil from her treatment case and swept through the stable in a controlled run, splashing it into the feed troughs, the water buckets, along the stall doors.
34 horses in 11 minutes, her hands steady even as her heart hammered.
Rowan arrived to find her covered in dust and oil, crouched over the wire at the southern gate with a face he would later describe to Lord Edmund as the expression of a woman who has already decided what needs to happen and is simply executing it.
She didn’t have time to tell him what she’d found.
The shouting began.
Lord Kais descended the viewing stand steps with the measured pace of a man who had rehearsed every moment of this.
He was the most powerful voice on the royal council.
He had been undermining Rowan’s military authority for 3 years.
Eclipse had told her this piece by piece over 11 weeks of quiet evenings.
This woman, Kais announced, his voice rolling across the courtyard, was observed placing materials at the paddic entrance before dawn.
She has sabotaged the royal muster.
She has attempted to destroy the alpha king’s war horses.
The crowd noise swelled.
Nah stood slowly.
She could feel Eclipse behind her.
He had been brought out for the muster, his coat gleaming, his recovery complete.
She felt his attention settle onto her shoulders like a steady hand.
I know what happened.
He said, “I saw it.
Stay still.
” Rowan was moving through the crowd toward her, his face unreadable, his eyes fixed, not running, walking with the deliberate pace of a man who does not show alarm.
But his eyes were on her and they were very focused.
Ka stepped closer.
“Do you deny it?” “I found the wire,” Nah said.
Her voice came out steady.
She was mildly surprised.
“I was examining it when you started shouting.
” A convenient story.
Ka’s turn to address the crowd.
She has been given unprecedented access to the royal stables.
She has cultivated a relationship with the alpha king’s own warhorse.
And now, on the most significant ceremonial occasion of the year, Eclipse moved.
He snapped the lead rope with a single violent jerk, broke away from the stable boy, and walked forward.
His iron hooves struck the stone like hammer blows.
17 hands of recovered warhorse, and he moved with the focused intent of an animal that had made a decision and was not interested in being redirected.
He planted himself between Nenah and the viewing stands.
Then he raised his head and let out a sound that was not quite a winnie, something older, something that had no name in the human vocabulary of sound.
Every horse in the courtyard answered.
the royal string.
All 34 lifted their heads in unison.
The sound they made together rolled across the stone like weather, and it silenced every human voice in the courtyard with the completeness of a hand pressed over a mouth.
Nah felt her skin rise.
Now, Eclipse said, “Tell them.
” She looked at Rowan.
He had stopped moving.
In his expression, she saw something she hadn’t expected.
not doubt, not the measuring calculation she had come to know.
Something raw.
He was waiting.
He was trusting her.
She turned to face the crowd.
“Eclipse is telling me,” she said, and her voice carried in the sudden silence.
“That the wire at the southern gate was placed at 2 in the morning.
He watched it happen from his stall.
The man who placed it came from the eastern servants corridor.
” She paused.
He was wearing Lord Kais’s household livery.
The silence changed.
He buried the remaining wire and the resin vial in the feed storage behind the south barn under the third hay bale from the left wall.
Eclipse snorted once.
Sharp, decisive, like a period at the end of a sentence.
Rowan turned to his captain of the guard.
One word.
Search it.
Kais’s face had gone the color of old ash.
This is absurd.
You’re taking the word of a of my head handler, Rowan said.
That particular quiet that Nah had learned meant the opposite of calm.
Who has given me no reason for doubt in 11 weeks of service? He looked at Kais.
Can you say the same? The guards returned in 4 minutes.
They carried a wrapped bundle of wire and a sealed vial of blackthorn resin.
The courtyard erupted.
Kais’s household man broke within the hour.
He gave names.
He gave dates.
He gave the full shape of a conspiracy two years in the building, using the muster as its moment, using Nenah as its convenient scapegoat.
The formal proceedings took the rest of the day.
Nenah stood through most of it, answering questions when asked, precise and steady.
Eclipse remained in the courtyard long past when he should have been stabled.
And because he stayed, the rest of the royal string stayed too, arranged in a loose semicircle that the guards had eventually given up trying to disperse.
It’s an old custom, Eclipse explained when she asked.
When a herd member is wrongly accused, the herd stands with them.
Most humans have forgotten it.
The horses haven’t.
She looked at the 34 horses standing quietly in the autumn light, and something tightened in her throat and stayed there.
When it was over, Kais taken into custody, his conspirators identified, the formal declarations made, the crowd dispersed in the buzzing, fractured way of people who had witnessed something they would be discussing for years.
The courtyard emptied slowly.
Nah stood in the cooling afternoon air.
She was tired in a way that went past her bones.
Eclipse came to stand beside her, his shoulder warm against her arm.
“You did well,” he said.
I want that noted.
Noted, she said quietly.
She heard the footsteps.
She knew them by now.
She would know them anywhere.
Rowan crossed the emptying courtyard toward her.
The remaining nobles and council members and pack representatives went still as he passed because he had removed his formal gloves and was walking with a directness that had nothing ceremonial about it.
He held the gloves in one hand, and his eyes were on her face.
He stopped in front of her.
Around them, every significant political figure in the five territories was watching.
She was fully aware of this.
She suspected he was too, and that he had decided it did not matter.
He looked at her for a moment, the same way he had looked at her the morning eclipse first stood, when she had been sitting on the stable floor, laughing to herself.
Then he took her hand.
Not a formal gesture, not only a political statement, his fingers wrapped around hers.
Warm, certain.
He held her hand like something he had already decided never to let go.
The position of royal master of horse has been vacant for 6 years, he said.
His voice was even, but it carried.
I’m ending that vacancy today.
A murmur moved through the watching crowd.
The authority of the position includes full oversight of the royal stables, the breeding program, the ceremonial string, and the training of all cavalry mounts.
A pause.
It also carries a seat on the royal council.
The murmur became something louder.
Lord Edmund materialized at Rowan’s side with his particular silent efficiency and produced a small object on a velvet cloth, a token.
Dark iron set with a white stone, the mark of the Snow Peak royal house.
Rowan took it.
He looked at her.
This is not a reward, he said quietly.
And she understood this part was for her alone.
This is recognition.
There’s a difference, she looked at the token.
She looked at his face, the controlled, measured expression she had spent 11 weeks learning to read that she knew now held more than it showed.
I know, she said.
He placed the token in her free hand and closed her fingers around it.
Well, Eclipse announced in the tone of a critic who has finally seen a performance worth attending.
It’s about time.
The formal banquet that evening was a different world from anything in Nah’s experience.
Candle light and careful seating arrangements and wine that cost more than her family’s annual income.
She sat at the high table next to Rowan.
Before taking her seat, she had checked in on Eclipse.
The grain is acceptable, he reported.
The bedding is correct.
The water temperature is slightly above optimal, but I will endure it.
I’m glad you’re comfortable.
I am not comfortable.
I am adequately accommodated.
There is a distinction.
A pause.
Go to your dinner.
You’ve earned it.
The banquet was long and formal.
Rowan was beside her, and he had a quiet habit of leaning slightly toward her when someone said something requiring a response, as if consulting, as if her opinion was something he wanted before he spoke.
It was a small thing.
She noticed it every time.
After the formal portion dissolved into something more like a gathering, Lord Edmund appeared at her elbow with a glass of amber liquid and the expression of a man delivering a verdict.
For what it’s worth, he said, I’ve spent two years trying to build a case against Kais.
He looked at his glass.
A horse beat me to it.
Eclipse is very observant, Nah said.
Apparently.
He glanced toward Rowan, who was across the room with two northern lords.
He’s been different these past months since Eclipse started recovering.
Edmund looked back at her.
Since you? He raised his glass slightly.
Welcome to the council, Master Nina.
He walked away before she could respond.
Later, when the hall noise became a dull roar, she found Rowan on the eastern battlement.
The same place she had stood the morning after Eclipse first bore weight.
The night was clear and cold, the stars very bright above the snow fields.
She stood beside him.
For a while, neither spoke.
The wind moved between them, carrying pine and cold stone.
“You knew,” she said finally before today about Kais.
I suspected, he said.
I didn’t have proof.
Eclipse had proof.
Eclipse had proof, he agreed.
A pause.
I should have asked him sooner.
She looked at his profile, the clean line of his jaw, the slight tension in his shoulders.
She had learned to read as thought rather than anger.
You’re not angry, she said.
That it was me, that it wasn’t your guards or your counsel.
He turned to look at her.
Why would I be angry? Some men would be.
Some men, he said, are idiots.
She laughed, quiet, genuine, and saw the corner of his mouth move in response.
I gave you the council seat because you earned it, he said.
Not because of today.
Because of 11 weeks of work no one else could do.
Because you were right about the eastern flank, and because you told me the truth about Eclipse’s condition when every expert before you told me what they thought I wanted to hear.
His gray eyes were steady on her face.
I don’t offer things I don’t mean.
I know, she said.
I’ve noticed.
She looked out at the dark forest.
Below the citadel glowed warm against the cold.
I don’t know how to do this, she said.
The council, the politics, all of She gestured at the citadel behind them.
I know, he said.
I’ll teach you what I can.
Edmund will handle the rest.
a pause.
Eclipse will have opinions.
Eclipse always has opinions.
Then you’ll be well advised.
She turned to look at him.
He was already looking at her.
And because she was tired of being careful, and the night was cold, and he had held her hand in front of the entire five territories without a moment of hesitation, she leaned up and kissed him.
He was still for exactly one second.
Then his hand came to her jaw, steady and certain, and he kissed her back with the same complete, unhurried attention he gave to everything that mattered to him.
“Finally,” said Eclipse from somewhere far below, in the tone of a man who has been waiting for a very long time.
3 days later, Nenah walked into the council chamber for the first time as royal master of horse.
The table was long, dark wood, 22 chairs, 21 of them already filled.
Rowan looked up from the far end.
He didn’t stand.
She had asked him not to, but his eyes followed her all the way to her seat.
Edmund leaned close.
Today’s topic is the northern supply lines.
Lord Harwick will oppose everything you say.
Not because you’re wrong, because you’re a woman.
Thought you should know.
Eclipse told me.
Nah said.
He said Harwick spilled his tea three times during last week’s session and blamed the servant each time.
She looked across the table at the heavy set lord who was clearing his throat and preparing to speak.
A man who can’t admit a small mistake isn’t worth fearing.
The corner of Edmund’s mouth lifted.
He said nothing.
Across the table, Harwick opened his mouth.
Begin, said Eclipse’s voice, warm and steady and proud.
Show them what a woman who listens to horses can see.
