Chapter 23 — The Black Wolf
Knox had gone to the kitchens for a knife.
Not a practice knife. He had spent the whole afternoon working the arithmetic, and the arithmetic said that a man had come up the linen stair at midday and gotten within nine steps of his brother, and that wooden swords do not stop wire and powder.
The kitchens at ten at night were warm and half-dark and nobody was watching the block. He was reaching for the smallest boning knife when he heard the voices in the scullery.
"—two of them, and neither one of them his."
"Keep your voice down."
"Why? Half the valley's saying it." A man's voice, thick with drink and grievance. Knox knew it a little; one of the Pierce house men, off duty, angry. "Five years she's gone. Five. Comes back with two whelps and a crown and we'r
