The border stayed quiet a long time after Locke left. My wounds healed clean, and Ronan stopped treating me like I might break. Whenever he handled official business, he kept a seat for me at the far end of the long table. At first I just sat and read. Then I caught his men miscounting a shipment of winter grain and said so in passing. The next day, the whole stack of account books turned up in front of me.
I looked up. "So I'm your unpaid clerk now?"
Ronan set the silver seal that authorized granary transfers on the table. "My clerks can't tell at a glance which unit's padding its supply requests. So I'm asking you to help me. Will you?"
I looked at the seal a moment, then reached out and took it.
At my first council meeting, several knights addressed Ronan and ignored me out of habit
