Terms

“No,” said Captain Hild Varro.

She did not say it loudly. She said it with her hands flat on the council table and the burn scar on her neck gone white, and every captain at the table looked at her and then looked away, because they knew what she was going to say next and nobody wanted to be the one who made her say it.

“You’ve read the charter,” Casimir said. “The Warden may treat for the Gap.”

“I’ve read the charter. My grandfather read the charter. The Warden of his day treated for the Gap sixty-one years ago, and Oster signed, and the march stood down its wall, and eleven months later Oster came through the pass on a feast day and my grandfather died on the steps of the Lowcross chapel with a spear in his back.” Varro’s voice did not change at all. “I was raised…