What Ilse Chooses

Justice Kellow held her hearing in the great hall at ten o’clock on the twentieth day, as she had said she would, and not an hour before.

The whole march came. Ilse had not expected that. She came down the tower stair with her mother’s ledger under one arm and her own under the other and found the hall full to the doors: captains, household, soldiers from the wall, and at the back, standing because the benches were taken, half of Lowcross. Tove on her two sticks. Col Hawick. Wenna, holding her mother’s hand and a slate. They had walked four miles through the snow in the dark to stand at the back of a room and listen to a Justice talk about a book.

Casimir was at the head of the table in a chair Maud had allowed on condition that he did not stand up from it. His…