The Standard on the Horizon

Ten winters after the thaw, the snow of Oakhaven was no longer a curse. It fell in November and left in April, as it does anywhere, and the children born after the night of the talisman didn't understand why the old people stood staring at the first larch buds as if at a miracle. In the great hall, the morning light came in through three hundred stained-glass windows patched with lead and left diamonds of color on the floor. The eastern rose, the one with the sun made of a hundred blue pieces, was still the one most people stopped to look at.

Irene de la Torre climbed to the western wall walk with her cloak fastened to the neck and a letter in her hand. Fadrique had been up there since before dawn with the spyglass and didn't turn when he heard her. He had his first grey hairs at the temples and the habit, which ten years hadn't broken, of falling silent when something truly worried him.

"The post from Valdelobos has arrived," said Irene. "The horse burst at the barbican. It brings a letter with the new viceroy's eagle."

"You needn't read it to me." Fadrique handed her the spyglass and pointed to the hill of the Yews, where the mist over the pine forest was beginning to tear. "Look."

Irene looked. Up the royal road, like a grey snake that never ended, a column was climbing: cuirassiers, Rhineland pikemen, artillery wagons drawn by oxen, the purple-and-gold banner of the new viceroy flying over it all. She counted company flags until she lost count.

"Twelve thousand," said Fadrique. "More or less."

"In ten years we've done nothing to justify twelve thousand men."

"We've stopped paying. The barons, the tithe, the moneylenders of Burgos." Fadrique took the letter from her hand and broke the seal without looking at it. "For some people, that justifies a great deal."

At midday the council chamber was fuller than it had been in a generation. Around the oak table sat not only the captains of the guard but the people who had held Oakhaven together for those ten years with their hands and with their pens.

Tomás de la Torre had spread the valley's charters across the table, each with its seal, and Beatriz, beside him, sorted the letters of support from the southern councils with the same face she wore when balancing an account. By the window, Íñigo de Vivar and Irati still had mud from the forest of the Mist on their boots; his left arm had been a little stiff for ten years and she still called him little lord when she wanted to annoy him. Bruno and Brianda had come up from the forge with black hands; behind them, not daring to sit, stood Ciro, who was no longer an apprentice but a journeyman with three apprentices of his own. Sira and Nuño had just arrived upriver by the towpath, the amber hanging from her neck over her shirt. Nerea and Lope had come down from the Gorge of Souls with old Jarek, who refused to stay at the sheepfold however much his knees hurt. And in a corner, a roll of maps under his arm, Rodrigo de Molina was writing something on his slate for Leonor to read aloud.

"Rodrigo asks how many there are," said Leonor.

"Twelve thousand," said Fadrique. "And they demand that we open the gates, accept a governor and give back the river customs. If not, siege."

No one spoke for a moment. Then Jarek spat on the floor, as he always did when something struck him as foolish, and Nerea elbowed him.

"We have flour for six months," said Sira. "What we brought upriver in the autumn."

"We have sixteen falconets, if you give me three weeks," said Bruno. "Ten, if you give me one."

"You have one," said Fadrique.

Beatriz had picked up the viceroy's letter while they talked. She read it slowly, with her finger, the way she read everything. When she reached the final clause, the one with the conditions, her finger stopped.

Tomás noticed before anyone. He knew that gesture: it was the one from the night in the seal chamber, when she recognized the knot of San Julián on a parchment.

"What is it?"

"The letter is signed by the viceroy," said Beatriz, without looking up. "But the customs clause was added in another hand. A hand that makes long esses, in the old Chancery manner, and closes every line with a downward stroke, like someone slamming a door."

Íñigo came up behind her and looked at the parchment. The color drained from his face.

"It can't be. He's in the tower of San Juan."

"He was." Beatriz set the letter on the table very slowly, as if it weighed a great deal. "Two winters ago they wrote to me that he had died of fever in the tower. I didn't go to the burial. I never saw the body."

She laid her finger on the last line.

"It's my father's handwriting."