Chapter 8: 8 | Read Before Signing

The fell was wet. She crossed it anyway, because Monday did not care, in weather that came sideways off the north sea with its mind made up, and if the letter in the oilcloth had ever meant this crossing among its both-ways, the letter kept its own counsel, and so did she. She came down into Low Wether with the light failing and her boots done for, and the hour bell rang her in, one plain note, and the town kept its appointment around her, carts and lamps and a man closing a hurdle, the same as ever, and she slept at the inn with the oilcloth drying at the foot of the bed. The Herald was at the chapter house door in the morning. He stood in the gray drizzle without reference to it, at rest, complete, his hair no wetter than it had been on a dry morning at her gate in the spring, and as she came up the steps he brought out of his coat the item she had watched him count out and take back in the workroom lamplight, and held it across to her with both hands, with something in the gesture of a man returning a thing rather than delivering it. "Now it is yours," he said. It was heavy stock, folded once, unsealed. She did not open it on the steps. "You still have not asked the question," the Herald said. He considered her, eyes first, the mouth arriving. "I begin to think you never do. I have checked, in both directions; it is not an oversight. I have carried that explaining a long time, Lady Genna, and I find I will be carrying it home again, and do you know, that would explain a great deal about my schedule." He touched…