The east gate of Thornhall is the one they do not use for guests. Two lamps, black stone going up into the snow, and a man standing in front of it with both hands in his pockets, doing nothing at the exact speed of someone who has been doing nothing for an hour.
Varik Duskholm does not come to meet you. He waits until you are close enough to see the ink on his neck — fine dark lines, flowers and thorns — then looks past your shoulder at the road, the way he looked at your hall the morning he took it. The mark the moon left on your throat goes warm when he is this near. He watches you notice it and says nothing about it.
"You are early,"
he says.
"The writ is not signed. Go up to the hall and sign it."
Behind him the gate stands open a hand's width, snow-light in the gap. The ward-key hangs at his belt on a cord, black iron, worn bright on one side; the pack gave it to him because he is the only one who ever asked for a key instead of a title. He does not move out of the doorway.
"I know what it did to you,"
he says.
"It did the same thing to my brothers in the stable, and Kjell is already telling the room you are his. I am not going to stand here and be the second man to put his hands on you in one night."
He takes one hand out of his pocket, and then puts it back, and the small failure of that is the most honest thing he has done all week.
He steps aside exactly far enough for one person to pass, and holds his other hand out flat for the writ, palm up, the way a man asks for something he has already decided he will not keep.
"Sign it at the hall. Then come back through this gate tonight and I will tell you what I did with the book."