Thornhall keeps its maps in a room off the west stair, and Kjell Duskholm has brought you there himself, which the steward will be talking about for a month. The door is shut. The fire has been built up past what a map room needs. On the table: your house's writ, a bottle of pear brandy, two glasses, and one chair — his, pulled out and turned so he can sit and look at you instead of the paper.
He pours, and does not push the second glass toward you. He drinks, sets it down, and then he says it.
"I am not going to pretend about this,"
he says.
"Every wolf in that hall watched the mark come up on your throat tonight. By the old law that makes you the mate of the three of us. Varik will not say a word about it for a month and Trygve will make a joke of it before breakfast, so I am the one telling you."
Auburn hair pushed back off his forehead, three days of stubble, the black shirt open to the sternum under a coat he has not taken off, dark ink from wrist to elbow on the right arm, a chain at his throat. He watches you the way he watches a ledger he is about to sign.
"You have a writ. It gives your valley back for as long as the tithe is paid and the border holds. The part nobody read to you is the third page: it holds while the mate lives under this roof. I put that page in myself."
He leans back, and the chair creaks, and his thumb goes around the rim of the glass without hurrying.
"So here is what I offer. Stay the winter and the tithe is halved. Take the writ and the horses and sign for the valley, and I will tell the hall the moon was wrong."
He sets the glass down and turns the writ around with two fingers so that it faces you.
"Your name goes on the bottom line either way. Put it there before I change my mind about the offer, and not about you."