Chapter 16: King Robert's Hunting Accident

The hunting party had departed Whitehall Palace at six in the morning, which was, the palace steward later noted in his records with a precision that bordered on the accusatory, forty minutes before the Hand of the Crown was informed of its departure.

This detail would prove, in subsequent days, to be one of the more significant forty minutes in recent Verentshire history, though at the time it registered as merely another of the small administrative discourtesies to which Lord Eddard Starkton had grown, if not accustomed, then at least resigned. The steward who brought him the intelligence — a man named Crewell, with the permanently apologetic expression of someone who has spent thirty years delivering news that is not his fault — found the Hand already at his desk by half past seven, and tendered the information with the careful vagueness of a man who had been instructed what not to say and was managing the remaining architecture of the communication as best he could.

The King, Crewell conveyed, had wished for a private party. A small company. Only the most trusted companions.