Chapter 26: The Execution of Lord Edwyn Stark

The morning obliged the occasion with what could only be described as poor judgment.

It arrived clear and unhurried, with the particular quality of autumn light that falls at a slant and makes ordinary stone look like something worth painting. The courtyard — the eastern one, the formal one, the one with the iron rings in the paving where the ceremonial horses were once tied before someone replaced the ceremony with something more efficiently unpleasant — was pale gold and shadow in equal measure, which was, frankly, the sort of thing that ought to be reserved for happier mornings.

The castle had been awake since before the fourth bell. This was, Joanna understood, not unusual. Castles of this size ran on shift arrangements and had people awake at all hours for purposes she had spent the season learning not to ask about too directly. But there was a quality to the activity this morning that was different from the ordinary morning quality, and she had identified it before she was fully awake: it was the sound of people moving with purpose toward a specific time, which was a sound distinguishable, to anyone who had grown up in a working household, from the sound of people moving through the ordinary requirements of the day.