Marlowe
The old man stood there a long moment, blade lowered but not yet sheathed, weighing something visibly heavy behind his weathered expression.
"I knew Silas," he said finally, quiet enough that the whole yard leaned in to catch it. "Rode beside him for years before Ridge Pass. Man had more honor in him than half this club combined, and I mean that as fact, not sentiment." His eyes moved to me, something complicated in them — respect, grief, uncertainty all tangled together at once. "Doesn't erase the fact that a law's a law. But it does make me want to hear more before I decide how hard to enforce it."
"She fought at the northern perimeter," Bear said, stepping forward again, his voice carrying easily across the still-quiet yard. "Pulled a rider out of the fire line with her bare
