It rained.
Not dramatically — the western corridor's autumn rain was the practical kind, grey and steady, the kind that had been raining since before anyone in the room was born and would keep raining long after. It made Drennick's ridge look like everything else in the territory looked: quiet, patient, entirely unremarkable from outside.
Twenty-three people descended into Marrow.
Twelve from Drennick, including Hale and Vass — Vass, who had been offered every possible accommodation and had accepted none of them, who descended the stone stairs with the walking stick and the specific determination of a woman who had waited forty years for this and was not going to watch it from above. Eight from Hollowmere and Ashwell, the territorial representatives who'd been at the gathering. Sera, Ta
