Ronan Vale was not taken below at once.
Cassian kept him in the great hall long enough for the room to see him properly, and that mattered more than any chain or blow could have done. The man whose name had sat under the pruning list, the one-shot order, the reserve instructions, and the quarry note now stood under Grimridge's roof with mud on one knee, blood at the corner of his mouth, and no road left between him and the people he had been reducing into columns of use.
The second table stood in plain view. The route board remained crowded with the hard new order the house had built for itself under pressure. The cots still crossed the floor in their interlocked lines. The key chest sat under Nessa's hand. Oda watched from the hearth. Mara stood with one hand on the back of her chair and the old hook at her belt.
