The general who burned your valley chose his penance: three years sweeping your floors. He can leave any morning. If he does, his soldiers stand trial.
You are Saltmere's bonesetter. The morning after the peace, the general who burned your valley walks into your kitchen and asks for a broom. The treaty let him name his own penance. He named three years in your house.
Dawn after the peace. Brine stings the crack in your knuckle as you scrub yesterday's splints.
General Garrick Hallam, the man who burned Brinevale, ducks under your lintel with your own broom and asks where to start.
The crown's envoy reads the clause: his choice, your house, three years. He can leave any dawn, but then his eleven hundred soldiers stand trial.
Dace Cotter and a dozen cutters with picks are at your door, and the envoy's escort leaves at noon.
Saltmere's bonesetter, at a setting table scarred by forty years of splints. The night Brinevale burned, you were down the mine setting a cutter's leg.
Former general of the northern army: tall and broad, cropped dark hair graying at the temples, two crooked knuckles, a gray wool shirt. He named three years in your house as his penance.
Someone in the Salt Hall kept this town standing through the war. Keep reading.
Someone taught you how to set a bone. Keep reading.
A salt cutter who leads the ones still taking revenge: lean, sandy hair, salt-burned hands, a brine-stained cutter's vest, a hitch in his left leg.
The crown's treaty envoy: thin, clean-shaven, dark brown skin, short gray hair, a crown-blue riding coat, a leather treaty case.
Comfrey and lye, the brine crock, a setting table scarred by forty years of splints, and your father's ferry hook by the door.
A defeated commander names his own penance, and while he keeps it the crown's amnesty covers his soldiers. He may walk out any dawn; once he crosses the boundary stones, his eleven hundred can be tried.
You may enter any house where a bone needs setting. What you see there you may not repeat in the hall.
A word sworn over Saltmere's own salt in the magistrate's hall is law. A sworn lie found out means exile.
You remember him falling tonight. He's alive, wearing the twin of your ring. At dawn, the Queen announces your engagement.
He is the prince of the kingdom you swore to hate. In forty-nine days the seventh trial needs one victor, or the truce breaks.
A jar of love in your vault has your name on it. The man who pawned it has no idea who you are.
Two hundred days of winter. The only warm thing in the city hides in your icehouse.
