Deane hooked a boot behind Raff's ankle and shoved. Raff went down hard on the gravel. The sound of it—bone and stone—made Leonora cry out. She wrenched against her father's hand.
"Stop it," she said. "Father. Stop. He has done nothing. I went to him. Do you hear me? I went—"
"Be silent."
Raff lifted his head. Gravel had cut his palm where he had caught himself. He looked at Sir Ridley, not at Leonora, as if looking at her would make her more of a weapon in the scene.
"Sir," he said. His voice was rough and even. "Whatever you mean to do, do it to me. Leave her out of the yard."
"How thoughtful," Sir Ridley said. "A stable boy with manners. Deane—his arm. Hold him."
Deane seized Raff's left arm and twisted it up and back, not enough to break, enough to display helplessness. The shirtsleeve tore at the shoulder seam with a soft, decisive sound. Cloth gave. Skin showed. And there, dark against the pale inner forearm, small as a seal on a letter, sat the crown: a little arched circlet of ink, with two short strokes beneath it like crossed blades.
Sir Ridley saw it.
He had been in the middle of a sentence about filth and gratitude and the wages of trespass. The sentence died in his mouth. The colour left his face so suddenly that for an instant Leonora thought he might fall. His hand loosened on her arm. The court, the chaise, Hobb on the box, Deane's breathing, the rook in the elm—all of it seemed to lean away from the mark on Raff Harrow's skin as if the air itself had taken a step back.
"Where," Sir Ridley said, and the word was not a magistrate's word. It was older. "Where did you get that."
Raff did not look down at his own arm. He kept his eyes on Sir Ridley's.
"From my father," he said. "Mathias Harrow. Private, then sergeant. He said you would know it if you still had eyes."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of a winter road Leonora had never walked and a debt she had never been told she lived inside.
Sir Ridley's throat worked. He made a small gesture, almost helpless.
"Let him up," he said.
Deane stared. "Sir?"
"Let him up. Get your hands off him. All of you—out of this court. Now."
They went. Even Burl went, confused and glad. Hobb looked once at Sir Ridley's face and found a reason to inspect a buckle. In a dozen heartbeats the carriage court held only three people: a father, a daughter, and a man on his knees who had not yet been told he might stand.