Vorath's head turned. The orange-red eyes moved from Lucen to Brynna to Morthen with the slow dignity of a creature that had heard men rename it for centuries and had not consented to any of the names.
When the dragon spoke, the voice was not a roar. It was a low vibration that found the bones behind Lucen's ears and used them as instruments.
"You open my doors," Vorath said, "and bring your hungers like offerings. Speak plainly. I have slept through prettier lies."
Brynna's fingers tightened on Lucen's. He felt her pulse against his knuckles, fast and furious.
"We came to ask your acknowledgment," Lucen said. He did not kneel. Kneeling would have looked like worship or surrender, and Vorath did not seem interested in either. "House Marrow and House Solenne bind by marriage. The old law says the Bound Witness seals what courts argue. We ask you to witness us. Freely."
"Freely," Vorath repeated, and something like dark humor smoked through the word. "While a flail hangs, and a sister sits in a foreign hall, and an uncle counts coin against my hide. You use that word as if it still had meat on it."
Morthen shifted his stance. The spiked ball turned a quarter rotation on its chain. "Dragon. House Grell's claim is written. You were pledged as surety when Marrow took Grell steel across the Blackwater and failed to return it in the same number of living men. Acknowledge the debt. Transfer. I will leave these two their clothes and their disappointment."
Brynna stepped forward despite Lucen's tug. Crimson velvet flared. "You will not speak of him as inventory. You will not speak of my sister as a key you turn when you want a door. If there is a debt, settle it in courts, in fields, in anything that does not require waking a person to use him as a stamp."
"Person," Morthen said, almost gently. "Careful, lady. Sentiment is expensive."
Vorath's wings shifted. A draught moved through the chamber and made the torches lean. "I am not your stamp," the dragon said to Morthen. "I am not their wedding jewel. I am Vorath. I was bound here by a compact older than your houses' pride, and the compact has terms you both pretend not to remember because remembering would cost you sleep."
Lucen's mouth had gone dry. "What terms?"
"That I wake for truth, not for transfer," Vorath said. "That those who open my doors share the burden of what they wake. That no single night may empty a debt, break a curse, or finish a trust. Men like tidy endings. The stone does not."
Morthen's flail dipped a fraction, then rose again. "Pretty theology. My employers prefer signatures."
"Then your employers may come stand where you stand," Vorath said, "and learn how signatures taste."
For a moment nobody moved. Lucen could hear Brynna breathing. He could hear the chain of the flail make its tiny hungry sounds. He could hear, absurdly, the soft tick of one of the gold clasps on his doublet against another when his chest rose.
Then Morthen moved.