The stairs down from the war room ran two hundred steps and Northern took them at a walk, because running would have told the men on the balcony above him that there was something worth running from.
There was. He simply did not intend to say so.
The guards in the corridor were still on one knee. One of them, a boy no older than Iren, had his palm flat on the stone and was breathing in short measured pulls like a man keeping down a meal. He tried to get up as Northern passed and could not manage it, and the shame on his face was worse than the fear had been.
Northern stopped and put a hand on his shoulder.
"It isn't you. Stay down until it passes."
Then he went out into the courtyard, where his eldest sister was waiting with her hands folded, and the pressure came down over him like a hand closing over a lamp.
For a moment he could not make his lungs finish.
