Guy positioned himself near Wendenal, but the man had no interest in him. Instead, Guy searched the crowd. He found Eric of Felley and gave him a stern stare. There was nothing they could do to make any of this better.

“I would think we’ve learned lately,” Morg tried to address the crowd, desperately looking for sympathetic faces in the familiar hall, “that not everyone who puts on the tabard is a member of the Guard.”

“You want to talk about recent history?” Wendenal bit into it before the crowd could react. “You mean to say we should treat every man in the Guard as an enemy? You’re right that wearing the blue doesn’t prove a man to be deserving of the title of Guardsman, as I can see by the man who stands in front of me!”

Morg swallowed. “That boy was a murderer.”

“And he became a Guardsman. You are living proof it’s easy enough to change from one to the other.”

“If I may, Sheriff,” Silas of York took a half step forward, “I knew the man in question, from the prisons in York. I was the one that recognized him.”

“And I thank York for its concern,” Wendenal said, but his full force was still aimed at Morg. “So what did you do with this information, Guardsman? Take it to your captain? Or to me? Perhaps a servant girl, or a rock, anything at all that may have been more discerning than yourself?”

Morg’s cow eyes opened wide, and he shrank a bit. “I didn’t think there would be enough time. In light of what happened to the Sheriff, I thought—”

“In light of what happened to the Sheriff,” Wendenal tasted every word and spat them out again, “you should know better than to take justice into your own hands. De Lacy’s assassins decided to take his life because they thought they were right. They weren’t. We’re supposed to be better than them.”

“I only meant to trim his ear is all, but he fought back—”

“You held a knife to his face and you think he’s at fault that it cut him?”

Morg breathed heavily, his body sagged. “Is he dead?”

Wendenal looked to his right, but the men there gave uncertain responses. “You opened his throat. I’ve never seen a man survive that.” He looked down now, just a moment of hesitation, then stood tall again to deliver the punishment. “What’s your name?”

“Morg.”

“Your full name.”

He shifted. “Kyle Morgan.”

“Kyle Morgan, you are to be imprisoned for assaulting a fellow Guardsman. If Hawkins dies, you may likely face the hangman as a traitor.”

That word was repeated many times by a shocked crowd, and ever more harshly by Morg himself, whose face went red. Guy closed his eyes, unable to see the man blubber.