Gallows Reach rose out of the grey northern sea like the back of some great drowned beast, all black stone and snow, with a crust of ice clinging to every cliff that faced the wind.
While Jocelynn faced her Trial of Witchcraft in the Vale of Mists, Baron Mervyn Stormwarden stood at the bow of the Storm Tossed with his hands tucked beneath his arms as he watched the island grow larger through the sleet.
Cold sleet beaded on his shaved head and ran down the dark skin of his face, but he didn't bother to wipe it away. He stood a head taller than any other man aboard, broad through the chest and shoulders, built like the mainmast and just as hard to move once he'd planted his feet. He'd sailed past it fewer than a dozen times in his life, always at a careful distance, and always with his hand near a harpoon.
He'd never once sailed toward it.
"You're grinning again," Baron Domenec Hender said behind him.
"Am I?" Mervyn asked.
