The words fell upon the southern courtyard with the dead, sickening finality of an iron drop-gate dropping into its stone groove. Across the flat stone slabs, the bustling routine of the castle seemed to freeze. Two wagon drivers holding bags of horse oats paused with their shovels in mid-air, a laundress carrying an armful of dried blankets stopped on the barracks steps. Sergeant Kroll stared down at the frozen stones, his mouth a hard, unhappy line. The wind gusted sharply, whistling through the empty iron hasp of the broken padlock, carrying a bitter flurry of frost across Kezra’s face.
Marshal Krail turned his black gelding and rode toward the inner bailey without looking back, his adjutants trailing behind him in a clatter of hooves and jingling bridle-chains. Captain Hest Vale stayed long enough to cast a sharp, triumphant sneer toward Kezra. His iron baton was tucked securely beneath his arm, before following his commander toward the headquarters tower. Ulvan Dret gave Kezra one last, painful look of sorrow before limping away in the wake of the soldiers. His leather gaiter scraped unevenly over the cobbles.
Kezra stood fully still beside the open hatch, her sounding rod clutched in her right hand. Fourteen sacks of hulled barley. The arithmetic of the penalty slammed into her mind with terrifying clarity. Fourteen sacks meant fourteen hundred pounds of dry, milled grain. The exact quantity that Adra Pike and the Alderfast council had budgeted to sustain one hundred and twenty-six men, women, and children…
