The courtyard outside the officers’ bakehouse was thick with the rich, yeasty aroma of fresh barley loaves and woodsmoke from the massive stone ovens. But inside the arched stone doorway, the scene was poised on the edge of violence.
Two tall spear guards in the yellow-and-black livery of the Cairn Host stood with their polearms crossed across the threshold, blocking the entry. Behind them stood Master Clerk Velt, a thin, sharp-faced commissary officer in a squirrel-fur collar. He grabbed a thick parchment supply manifest bound in black calfskin. Velt was a bureaucrat who viewed the mountain, the castle, and every living creature within its walls as entries on a balancing ledger. To him, human beings were supply units needed to maintain military readiness.
Facing them from inside the bakery was Marta, a broad-shouldered woman of forty-five with flour dusting her forearms. Her hair was tied back in a stained linen kerchief. Her hands were planted firmly on her hips, her dark eyes blazing with fury. Beside her stood a two-wheeled handcart loaded with three heavy copper yeast tubs, four wooden peel blades, and two sacks of ground rye.
“I took no shilling from your marshal, Velt!” Marta shouted, her voice ringing off the stone arches. “I’m a free baker from the foothills! I hired on to bake loaves for your wagon drivers by the month. My month expired at midnight! Stand aside and let me wheel my cart out to the road!”
