Tomas stood in the center of the vast underground storehouse, his lantern light glinting off the black hoop-iron bands of the two hundred crates.
Beside him, Kael walked down the central row, his heavy fleece mitten touching the rough spruce wood of each box as if he were touching the faces of long-lost children. His weathered face was gray with an emotion that had no voice. His jaw worked silently beneath his frosted beard.
“They were here,” Kael whispered, his voice cracking in the dry cold. “All of it. Every bag of flour. Every side of salt pork. Two hundred crates of food sitting in a stone vault, while my cousin Jarek and forty-two boys were boiling harness leather twenty feet away in the Great Hall.”
Nessa walked to a small pine writing desk set near the entrance of the vault. The desk had belonged to the storehouse keeper—a simple drop-front cabinet of mountain ash with pigeonholes for vouchers and inkpots.
Lying on the desk was a leather-bound folio, its calfskin cover warped by ancient damp before freezing solid into a curved, unbending board.
“Tomas,” Nessa called out, her voice sharp as an iron rule. “Look at this.”
Tomas walked to the desk. He set his lantern beside the folio and leaned over the wood.
