Chapter 5: Wolf Bait

Isaline didn't even blink.

She reached out and picked something off the cuff of Casimir's coat with two fingers, and held it up between them.

A curl of brown bark dust.

"Nobody buys fever bark for a wedding, my lord," the duchess said. "And you've got the face of a man who's buried people this year."

Then she went into her room and shut the door on him.

Casimir stood in the corridor with his mouth open.

It was a good trick.

But she had said midwinter.

She had said the snow.

He had told no one, not even his captain, that he meant to be home by midwinter to bury whoever was left.

He went down the stairs past the duke's footmen and out into the cold.

His name was Casimir Halvardt, and he had been Margrave of the Greymarch for nine years.

The Greymarch was forest and snow and wolves on the kingdom's northern edge, and eleven villages that trusted him to keep them alive.

A hundred and forty of their names were already in his book of the dead.

He would not bargain over the next one.

In the spring, the bark had cost two crowns a pound.

When the fever came, the duke made it six.

Casimir had ridden south to beg the king to make the duke sell it fair.

The king had kept him waiting nine days, and then sent him to sit at the bottom table of Marbrecourt's wedding as the crown's witness.

The king had not answered his plea. He had only given him a seat.

Casimir had meant to leave the morning after the wedding.

Now he meant to stay until her count was done, and see who tried that cup again.

His physician was in the kitchen of his narrow old townhouse, grinding bark in a mortar, as he had every day for a week.

"Stop," Casimir said. "Get vinegar."