The Mate He Gave Away novel · Chapter 10 of 40

Chapter 10: Bread, Not Grain

The carts rolled into the village square with a noise.

Thirty riders in black.

Twelve empty carts.

And Osric on his white horse in the middle, in black velvet with gold at the collar, as if he'd ridden to a ball.

The square filled up behind him.

Farmers came out of their doors.

Widows with babies on their hips.

The soldiers from the keep came down the hill in a loose crowd and stopped at the edge.

I walked up from the falls with flour to my elbows and my braid half undone.

Corvin walked beside me.

Osric watched me come.

His eyes went over my plain wool dress, my floury arms, my bare head.

"Clemency," he said. "You look like a scullery maid."

"I've been working."

"So I hear. A mill." He said it like a dirty word. "My brother always did like playing with toys."

He turned his horse to face the square.

"By the king's Writ, every grain grown in this valley goes to the royal mill at Highcrown. My carts are here to take it."

Nobody moved.

"Captain," Osric said. "Load the carts."

His captain was the same man from the Greywater ford. He wouldn't look at me.

He sent men to the barns.

They came back empty-handed.

He sent them to the granary under the keep.

They came back empty-handed.

He sent them to the threshing floors, the lofts, the root cellars.

Empty. All of it. Swept clean.

Osric's face was very still.

"Where is it?"

"Gone," I said.

"Gone where?"

"Through the stones. Into the ovens. Into a hundred and forty bellies and sixty more up the hill." I nodded at the crowd. "Look around."

Osric looked.

Every person in that square was holding bread.

I hadn't told them to.

They'd just done it.

Loaves under arms.

Flatbreads in aprons.

A little girl in the front with a heel of rye in each fist.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Mate He Gave Away from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.