The Mate He Gave Away novel · Chapter 4 of 40

Chapter 4: The Falls

I didn't sleep much.

I sat up in Corvin's chair with the key in my fist and the note on the table.

I listened to the keep settle around me.

Somebody in Frostgate had walked up those stairs and into this room before me.

Somebody here was counting days for Highcrown.

At breakfast I put the note down in front of Corvin.

He read it once.

His jaw went tight under the scar, and he started to stand up.

"Don't," I said.

"Somebody was in your room."

"Somebody was in your room. They didn't know it was mine yet."

I took the note back and tucked it in my sleeve.

"If you turn the keep upside down, they go quiet. If you don't, they keep writing. And people who keep writing make mistakes."

He sat back down slowly.

"You've done this before."

"I lived at court for three years. Everybody there was writing to somebody."

The hall was filling up for breakfast. Flatbread again, and thin porridge.

I stood up on the bench.

It was a stupid thing to do in a skirt, but it got their attention.

"The valley grows rye," I said. "I rode past it. Good fields, both sides of the river."

A few of the soldiers looked up.

"Every autumn that rye goes south to the royal mill at Highcrown. Four days by cart. The king keeps half. The other half comes back as flour, late and light."

"That's the Writ," somebody said. "Every sack to a royal mill."

"I know the Writ. I watched it get stamped."

I pointed out the window, toward the falls.

"There's a mill right there. If we grind the rye here, it never goes south. We keep all of it."

The sergeant laughed out loud.

"That mill's ash, girl. The wheel's charcoal. The stones went into the pool when the floor burned through. The old millwright's dead."

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