Chapter 5: Ash

The granary roof had fallen in by the time Thessaly reached it.

Men ran in two lines passing buckets from the frozen well, and the snow around the walls had turned to black slush.

Eskil was already in the thick of it with his mantle thrown off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

"Not the east door," he shouted. "Wet sacks on the east door, get the grain out of the east bay first."

Thessaly picked up a bucket.

Nobody told her not to, and she was grateful.

It took until the middle of the night to save the east bay.

When the last timber hissed out, a little more than a third of the winter grain was left, black on the outside and dry within.

The lords stood in the yard in their furs, silent.

"Two thirds gone," the steward said, hoarse. "It will not last until the thaw."

"It was set," Eskil said.

He was holding a lantern over a heap of scorched straw by the west wall, and the straw smelled of lamp oil.

"Somebody carried a jar of oil in here, past my watch, on the night the southern Duchess arrived."

The lords muttered.

The old lord of Ashfell said loudly, "The South follows her like a smell.

A fire the night she comes, and we are to be surprised."

Thessaly handed her bucket to a boy and walked to the lantern.

"Your Grace," she said to the old man, not unkindly. "May I ask you a few things?"

"Ask what you like."

"Not you. The watch."

She turned to the nine men who had stood the gate that night.

They were big, tired, smoke-smudged men, and they did not like being looked at by a duchess.