Chapter 8: Nine Days Is Long

The trapdoor opened onto a stair, and the stair went down into the dark.

Brigid came up the wall at a run, half dressed, with her sword in her hand.

She stopped when she saw the three of them.

Tamsin was fixing her scarf.

Wes was pulling his coat closed over a body that had gone back to his own.

Gravel was sitting beside the hole with his tail wagging.

"I see," Brigid said.

"We found something," Wes said.

"I can see that."

She did not ask about anything else.

She lit a torch and went down first.

The cellar at the bottom was wide and dry and cold.

It held rows of sacks stacked to the ceiling, each one sealed with grey wax.

Brigid slit one open with her dagger, and barley poured out onto the stones.

"The old lord told us the cellars were empty," she said slowly. "He told us that for two winters."

"He was selling it," Tamsin said.

"He was hoarding it. And he died with the key on him." Brigid's jaw worked. "My soldiers have been eating boiled bark."

Wes counted the sacks.

There were a hundred and forty, and at a spoon a day for forty soldiers it would last the garrison all winter.

"It's enough," he said. "For the keep and for the villages, if we're careful."

"It is," Brigid said quietly.

"Then we do it right."

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