Two days later Adrian rode out to see the western villages under pretext of reviewing winter stores.
He took only Sir Roderic, six guards, a clerk, and one mule cart for records. Not because the county could afford modest processions, but because too large a one became announcement instead of observation.
Greyfen's road west from the keep had once been paved with fitted stone in its central stretch. Now mud showed through in broad wounds where cart traffic and thaw had eaten the surface. Ditches overflowed. Two small bridges had been patched with timber not cut to matching lengths. Every piece of neglect spoke of the same thing: maintenance delayed until delay itself became policy.
The villages were no better.
At Low Harth the mill wheel turned slowly because one of the paddles had cracked and been bound with iron bands meant for barrel hoops. At Brier Hollow the communal barn roof sagged over the northern beam. In the market hamlet of Sedge the butcher's stall was empty though the tanner worked, which meant hides were leaving the county more reliably than meat fed it.
Everywhere people bowed.
Not with love. Not even with hope. They bowed with the quick, flattened posture of those who had learned that lords most often meant requests traveling upward and burdens returning down.
Adrian asked questions as though the answers mattered materially. That alone unsettled them.
How many plows worked the east field at Low Harth? Five once, three now.
Why did Brier Hollow send more wood to the town this winter than last? Because new cart dues made short-haul selling the only trade still worth the horseflesh.
Why had Sedge's spring pig count fallen by a quarter? Because two collection rounds took breeding stock under emergency levy before autumn fair prices could recover them.
Emergency levy.
He heard the phrase in every settlement. Frontier levy. Chapel upkeep levy. Road watch levy. Purity levy. Winter scarcity levy. Grain reserve levy.
Not all of them illegal in origin. Most illegal in scale.
At the county granary west of the town the keeper showed him books that matched nothing Hugo Pell had submitted. Grain had come in. Grain had gone out. Yet the bins stood thinner than the rolls justified. Adrian walked the catwalks above the storage bays, inhaled the dry dust of rye and barley, and counted with his eyes what the books lied about.
Then he climbed down and inspected the side doors.
One lock newer than the others.
One wagon ramp too deeply grooved for supposed winter inactivity.
One side shed with loose board flooring over recent tracks.
He crouched, set two fingertips against the timber, and felt the faint residue of repeated weight—sacks dragged, not carried; carts loaded in the night.
Sir Roderic watched from a pace back.
"You have found something?" he asked.
"Yes," Adrian said. "I have found that thieves are conservative craftsmen. They never imagine a lord will kneel in the mud to look beneath his own boards."
They pried up the loose planks before dusk.
Underneath lay a crawlspace large enough to pass sacks through into the drainage lane beyond the wall.
The granary keeper fell to his knees before anyone even accused him.
"Mercy, my lord. Mercy. I only followed orders."
"Whose?"
His eyes rolled toward the clerk, then the guards, then finally to Adrian's boots as though names might be spared if spoken low enough.
"The old allotment was never enough after the second collection increase. Master Pell's men said the extra grain was due elsewhere. Sometimes to the keep. Sometimes to Lord Berengar's cellars. Sometimes sold to town brokers for ready coin. I was told shortages would be corrected after spring remittance."
"By whom?"
"Steward's office," he whispered. "Always by steward's office."
The county's hunger had a corridor and a signature.
Adrian straightened. Beyond the granary wall the winter fields spread toward the west, tired but still alive. If Greyfen could be held intact through one season—just one—and if theft could be turned back into storage, there was room to breathe. Not safety. Breathing.
On the ride back to the keep he passed the church barn. Its doors were sealed with fresh wax. Two armed lay brothers stood outside it in better boots than half his guards possessed.
Interesting, he thought.
The Church of the Radiant Path preached endurance very comfortably behind full doors.