Chapter 23: The True Count

On the morning of the fourteenth Dace brought the cart back through the gate at first light with the bed empty and the mule steaming. He did not unhitch. Ilan stood at the kitchen door with a bowl of porridge balanced on his strapped forearm, and he read the cart before the carter spoke. No sacks. No oil cans knocking in the straw. "Baker's out," Dace said. "Coal factor's out. Chandler shut his door on me." Dace said the branch had pasted a warning on every shop door in Greywake: deal with a core under seizure and answer for your licence. It named the custodian of the Mercer a danger to the lower street. The meal bin held four days for thirty-three residents, with the three survey hands who had stayed and the runners eating beside them on Bram's account. The kitchen smelled of boiled grain and the warm mineral…