By the time Lady Olyan’s message reached Vartis, the ash was already cold.

  Fran had only said she would review the charters. She hadn’t expected to leave the capital. But then came the report — brief, unembellished, folded twice — stating that hired swords had crossed the disputed pasture, that a barn had burned, that one man and a boy had died trying to defend hay bales from another man’s claim. A familiar quarrel. Too familiar. This time it had drawn blood.

  So now the ducal carriage rocked gently over a narrow ridge road, southward and silent. A brittle wind stirred dust through the cracked shutters. At her side sat Lady Olyan, composed and unsmiling, a roll of reports resting across her knees. The councilor had said little since they left the city, but Fran sensed the same unease she had glimpsed days earlier — not fear, precisely, but a kind of weary certainty. Olyan had seen this before. So had Fran.

  She watched the road through a narrow slit of glass. Farmland. Thin, underfed. A patchwork of browning grasses, too dry for autumn. In the distance, the chimneys of Delran’s Hollow slouched toward the hills like broken teeth. No smoke, no sound, no shepherd’s whistle. A bad sign.

  She hadn’t been to this place before, but she knew the land well enough from the old charters. Lord Tarven and Lord Hereth, neighboring fiefs who had been circling the same patch of pasture for the last three winters. Neither of them powerful. Neither of them wise. Pride had done what hunger could not — turned borderland squabbles into funerals.

  Fran shifted her gaze to the right. Lieutenant Verren rode just ahead, his armor plain but polished, his posture stiff. The guards were few — six in total — and yet the sight of the ducal banner at their lead had already silenced the fields. A young girl herding goats paused and stood perfectly still as they passed, her thin arm wrapped tightly around the neck of a limping kid.

  Lady Olyan broke the silence first. “No other riders in sight.”

  “They’ve either scattered,” Fran said, “or they were never here to stay.”

  The last bend in the road revealed the edge of the village. The first thing they saw was the ruin — a barn, or what had been one. Only the frame remained, charred to skeletal black, half-collapsed on itself. Crows perched along the beams, tearing at bundles of straw or whatever else had burned with it. The ground nearby was scorched, muddy in places, as though someone had tried — far too late — to douse the fire with buckets and prayer.

  Fran inhaled slowly. Smoke, still faint. The kind that settled in walls and coats and stayed there for years. The kind you never forgot, even if you tried.

  The carriage rolled forward into the village. If the people of Delran’s Hollow had once gathered for festivals or markets in the main square, they had no interest in gathering now. Faces peered through half-opened windows. A few children watched from behind shutters. One of them held a slingshot in his hand, slack and forgotten.

  No one spoke. No one bowed.

  When the carriage stopped, Fran rose without waiting for the door to be opened. Her boots touched the ground with a soft, final sound. The smell of scorched hay and soot clung to the stones. A woman’s hand froze halfway to her door latch. A man shifted his weight from foot to foot but didn’t approach. Even the chickens seemed to pick at the dirt more quietly. Somewhere behind the buildings, a dog barked once, then stopped.

  A man stepped forward. Thin. Grey-bearded. Wringing his cap between both hands. His shoulders were bent like the spine of a ledger left too long on a damp shelf.

  “Your Grace,” he said, voice low. “We weren’t expecting… that is, we didn’t think—”

  Fran studied him. He looked more afraid than defiant, but not ashamed.

  “You’re the reeve?”

  “Aye, m’lady. Rannet. Been so for near ten years, under Lord Hereth. Though…”

  Though there’s little left to hold, when blood runs through pasture grass and barns burn to ash.

  Fran tilted her head toward the blackened barn. “Two dead,” she said. “A man and a boy. What were their names?”

  The reeve blinked. “A farmhand — Garet, son of Braya — and a boy, name of Lemm. Tried to stop the fire. The swords beat them senseless. Garet died on the spot. The boy lasted until morning.”

  She absorbed the names. Filed them, silently, with all the others.

  Behind her, Lady Olyan stepped down from the carriage, her expression unreadable. Verren gave a curt nod, and the guards began to form a soft perimeter.

  Fran turned back toward the barn. One of the crows flew off, cawing loud enough to break the stillness.

  “You came too late, Your Grace,” the reeve said.

  Fran didn’t flinch. “Yes,” she replied, quiet and flat. “I did.”

  She stepped forward, toward the heart of the square, the burnt wood, and the eyes watching her from shuttered homes.

  The burnt barn was behind them now, but the scent lingered. Charred hay. Wet ash. The tang of old smoke soaked into the soil. It clung to Fran’s clothes, her hair, the folds of her cloak. As if the fire had reached for her too, and left its mark.

  The village was small — a cluster of stone houses, low and gray, crouched against the wind. A well at the center, its bucket half-lowered. Chickens picking at dry earth. A broken fence. And silence. Not reverent, not fearful. Just the kind of silence people wear when grief has turned to something else. Something harder.

  No one bowed. No one spoke. A woman closed her shutters as the duchess passed. A man leaned on a cane and stared, unmoving. Two children peered from behind a doorframe, wide-eyed and unsmiling.

  Fran walked toward the cluster of villagers who had begun to gather, wary and sparse, like crows in a field too quiet. Her boots touched the ground with a dull thud. A dozen paces ahead, Lady Olyan waited by the well, her cloak pulled close, lips tight. Behind them, Lieutenant Verren remained with the other guards — watchful but still. No show of arms. Not unless ordered.

  A woman stood apart. Thin, pale, clutching a child to her side. Her dress was plain but carefully mended. Her eyes were sunken from lack of sleep, and she held herself with the stiff dignity of someone who had wept until nothing was left.

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  Fran approached her with quiet steps.

  “I’m told your husband…” she began, voice low.

  The woman nodded, once. “He tried to move the hay inside. Thought they’d torch the rest.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The woman’s gaze didn’t flinch. “He didn’t die for the hay. He died because two fat lords can’t count fences.”

  Fran said nothing. The child by the woman’s side looked no older than five. In her other arm she carried another — smaller, too small to understand — bundled in a worn shawl.

  A boy, perhaps ten or eleven, stood a little apart. His leg was wrapped in cloth, blood spotted through. He leaned on a stick and watched Fran without blinking. When she met his eyes and gave the faintest nod, he didn’t return it. He only looked away.

  Fran crouched near him, slowly. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  No answer. Only the slight shifting of his weight, the effort it took not to wince. A thin line of perspiration beaded his forehead despite the cool air.

  “Did someone look at your leg?”

  Still silence. But she could see the way he favored it, the slight tremor in his grip on the stick. The bandage was clean but tight—too tight. A dark stain had begun to seep through near his ankle.

  “May I?” She gestured toward the bandage, her voice gentler than it had been with the lords or even the reeve. When he didn’t pull away, she examined it without touching. “Whoever wrapped this knew what they were doing, but it’s been too long. The swelling needs room, or the blood can’t do its work.”

  The boy’s eyes flicked to her face, then away. “Gran did it.”

  “She did well. The herbs smell right—comfrey and yarrow. But infection sets in fast when the binding’s too tight.” Fran straightened slowly, careful not to loom over him. “Is she here?”

  He nodded toward a bent figure near the well. An old woman in a patched shawl, grinding something in a wooden bowl.

  “She taught you to gather herbs too?” Fran asked.

  A small nod. Almost a smile.

  “Good. You’ll need to know. When your leg heals, you’ll be the one helping her reach the high places for moonwort and willow bark.” She paused. “What’s your name?”

  “Jorik,” he said quietly.

  “Well, Jorik. Let’s get your gran and see about loosening that bandage before it causes more trouble.”

  The old woman—Mavra, she said her name was—approached with wary steps but steady hands. She looked Fran up and down once, taking in the travel-stained dress, the dirt under her nails, the way she held herself like someone who knew wounds.

  “You’ve done this before,” Mavra said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” Fran replied.

  “Before you were a duchess.”

  “Yes.”

  Mavra nodded, as if this explained something important. “Then you know why I bound it tight. The bleeding wouldn’t stop.”

  “I know. But look—” Fran pointed to the boy’s foot, which had begun to purple slightly. “The blood needs to flow both ways. Too tight, and it pools. Too loose, and it spills.”

  Together, they unwrapped the bandage. The wound was deep but clean—a gash from what looked like a broken board, jagged but not festering. Yet.

  “Fresh cloth,” Fran said, and Lady Olyan was there with supplies before she finished speaking. “And if you have honey, that’s better than any salve.”

  As they worked, other villagers began to approach. A woman with burns on her hands from trying to save livestock. An old man whose cough brought up blood—not from the fire, but from lungs that had breathed too much smoke and ash. Three children with cuts from broken glass, their parents hovering just close enough to watch but too frightened to speak.

  One by one, they came forward, watching as their duchess knelt in the dirt and proved she knew which herbs stopped bleeding and which ones stopped pain.

  At the edge of the gathering, a woman whispered: “Thank you… for coming at all.”

  Fran met her eyes — a quiet nod, nothing more.

  Then she looked down at her own hands, at the old faint calluses across her fingers — from years of grinding herbs, tying bandages, holding wrists. Another life, but not gone.

  “Tell your wounded to wait by the well,” she said softly. “We’ll see them before dusk.”

  The work took longer than expected. More villagers emerged from shuttered houses as word spread—a baker’s apprentice with a gash across his palm, a pregnant woman whose ankle had twisted badly while fleeing the fire, an elderly man who hadn’t spoken since the flames died but whose shaking hands needed steadying while Fran cleaned a burn that had festered for days.

  Lady Olyan brought supplies from the carriage without being asked. Lieutenant Verren kept watch but didn’t hover. The villagers began to speak in whispers rather than silence.

  By the time the last bandage was tied, the sun had begun its descent behind the hills. The reeve approached, his cap twisted nearly shapeless in his hands. “Your Grace, we’ve prepared the house for your use. It’s not much, but...”

  “It will do,” Fran said, wiping her hands on a cloth that had once been white. “Thank you.”

  They walked the short distance in silence. The reeve’s house was a narrow structure of timber and stone, half-shadowed by a drooping willow—the largest building in the village, if not the sturdiest. The shutters rattled with every gust of wind, and the hearth refused to stay lit without constant coaxing. But there was a table, ink, and three intact chairs. It would serve.

  Fran stood before the map spread across the boards, sleeves rolled just above her wrists, the red ink from Vartis still fresh at the corner where she’d circled the disputed pastures. Lady Olyan stood at her side, coat dusted with ash and travel. Beyond the window, a thin plume of smoke still rose grey against the paling sky. Somewhere, a dog barked. Children’s voices echoed faintly from the well.

  Fran placed her hands flat on the table.

  “Two letters,” she said. “One to Lord Hereth. The other to Lord Tarven. Both are to present themselves tomorrow before dusk, here in Delran’s Hollow.”

  Lieutenant Verren stood by the door, his posture crisp despite the dust on his boots. His hand drifted instinctively toward his sword hilt. “Both in one place, Your Grace? Should we prepare for blood or reconciliation?”

  “Neither,” she replied. “But remind them that I now hold authority over both borders — and that if they send riders instead of coming themselves, I’ll hold it as a confession.”

  He bowed slightly. “Understood.”

  Her attention turned to a small ledger near the corner of the table, hastily bound in twine and stained with soot. “The mercenary contracts?”

  “Half burned,” Lady Olyan replied. “But this is what we could recover. Names, sums, and some indication that both parties hired men from the same company — the Gold Banner.”

  “Idiots.” Fran’s tone didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. “Same swords, different orders. No wonder they turned on each other.”

  She pulled the ledger closer. The handwriting was crude, little more than scratched lines and scrawled sums. Still, she read. She memorized. She counted how many men had been paid, and for how long, and whether the names matched those now pacing nervously outside the reeve’s barn.

  As she set the ledger aside, her hand drifted toward the ring on her left hand — the one Gale had given her. She turned it once, slowly, feeling its familiar warmth. Her fingers brushed the heavier band on her right, the ducal seal cold against her skin, before she let both hands fall to her side.

  “No more blood,” she murmured. “Not over grass.” She traced the border lines on the map with her finger. “If I can’t settle a dispute between two minor lords, how can I hold the duchy when the real challenges come?”

  Olyan tilted her head. “Do you want a formal judgment written tonight?”

  “No. Just those two letters. I’ll speak with them when they arrive.” She straightened. “And make sure their guards stay outside the village.”

  Olyan gave a small nod. “I’ll see to it personally.”

  “And the men who burned the barn?” Verren asked.

  “They’ll stay under watch. They lit the fire — they won’t leave without facing me. But not tonight. Not while the dead are still unburied.”

  For a moment, none of them spoke.

  Beyond the window, dusk was thickening. The hills had gone from gold to ash. In the darkened sky, a crow circled once before vanishing toward the ruins of the barn.

  Fran closed the ledger. “I want guards on the main road, and someone watching both pastures. If either lord tries to approach before the judgment, I want to know.”

  “Consider it done,” Verren said, already moving toward the door.

  Lady Olyan lingered a moment longer. “You handled them well, Your Grace.”

  Fran didn’t answer right away. Her eyes had wandered to the empty chair across the table. The wind shook the shutters again. It smelled faintly of cinders.

  “I don’t want them to fear me,” she said at last. “But I’ll accept it. If it means fewer widows.”

  She pulled the first sheet of parchment toward her and reached for the quill.

  Only names to remember, wounds to mend, and choices that weigh more than swords.