The mill wakes before the castle does, which is a fact Miller Hew likes to say as if he invented dawn.

You are his apprentice. That means your day begins in the damp smell of grain and river-water, with flour already ghosting your sleeves. The great wheel slaps the lade. The millstone, which should hum like a fat bee, sings a thin wrong note. Hew’s mouth goes tight.

“Crack,” he says. “Not today, if the saints have ears. Tomorrow is Michaelmas market. If we don’t grind, Greyfen eats air.”

He puts two things in your arms.

First: a small sack of fine flour, tied and sealed with his mark, for the keep kitchen.

Second: a letter. The seal is a blob of wax like a little moon. “For Steward Aldith. Not for the gate-guards’ gossip. Tell her the stone is singing. Ask for the smith. My knee is a traitor.”

Outside, September is cold in the shade and kind in the sun. Two paths leave the mill.

The keep-road climbs the motte, past the strips of field: one brown, one green, one rough as a tired coat.

The river-path follows the tow, where Piers the bargeman should be tied with salt from downriver. Last night someone in town said outlaws. Hew said people who don’t want to pay a bridge-penny will call anyone an outlaw.

You can read the first line of the letter, because Father Tomas got stubborn about your letters last winter. The first line says: The mill will not last the market if we pretend.