The gatehouse is a mouth that thinks. Arrow-slits are not decoration; they are thin windows for people who would rather see than be seen. The ditch below the wall is dryish this late in the year. The well inside, Meg said, never gets to be dry.

A guard with a boiled-leather jack looks at your sack, then at your wax seal, then at your floury eyebrows, which are an honest uniform.

“Miller’s brat,” he says, not unkind. “Steward’s letter. Kitchen hatch on the left if you like your bones, solar up the stair if you like your job. Deliver the flour when you step in—hatch first, or after you gawp, but the sack is not a tourist. Hungry keep, hungry rules.”

You step under the arch. The bailey is a working yard: carts, a coop, a man mending a strap, a woman counting onions into a net. No banners snapping for a tournament. A clerk hurries past with a tally board under his arm like a shield that does actual work.

The millstone’s wrong note still sits in your ear. Hew’s knee is a traitor. The letter wants Steward Aldith. The sack wants the hatch. The walls want you to understand they are a machine: stone, water, food, paper.