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order to function correctly a fermentation vat—which consisted of urine and other additives—had to be kept warm. The weather should have been warm enough still to keep the vats at the right temperature, but instead apprentices stoked smoldering embers beneath the raised stands on which they sat.
    A squat, muscular boy poured more of the cloudy yellow liquid out from a jar and it splashed everywhere. Isla jumped back just in time, laughing. All around her, smells and noises competed for dominance. Even in a manor as down at the heels Enzie Moor, daytime was work time. No one could afford to sit idle, because ten minutes of idleness might ultimately mean the difference between food to eat during the coming months and death from starvation. It was ever thus, even at the grandest manors; even the king in his warm and well-stocked hall knew that only a hair’s breadth separated squalor from plenty.
    Especially these days, there was no such thing as certainty—for anybody.
    Knuckling her back, Isla straightened and surveyed the marching line of small and mostly well-repaired outbuildings. Sod needed replacing on several roofs, and tiles were loose on the steps. Whitewash had flaked off here and there, revealing the tough, fibrous wattle and daub beneath: a lattice of tightly woven strips called
wattle
that was covered in a sticky, foul-smelling mixture of soil, clay, animal dung, straw and sometimes sand. As building materials went, stone was best; especially for valuable outbuildings like the salt cellar and smoking shed. Wattle and daub kept the worst of the weather out, but could be cut into easily with a serrated knife. More than one householder in Ewesdale had woken up in the morning to discover his prized candlesticks gone after thieves ignored the stout lock on his front door and cut through the wall surrounding it.
    But stone was expensive—too expensive for all but the wealthiest of lords and merchants. Isla thought about her father again. The earl had a certain low cunning beneath his vague exterior, and knew on which side his bread was buttered. Isla wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he’d contacted Mountbatten himself. Darkling Reach was a week or so to the North and problems came with controlling land that didn’t directly abut one’s own domain, but Enzie was a valuable possession nevertheless.
    Isla left the paddock, treading the well-worn if not terribly well-maintained path down to what had once been apple orchards. They’d lain fallow for decades, and hadn’t been in anything that could remotely be called good heart since long before the earl was born. But apples still grew, and children still picked them. Isla tripped, almost falling into a rut.
    She had mixed feelings for her father. On the one hand, she was realistic enough to understand his perspective. On the other, she was mad at him for being so weak. But, she reasoned, perhaps he was doing the best he could given the limited capabilities at his command.
    Last night, lying alone in bed, the notion that Tristan Mountbatten was some sort of demon had seemed all too possible and, indeed, probable. Those eyes, those hands, that preternatural stillness as he watched the room move around him. The next morning, it had seemed ridiculous. Rowena, for all her complaints about the man, certainly hadn’t noticed anything untoward. She’d admitted, even, that he was handsome enough after his own fashion. What was wrong with her, Isla wondered, that she’d had such an immediate reaction to him? That she found him so repellent when no one else did?
    She’d thought, when she’d first been introduced to him, that if he’d touched her she’d scream. But, strangely, he hadn’t. Instead of bending down to kiss her hand, as was the current fashion among their class, the duke had merely nodded as if he were greeting a servant, or retainer. At the time, she’d been too relieved to be offended.
    A breeze blew through the stunted, gnarled apple trees