Sennet nodded to several of the men, who slipped away toward the sheepfold, and to several women, who went the other direction, whether to garden or woods, Dorrin did not know. The others watched her as she waited.

Her magery nudged: she could enlarge the feast without even those sheep. She did not, knowing that all they had seen of magery meant death and torment for one of their own. As she looked around, she could not help comparing the village to others she’d seen, from Kieri’s domain to the Immerhoft Coast.

This was hers; she was responsible for this—these houses barely more than mounds of sticks, roofed in bundles of old grass, not even proper thatch. In this season she should have seen kitchen gardens bursting with flowers and vegetables, trees hung with ripening fruit. Instead, meager gardens whose plants looked stunted, much smaller than those at the big house. Only a few trees, and little fruit on them. Ragged, dirty children, ragged clothes—stream-washed, she guessed, to honor her, but—

“Where do you get your water?” she asked Sennet.

“There’s a well, but it’s … it doesn’t give good water now, not since—” He gulped and looked away. “We go to the stream—it’s a sunhand away. I know, my lord, I know we’re not as clean as they in the house—”

“Let me see your well,” Dorrin said.

He led her to the well; one side of the old stone coping was gone. A few withered flowers lay on what remained and the ground around it. Sennet paled. “I’m sorry, my lord, the children will believe in the merin and put flowers …”

Dorrin could smell the stink of blood magic from where she stood, ten paces away. She went closer. “Someone cursed it.”

“It was—” Sennet gulped. “It was the old Duke, my lord. Said the likes of us had no right to water like that, said we was lazy. Please don’t be angry, my lord …”

Anger filled her as water filled a bucket. “It is not you I am angry with,” Dorrin said. “And those I am angry with are dead.” As they deserved.

“We tried to get the stones out,” Sennet went on. He still sounded scared. “But twice when we sent someone down with a rope, more stones fell and killed—and we did not want more to die.”

“You did not ask me for help with this,” Dorrin said. “I will ask you—will you permit me?”

“What can you do?” Sennet said.

What could she? She had no idea, but that the magery was tugging, shoving, telling her something. “I am not sure,” she said. “But will you let me try?”

“You are the Duke,” Sennet said. “I could hardly stop you.”

“True, but you are the elder here. If I can get the stones out, can you rebuild the wall?”

“If the Duke permits—but my lord, there was also—the blood.”

Naturally, there would have been blood.

“Did he sacrifice something here?”

“A—a woman, my lord. A woman with child, near her time.”