“You were going to eat your porridge naked. No thanks.” She returned to her own meal. “Anyway, your whole ‘vow of celery’ sounds stupid, if you ask me. If you don’t want to run, fine, but people forcing you to promise you won’t run? Acting like running’s a sin? Ain’t right.”

Brother Qown inhaled. Losing his temper wouldn’t help his cause. “I appreciate you noticing I didn’t ask you. Besides, it’s not about engaging in carnal relations. We live a simple life to fulfill our spiritual needs and escape the chains of our physical forms.”

Dorna stared. “Our count ‘escapes the chains of her physical form’ every night. I don’t think she’d agree it’s so wonderful.”

“That’s not what I mean—” He paused as Count Janel entered the kitchen. She looked grim.

“How did you sleep, Count?” Brother Qown asked.

“Like the dead.” She pointed to Dorna’s porridge. “Is there any more left?”

“Oh aye, colt.” Dorna fetched another dish and filled it from the cauldron.

Count Janel also added vegetables and pepper sauce to her portion.

Brother Qown thought the remaining cook still using the kitchen would faint when she saw the visiting count plunk herself down on a bench and eat. The cook didn’t dare tell the noblewoman to leave. She did, however, hover around the count like a wren fretting over a raven too near her nest.

When Count Janel noticed, she stood. “Walk with me,” she said to Dorna and Brother Qown. She took the porridge with her.

No one tried to stop the trio from leaving the kitchen or walking out onto the castle walls. Brother Qown suspected people would have objected—soldiers or the like—but Janel was a visiting count. She wasn’t Tamin’s direct liege, but the title still meant something. She could wander freely as long as she didn’t stray into private areas.

“Is anything wrong?” Brother Qown asked. The noblewoman wore a dour expression, extreme even by her own dour standards.

Count Janel leaned against a crenelated wall. “That depends on what my spymaster has discovered.” She looked at Dorna.

Mare Dorna ducked her head and put her hand to her face as though covering for a shy blush. “Ah, you’re a shameless flatterer, my dearest. I’m just a withered old gossip.”

Janel scoffed. “A withered old gossip who could convince a pebble to confess the name of the river that birthed it. Get on with it.”

Dorna straightened and checked for eavesdroppers. “It’s nothing good. News on the wind is Barsine Banner is filthy with witches. Winter came early, cold and hard. Water buffalo froze to death still chewing their cud; jaguars have turned to picking off people because the wild herds all hightailed it to warmer climes; the late spring will mean a later harvest, assuming there’s anything left. So witches must have done all that, right?”