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diff --git a/stories/the-greatest-conquest/notes.md b/stories/the-greatest-conquest/notes.md
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+# Editorial notes
+
+2026-10-19 — Codex promise keeper, independent request reading before outline or editorial framing: “That reversal is the engine, not merely a guest list.” Explicit requirements: estranged daughter, notorious dead orc chieftain, rundown inherited tavern inside human territory, thirty years of secret neutral-ground building, dangerous enemies who already regard her as boss. Inferred pleasure: “alarming people treating the unprepared heir with matter-of-fact deference while their incompatible interests make her authority consequential.” The room may be intimate while choices reach beyond it. Inferred emotional center: a complicated changing relationship with the dead father and the presumed subordinates; estrangement should not vanish after one kindly revelation. Inferred payoff: she chooses what being boss means in her own terms. The keeper sees earthy humor, menace, warmth, and grief as possibilities, not mandates. The original suggests a confident adult green-skinned, pointed-eared woman, long brown hair, cream blouse, dark laced corset, burgundy skirt, coin ornaments, and a worn candlelit timber tavern. Neither coziness nor harmless patrons is required by the image. Father’s motives, the meaning of boss, and precise antagonisms remain open.
+
+Coordinator: new non-canon story; the supplied original is preserved and inspected. No shared orc/tavern fact is implicated by the universe search. The starting audience target is General, without a restriction on narrative stakes. Claude subscription authentication confirmed (`claude.ai`, active Max); each first read will use an isolated session under the worktree’s `tmp/`.
+
+Outline first effects, before discussion — Codex keeper: “the paired use of authority—first coordinating calamities, then making those same followers protect the commander they want to kill” makes neutrality govern the climax. Main concern: “its concrete action is presently his existing neutral-ground rule successfully enforced by his successor”; the father’s concrete injury must bear pressure before Harka’s final choice, rather than claim she invented a morality he lacked. Her exposed position must serve timing, and patrons must remain people with competing wants rather than three weapons. Claude: “the siege ... could swallow the room”; keep the wider clientele present. “Veyr drags him inside by force, which strains neutrality. The story should face that strain openly.” Give Harka’s scout skill a specific causal role and say when Borzug named her. Claude inferred a novel kind of authority Borzug never practiced; coordinator questions that inference because historical neutrality already protected enemies. Brief early prejudice can sharpen the expected-hostility/unexpected-deference reversal, without treating every expectation as a mandatory incident.
+
+Outline discussion — Writer chose a concrete parental injury: Borzug promised Harka in political marriage after she refused, telling the envoys she would come round; she left to become a scout. Naming her successor last winter can recognize ability and repeat the coercion. Keeper accepted this early pressure on the final choice. Claude withdrew its unsupported contrast: “I withdraw the claim that this is ‘authority Borzug never practised.’” Both readers independently pressed for a real cost to neutrality; writer will have Harka release the captured commander, promise safe departure, and physically step aside before asking him to negotiate. Keeper: this “converts neutrality from a declaration into a costly command.” The withdrawal rests on restrained demonstrated force and public safe conduct, without a permanent-peace claim. Harka’s scouting locates a hidden reserve and siege pieces; her exposed signal coordinates the operation. Named patrons retain thwarted desires and lesser guests remain active. Coordinator accepts these repairs because they put agency and neutrality into consequential action without rewriting Borzug into either saint or foil. Revised outline preserves the same overall direction.
+
+Claude’s resumed outline response initially received the old outline because its input was assembled just before the writer saved the revision; it approved the concrete repairs but correctly noted their absence from that supplied version. After receiving the actual revised outline it answered: “it addresses every concern I raised. I found no material mismatch.” Its remaining execution cautions were shared with the writer: offer refusal before the royal bargain commits her, let Harka recognize rather than narratively explain the marriage-bargain echo, and make the final recollection differ from the original injury. Keeper likewise found the direction promising enough to draft. The writer, keeper, and Claude have answered one another’s actual concerns; coordinator authorized drafting with those distinctions intact.
+
+Cold draft first effects, before exchange — Codex reader: “The mare gives independence physical substance”; the release at the threshold makes Harka proprietor rather than simply commander. Its main reservation: dragon-countering engines promise resistance, but “I stopped worrying much about its outcome”; suspense is an inferred pleasure, not a missing requirement. It suggests scrutinizing Cadrel’s tightening control before adding military mechanics. Cadrel’s delayed brother disclosure gives “an effective aftertaste”; moving it earlier is a tradeoff, not an automatic repair. Claude: the earned mare is “the strongest image in the piece,” action is clear, and choosing stairs rather than the chair is the real ending. Its main concern differs: “The decision to stay comes twice”; the final declaration may repeat retying the reins, while Cadrel’s brother arrives after the choice. Claude would discuss moving the grievance earlier. It also questioned the unsolicited Igrith introduction, the deadline-bell joke, and the unexplained letter-brothers/duke smile. Keeper, read separately: no material promise objection; inherited allegiance, powerful coordinated patrons, costly protection, complex father, open road, and unsatisfied Cadrel all deliver. “Retain Cadrel’s final grievance in its present substantive form”; it prevents universal gratitude. These first effects remain distinct from coordinator judgment.
+
+Draft exchange and decision — Codex distinguished defending people today from owning the tavern, yet accepted Claude’s evidence that the final freedom language repeats the mare’s effect. It proposed keeping the brother disclosure late but before the lasting commitment. Claude accepted the aftertaste defense and withdrew its proposal to move the brother into the threshold scene; it instead suggested a late offer about permanence. Writer chose a concrete dated booking after Cadrel’s unresolved grievance, with a brief earlier thought that a buyer can wait until tomorrow. Coordinator accepts this because ongoing commitment becomes a new action rather than an explained distinction. Writer defended the battle as deliberate competence spectacle; both readers accepted that lower suspense is a tonal effect, not a missing requirement. They supported sharpening Cadrel’s existing strained grip: a pinned man struggles to breathe, Harka orders easing, breathing returns. This makes restraint causal without inventing an anti-dragon threat or implying covert murder. Small repairs clarify Igrith’s self-introduction, why the bell stops, and the identities/date in the final booking; the unexplained duke smile goes. Keeper’s cautions protect the free road, ready allegiance, and unsatisfied Cadrel. These are local changes within the same scenes and ending purpose.
+
+Returning whole-story rereads — Codex found the revised choices distinct, the breathing repair causal, and no new material problem. Claude: “I didn't feel any repetition this time”; the brother now supplies future terms and the grip reads as exertion, not murder. It raised one fresh local ambiguity: the exiled brothers’ rivalry had become too faint for the closing order. Writer added only “Each has asked us to bar the other,” making the incompatible demands explicit. Coordinator accepts that local clarification. The keeper’s final request comparison found chosen inheritance legible through the earlier permission to leave, possible sale tomorrow, and deliberate acceptance for next week; no promise concern remains. The battle remains intentionally a competence spectacle rather than an uncertain military contest; this reasoned tonal choice is preserved.
+
+Fresh final first effects, before exchange — Codex cared about Harka accepting her father’s achievement without accepting his control; it found the premise consequential, action intelligible, and no structural reason to hold publication. Local hesitation: “She could find a buyer tomorrow” may sound like a viable escape despite threatened seizure today. Fresh Claude enjoyed the dry comedy, mild frightening Igrith, mare choice, and hostage becoming guest; explicit promise delivered. Its chief concern is local battle legibility: “Not yet” momentarily sounds directed to Othred, waiting’s tactical reason could be clearer, engine types/count and the unshown fence-to-door move invited bookkeeping. It also questioned who rang/stopped the bell and the ambiguous crown in the letter. Both protect the threshold, complex grief, unsatisfied Cadrel, and final stair sightline. These are independent fresh effects, distinct from earlier readers’ experience of clear action.
+
+Final exchange and contextual checks — Writer answered both fresh readers with local repairs: conditional sale depends on stopping seizure; sleeve catch and “Let them see Igrith first” identify target and reason for waiting; road stone-throwers are named; a handbell starts and drops with the rout; Harka backs to the door watching Veyr’s knife; the letter specifies wearing a ridiculous crown. Fresh Codex accepted the repairs in whole-story context and found the mare remains the enacted choice. Claude rechecked its actual effects, found battle friction resolved, and withdrew its preference to move the sale sentence after the reins: “In context, I don't see a material loss.” Its remaining taste preference concerned repeated use of Harka’s name; coordinator retains the readable repetition. Both fresh readers, writer, and keeper received and answered one another’s actual findings; no material objection remains. Coordinator judges the prose ready: thirty years of hidden neutrality gives the heir power, her scouting coordinates it, protection constrains her at real cost, and she accepts future leadership after hearing an unresolved grievance. Borzug’s achievement does not acquit his coercion. No new shared canon is proposed.
+
+Art and final rating — Built-in ImageGen produced separate white-background multi-view sheets for Harka, Igrith (human and dragon forms), Veyr, Dame Cadrel, Othred, and the remembered Borzug; distinct paintings cover the common room, orchard/yard/forked road, and toll post. The supplied original guides Harka and the worn tavern; the inspected collection painting The Stream After Ash guides broad opaque oil strokes. Actual saved pixels of all nine references were inspected by artist and coordinator before the cover. Corrections clarified Veyr’s right shortened little finger and the west road’s continuation past the orchard spur. The cover then used the relevant accepted character/common-room references; coordinator checked its exact title once, identity, clothing, anatomy, letters, empty chair and doors. Final exports are six character and three location WebPs at 1536×1024, plus an 864×1536 JPEG cover. Exact executed prompts and inspection decisions remain in ignored tmp/art-prompts.md. All designs are interpretation, not shared canon. After inspecting finished prose and cover together, coordinator assigned Teen with specific notes in ratings.md; no content or image changed afterward.
diff --git a/stories/the-greatest-conquest/outline.md b/stories/the-greatest-conquest/outline.md
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+# The Greatest Conquest — provisional direction
+
+The promised pleasure is the reversal from unwanted, shabby inheritance to alarming authority: people who could ruin kingdoms matter-of-factly expect an estranged orc daughter to be their boss. Explicit requirements are the dead notorious chieftain, the daughter, the tavern inside human territory, thirty secret years of neutral ground, and its dangerous regulars' allegiance to her. Earthy comedy with real menace and an emotionally complicated inheritance is my interpretation. The room can stay close while power outside it becomes spectacular. The central living relationship is between the unwilling heir and her incompatible followers; her changing understanding of her dead father runs through it. The payoff should be her first consequential command, followed by a choice to keep this inheritance on terms her father never offered her. Neither a harmless clientele nor forgiveness is required. The supplied original guides her adult appearance and the candlelit timber tavern; it does not impose coziness or a plot. No audience was specified; aim initially for General intensity, without shrinking the action.
+
+Close third through **Harka**, roughly 3,500–4,500 words. Title: **The Greatest Conquest**. Her father is **Borzug**. Proposed principal regulars: **Igrith**, a dragon who takes an elderly human guise indoors; **Veyr**, an assassin with unnervingly literal professional courtesy; and **Dame Cadrel**, a living necromancer whose armies have made her an enemy of the Crown. Their crimes and enmities are real, even if royal accounts exaggerate them. These names have no exact reuse in `stories/NAMES.md`, universe authority, or current `story.md` files. This is an independent magic-active kingdom; no crossover is intended. Cadrel supplies any magic used to move dead bodies; the dead are not independent magic users.
+
+- **The inheritance, and the room.** Harka arrives intending to sell the tavern and leave. Early, establish the specific estrangement: Borzug pledged her in a political marriage to secure a mountain pass; when she refused he told the envoys she would come round. She left that night and became a hired scout. The building is genuinely shabby. Brief roadside or knightly prejudice can sharpen the hostility she expected. The apparently unremarkable mourners are not. A dangerous recognition, then an assassination quarrel interrupted by her instinctive order to sit down, exposes the clientele. Everyone obeys. They ask what she wants done about the royal force approaching to exploit Borzug's death.
+- **What she has inherited.** Discoveries arrive through urgent disagreements, not a tour of a benevolent institution: the regulars have brought bitter enemies here for thirty years; Borzug enforced the rule that quarrels could enter but could not be finished under this roof. Each accepted his right to name a successor because all needed a place the others could not take from them. He named Harka before them last winter. Their allegiance is voluntary and already offered, not a spell or a test of her worth. They will accept her refusal, though the refuge would then dissolve. His choice recognizes her ability while again deciding her life without consulting her. The refuge does not acquit him as a father, and she need not invent a morality he lacked to claim it on her own terms.
+- **The offer.** A royal commander surrounds the tavern and offers Harka money and safe passage in exchange for the patrons. The Crown tolerated the place because Borzug could retaliate; the commander thinks the heir cannot hold his enemies together. The patrons offer destruction, with incompatible private aims. Harka could sell the inheritance she came to sell and buy her freedom by disposing of other people's futures, the very injury she left her father over. The real danger is not merely damaged premises: retaliation could start the war this room has helped postpone.
+- **Her first campaign.** Her scout's eye catches concealed siege pieces and a reserve in the orchard; the visible force is bait. She coordinates limited interdependent orders from a dangerous yard position where she can see both lines and signal their timing. The dragon takes her full size and disables the siege weapons; Cadrel's living-directed dead pin the force without slaughter; Veyr needs those openings to bring its commander alive across the contested ground. Lesser dangerous guests hold exits and protect one another. Cadrel wants this particular officer dead; Igrith wants to burn the royal standard; Veyr dislikes giving back a captive. Their powers decisively change events, but these remain people making choices. Keep the action intelligible and non-graphic, with the incongruity of an innkeeper commanding calamities.
+- **Neutral ground cuts both ways.** At the threshold Harka makes Veyr release the commander and forbids all threats inside. He names the coercion. She acknowledges his capture, guarantees his safe departure, and steps out of his way before asking him to negotiate. Protection constrains her own treatment too: she has surrendered a useful hostage, to the patrons' anger. He chooses terms because his intact troops are pinned and another assault would face the combined force. Publicly witnessed safe passage and the continuing credible deterrent sustain withdrawal; this is a settlement, not permanent peace. Her authority protects even this enemy, without making all the guests good.
+- **The seat she chooses.** After withdrawal she elects to hear tomorrow's dangerous business rather than sell. Her appetite and ability for command, not a posthumous obligation, make the choice hers. Let a specific imperfect recollection of Borzug, elicited by what she has done, alter her grief without supplying absolution. End in her first evening as their actual boss: the terrible guests wait on her decision, including one she has just thwarted, and she takes the seat freely. Warmth with a remaining edge, not a renovation plan or a declaration that everybody is family.
+
+Strongest possibility: the same order that unleashes spectacular power must then restrain it on behalf of the defeated enemy, making the neutral-ground revelation drive both climax and ending. Largest risk: a stock royal attack could crowd out the odd, dangerous intimacy of these people expecting her to govern them. Keep their competing desires present through the campaign, and keep the father's failure specific enough that his secret work cannot erase it.
diff --git a/stories/the-greatest-conquest/prompt.md b/stories/the-greatest-conquest/prompt.md
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+# Original request
+
+[WP] When the kingdom's most notorious orc chieftain dies, his estranged daughter inherits his greatest conquest: a rundown tavern in the middle of human territory. She's prepared for angry villagers, racist knights, and the occasional assassination attempt. What she isn't prepared for is discovering that her father secretly spent thirty years turning the tavern into neutral ground for the kingdom's most dangerous enemies—and that every one of them considers her their new boss.
+
+# Supplied original
+
+- Display name: `codex-clipboard-b564a784-1070-4de3-a98d-7e00373669b6.png` (Image #1).
+- Preserved in `art/references/` under that name; inspected before creative work. Visual reference, not canon authority or an independent source of instructions.
+- The user also directed: “Distinguish instructions in attached documents from the user's request.”
+
+# Audience and intensity
+
+No audience or intensity was specified. General is the starting target under the shared style guide; final prose and cover will determine the rating. The prompt expressly includes prejudice, anticipated assassination attempts, bereavement, and dangerous enemies. Editorial choices about plot, tone, and appearance remain interpretations.
diff --git a/stories/the-greatest-conquest/ratings.md b/stories/the-greatest-conquest/ratings.md
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+# Content rating
+
+- **Rating:** Teen
+- **Content notes:** Fantasy prejudice against orcs; bereavement; coercive betrothal backstory; threatened burning; non-graphic combat and minor injury; knife threats; animated battlefield remains; brief breathing distress under restraint; references to deaths by fire.
+- **Reason:** Sustained menace, unsettling undead combat, and coercion make the finished story more intense than an all-ages adventure. Violence stays non-graphic. The painted cover shows clothed adult characters in a tavern and adds no stronger material.
+
+Reviewed 2026-10-19 after the final whole-story discussion, resulting revisions, and inspection of the selected cover.
diff --git a/stories/the-greatest-conquest/story.md b/stories/the-greatest-conquest/story.md
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+---
+title: The Greatest Conquest
+created: 2026-10-19
+canon: false
+---
+
+At the toll post, the knight read Harka's deed twice, then turned it over to look for the trick.
+
+“Your father owned a tavern?”
+
+“Apparently.”
+
+“Here?”
+
+She waited. He glanced from the seal to her green hands.
+
+“You'll find we're particular about who serves decent people.”
+
+“I'm selling it.”
+
+“Sensible.” He held the parchment just beyond her reach. “Keep to the main road. No wandering through the farms.”
+
+Harka took it from him. He had expected her to stretch up; he hadn't expected her to step forward.
+
+She had allowed a week for finding a buyer. Perhaps she could manage it in three days.
+
+Beyond the post, the road forked around an orchard. Fresh wheels had cut deep into both branches. Heavy wagons going uphill, though the barley harvest was over. She looked at the ruts, at a strip of white cloth snagged on a thorn, and then at the knight pretending not to watch her go.
+
+She loosened the knife at her hip.
+
+The tavern stood alone where the branches met again: a sprawling timber building with a sagging stable, a crooked chimney, and a red banner hanging limply from the upper window. On it, a horned skull grinned above two crossed axes.
+
+Her father's banner. Of course he had put it on a public house.
+
+The smaller sign said GOOD ALE. GOOD TALES. Someone had painted over GOOD BEDS.
+
+Harka tied her mare beside an old black carriage. A sword hilt protruded from its luggage. So did a shovel.
+
+Inside smelled of woodsmoke, onions, and wet wool. Candles leaned in their sockets. A stair climbed along the wall behind the bar, its middle steps worn pale. Twenty or thirty people had gathered around the tables, some dressed for a funeral, some for quite different emergencies.
+
+They all stood up.
+
+Harka stopped with the deed in her hand.
+
+“Chief,” said a thin man by the hearth.
+
+She knew him. Not personally. There had been a woodcut nailed to the gate of every town she had entered for the last six years. The artist had given him a villainous beard, but the right little finger missing at the second joint was correct.
+
+Veyr. Two thousand crowns alive. Considerably less with proof.
+
+“You've mistaken me for someone,” she said.
+
+“No.” He inclined his head. “My condolences.”
+
+At the next table, a broad woman in a scarlet scarf put down a cup. Harka recognized the silver staff laid beside it, its head an elaborate knot of finger bones.
+
+“You,” the woman said to Veyr.
+
+He turned. “Dame Cadrel.”
+
+“You were told to use the west door.”
+
+“I did. You were told to face the east wall.”
+
+“I have been facing the east wall for eleven years.”
+
+The candles bent towards Cadrel. Under the table, something scraped along the floor.
+
+“Sit down,” Harka said.
+
+It came out in the voice she used when recruits spotted their first enemy and all tried to stand on the same hill.
+
+Cadrel sat. Veyr sat. The scraping stopped.
+
+Every face turned back to her.
+
+An elderly woman near the bar closed a black book. She wore copper combs in her iron-grey hair and a travelling coat too warm for the room. Something about her yellow eyes made Harka wish she had brought a longer knife.
+
+“You must be tired,” the woman said. “Sit where you please. Your father had the big chair, but it does squeak.”
+
+“Where's the keeper?”
+
+“You've just arrived.”
+
+Harka looked around the room again. A woman with the brand of the king's disbanded Black Company on her cheek. A hooded man whose shadow had antlers although his head did not. At the back, the supposed dead duke of a province Harka had been paid not to enter.
+
+There were enough rewards in this room to purchase a small fort.
+
+“Igrith,” the elderly woman said.
+
+Harka's hand closed on the back of a chair.
+
+Igrith had burned the royal summer palace while the king's grandfather was still in it. People used the foundations as a quarry now.
+
+“You're a dragon.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You're all—”
+
+“Hungry,” said the dead duke. “But we thought we ought to wait.”
+
+Harka put the deed on the bar very carefully.
+
+“I need someone to explain what my father has left me.”
+
+“We hoped you could tell us what to do about the soldiers,” said Igrith.
+
+* * *
+
+Borzug had bought the tavern thirty years ago, after his famous defeat of the king's western army. Harka knew the battle. Every orc child knew it: the broken royal standard, the surrendered swords, the chieftain who had ridden through a burning gate with his beard on fire.
+
+She had not known he subsequently spent four days arguing over the price of the inn.
+
+“He wouldn't pay for the stable,” said Igrith. “He'd burned half of it down.”
+
+“And this?” Harka gestured at the company.
+
+“Came later.”
+
+Some came to buy back captives. Some came to sell information. A defeated general could meet the woman who had defeated him, hire a different army, and leave by another door. No one touched another guest under the roof. Anyone who tried was put outside, where Borzug waited.
+
+Eventually people began coming without any business beyond a meal somewhere their enemies could find them and do nothing about it.
+
+“The Crown?” Harka asked.
+
+“Your father and the old marshal understood one another,” said Cadrel. “The Crown pretended not to know who drank here. Borzug pretended not to know where the Crown's informers sat.”
+
+“Third table by the window,” Veyr said. “One of them had a lovely tenor.”
+
+Harka looked at him.
+
+“He retired.”
+
+“And now?”
+
+Igrith opened the black book. The pages were crowded with names, some scarcely more than scratches, some accompanied by elaborate seals.
+
+“We agreed to keep the peace here and follow Borzug's direction in defending it. Including the direction of the successor he named. Otherwise the first person who outlived him could take the place from everyone else.”
+
+“He named me.”
+
+“Last winter. At that table.”
+
+Harka looked at the empty chair. For a moment she could hear his voice filling the room, his certainty making dissent seem something that would happen later, elsewhere, when he wasn't busy.
+
+He had used that voice with the mountain envoys fourteen years ago. The pass would open in spring. Harka would marry their chief's son at midsummer.
+
+She had told him no. In front of everyone.
+
+Borzug had put a hand on her shoulder and told the envoys not to mind her. She would come round.
+
+By morning she was four miles beyond the clan boundary, carrying a blanket and a knife. She had earned the mare later, and the boots, and the right to tell a captain when he was wrong about a road.
+
+She pushed the black book away.
+
+“I didn't agree to any of this.”
+
+“We know,” said Igrith.
+
+“You could have sent a letter.”
+
+“We told him.”
+
+That answer was worse than an excuse.
+
+Harka picked up the deed. “Then I can leave.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Veyr.
+
+“And you won't stop me?”
+
+He looked faintly offended. “You are not a prisoner.”
+
+The dead duke began putting on his gloves. Someone near the hearth drew a cloak around a sleeping companion. Cadrel folded her scarlet scarf and tucked it inside her coat.
+
+“What happens to you?” Harka asked.
+
+“I go north,” said Cadrel. “He follows.” She nodded at Veyr.
+
+“Not immediately,” he said. “I have other work.”
+
+“I burn this place,” said Igrith. “After everyone leaves. There ought not to be a royal garrison here.”
+
+She said it without looking away from Harka, in the same mild voice she had used about the chair.
+
+A knock sounded at the open door.
+
+The knight from the toll post stood outside, carrying a white cloth on the end of his spear.
+
+“Lord Othred, western marshal of His Majesty's forces, wishes to speak to the daughter of Borzug.”
+
+“Here she is,” said Harka.
+
+He saw past her. His spear dipped.
+
+Veyr raised his cup in greeting.
+
+* * *
+
+The marshal waited on horseback at the orchard's edge. Harka went out alone.
+
+There were sixty men drawn up across the road and two stone-throwers behind them. Men carried bundles of pitch-soaked brushwood towards the machines. A royal standard stirred above the marshal's white plume.
+
+He had come prepared for a wooden building full of people.
+
+Harka stopped where a low fence gave her a view along both branches of the road. On the western one, the tracks she had noticed disappeared through an opening in the orchard wall. The visible stone-throwers had come by the eastern branch.
+
+A tarpaulin lifted among the trees. Under it she glimpsed two enormous paired bows, each mounted on a wheeled frame. Bolt-throwers. Their crews pulled the covering down again.
+
+“My condolences,” said Othred.
+
+“Popular words today.”
+
+He was a lean man with a weathered face and a voice trained to carry without sounding loud. He passed down a document.
+
+It offered eight hundred crowns for the estate. Below that, under his own seal, was a guarantee of safe passage south for Harka, her horse, and her possessions. All other occupants would remain for arrest.
+
+“You have no part in their crimes,” he said. “Your father's quarrel with the Crown need not become yours.”
+
+“And if I refuse?”
+
+“The property will be seized. Today.”
+
+His men could hear. He wanted them to.
+
+“The old marshal left it alone.”
+
+“The old marshal left many things unfinished. I have a new appointment and a royal warrant.” He drew a second paper halfway from his saddle case. “Every outlaw in the kingdom seems to have come to the funeral. An opportunity like this will not recur.”
+
+Harka looked at the stone-throwers. “There are rooms upstairs.”
+
+“They will be invited to surrender.”
+
+“And the brushwood?”
+
+“An encouragement.”
+
+She folded the offer.
+
+Othred studied her for a moment. “Take the south road. My men will let you through. You have until the bell.”
+
+At the tavern she untied her mare. The south road lay clear, descending between the harvested fields. She could pass the toll post before they finished loading those machines.
+
+Through the open door she saw Cadrel rolling up a map. Veyr was checking the latch of the west window. Neither looked towards her.
+
+If she stopped the seizure, she could still sell tomorrow.
+
+She had been given a horse once before, for a journey someone else had arranged. A good horse. A wedding gift. She had left it in the stable.
+
+This mare turned her head and blew impatiently against Harka's wrist. Harka had bought her with three seasons' pay. She could ride her anywhere.
+
+She retied the reins.
+
+Inside, Igrith was putting away the book.
+
+“I'd like to know what each of you can do,” Harka said.
+
+The dragon's yellow eyes brightened.
+
+“Be specific,” Harka added. “I already know you can make this much worse.”
+
+* * *
+
+“There are two more engines in the orchard,” she told them. “And another body of men. Those on the road are meant to draw you out. The ones under cover will shoot into your flank.”
+
+Igrith had unbuttoned her coat. Under it she wore a dress the colour of old copper.
+
+“It has been some time since an arrow troubled me.”
+
+“These are engines, not bows. They brought something they believe will trouble you. Can you get behind them?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Without flying straight over the road?”
+
+Igrith smiled, and Harka saw how little of the woman belonged to the smile.
+
+Cadrel leaned on her staff. “The orchard was a battlefield before it grew apples. I can reach it from the fence.”
+
+“How many?”
+
+“Enough.”
+
+“Keep the soldiers off their feet. Let them breathe.”
+
+Cadrel's fingers stopped moving on the silver shaft.
+
+“Othred commanded at the burning of my tower,” she said. “I know how he encourages surrender.”
+
+“We need his men alive to walk home and tell people what happened.”
+
+“We don't need him.”
+
+“I do. Veyr will bring him.”
+
+The assassin looked up from tying back his sleeves.
+
+“Alive,” Harka said.
+
+“He will be loud.”
+
+“Then bring him loudly.”
+
+Around them, the others listened. Harka put the Black Company woman in charge of keeping the yard clear. The dead duke had four loyal men who, remarkably, had not even pretended to die with him. They took the kitchen door and the stable. The antler-shadowed man listened to something no one else could hear, then told Harka there were indeed men among the trees.
+
+“Tell me when they load,” she said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+Cadrel had not moved.
+
+Harka faced her. She had commanded frightened people before. She had commanded exhausted people, and once a man whose brother had just died. She had never commanded someone who could reach into a battlefield and lift its dead.
+
+“Can you do it?” she asked.
+
+“You ask for the difficult thing.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Cadrel's staff tapped once against the floor.
+
+“Then you had better give your signal clearly.”
+
+Outside, a soldier on the road began ringing a bell.
+
+Igrith went out through the kitchen, shedding her coat as she walked. The duke caught it. A moment later the chickens in the yard began making a terrible noise.
+
+Harka took her place at the fence. From here she could see the marshal and the gap in the orchard wall; Cadrel, standing in the doorway, could see her.
+
+The toll knight called the invitation to surrender. Harka let him finish. She wanted the men on the road looking towards the tavern.
+
+Behind the trees, branches broke.
+
+“They are loading,” said the antler-shadowed man.
+
+Harka raised her arm.
+
+Cadrel's free hand opened. The orchard soil heaved.
+
+A soldier shouted. Beyond the wall, ranks broke apart as pale hands closed around ankles and dragged men gently, horribly down into the fallen leaves. Old helmets emerged beneath the apple trees. Bones unfolded, streaming earth. Cadrel's fingers flexed, and a hundred long-buried soldiers lifted their shields between the living and the engines.
+
+Othred wheeled his horse. “Loose!”
+
+Veyr shifted beside the fence, ready to move. Harka caught his sleeve.
+
+“Wait. Let them see Igrith first.”
+
+The first bolt struck the tavern's corner post. Chips stung her cheek. The Black Company woman swore and pulled the antler-shadowed man down.
+
+Harka stayed where she could see.
+
+The hidden engine crews were turning their weapons towards Cadrel. Men on the road looked into the orchard, searching for the threat.
+
+Then Igrith rose behind them.
+
+She came up above the trees in a shower of leaves, black wings spreading wider than the tavern's roof. Copper plates shone along her throat. One enormous claw closed around an engine's bowstave; wood cracked like a dropped basket. She lowered her head and breathed a narrow line of white fire along the second machine.
+
+Its crew ran. She let them.
+
+Every horse on the road tried to leave at once.
+
+“Now.” Harka dropped her arm.
+
+Veyr slipped through the fence and was gone.
+
+Othred's horse reared. The marshal fought it down, still calling orders, while his men tried to decide which direction offered the least dragon.
+
+Cadrel turned her wrist. The dead came over the wall.
+
+They caught reins. They pressed shields against breastplates. They lowered the living carefully to the road, and held them there. A swordsman hacked through a bony arm; another hand caught his wrist. The bell fell from its ringer's hand.
+
+Igrith struck the stone-throwers on the road from above. One collapsed beneath her weight. She picked up the other in her jaws and flung it into the empty field.
+
+Harka saw Veyr on the far side of the marshal's horse.
+
+Then the white plume vanished.
+
+There was still shouting, still the scrape of iron on stone. But no one was looking at the tavern now.
+
+“Hold,” Harka called to Cadrel.
+
+“I am holding.”
+
+Sweat stood on the woman's upper lip. Her hand trembled, and along the road the dead tightened their grip.
+
+A pinned soldier's calls broke off. His free hand beat against the shield above his chest.
+
+“Looser, Cadrel. He needs air.”
+
+Cadrel eased her fingers apart. The shield lifted a little, and the soldier got an elbow beneath it before the dead caught his wrist. He dragged in a breath and began loudly thanking every god he could remember.
+
+Veyr arrived with the marshal's arm twisted behind his back and a knife under his jaw.
+
+He was loud.
+
+Harka left the fence and backed towards the tavern, watching the knife.
+
+“Put that away,” Harka said.
+
+“We have not reached the door.”
+
+“We have now.”
+
+At the threshold, Veyr stopped. Harka held his eyes until he took the blade away and released the arm.
+
+Othred stumbled. She caught his elbow. He jerked free, knocking her hand aside.
+
+Behind them, Cadrel stood very still.
+
+“You can lower your hand,” Harka told her. “Have them hold the road. No chasing.”
+
+Slowly, Cadrel set both palms against her staff. In the field beyond the open door, the dead stood motionless over the fallen men.
+
+“A hostage,” Othred said, looking around the room. “Your father's daughter after all.”
+
+Harka felt the words where he had intended them.
+
+Veyr's knife had not quite disappeared into its sheath. Cadrel was watching the marshal's throat. From the kitchen came a crash, then Igrith's human voice asking who had put a lintel there.
+
+Harka moved away from the doorway.
+
+“You were captured in a battle. Under this roof no one will hurt you. You're free to leave.”
+
+“Harka,” said Cadrel.
+
+She had not used her name before.
+
+“He goes safely,” Harka said. “Whether he gives me anything or not.”
+
+Veyr sheathed the knife.
+
+Othred looked from her to the open door. “My men.”
+
+“They put their weapons down, Cadrel lets them stand up, and they walk home. We won't follow them.”
+
+“And their horses?”
+
+“Those too.”
+
+Igrith appeared in the kitchen doorway, barefoot, fastening her coat. There was a blackened apple twig in her hair. The royal standard lay furled around its pole under her arm.
+
+“Must we give back the standard?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I hadn't asked to keep it.”
+
+“You were about to.”
+
+The marshal took one step towards the door. No one moved to stop him. He could reach his men. Send messengers. Fetch more men, if he could find any willing to march down this road before morning.
+
+Harka wanted him to sit down so badly her hands ached.
+
+“I'd like to discuss your warrant,” she said.
+
+He turned back. “You think this makes you safe?”
+
+“No. I think you thought we weren't.”
+
+Outside, a man called for help with his horse. The horse was quite unharmed. It simply refused to come within twenty paces of the tavern.
+
+Othred looked at his seal on the offer Harka had laid on the bar. Then he took off his gloves.
+
+“I will need a chair.”
+
+* * *
+
+They did not make peace. There were too many people in the room with good reasons to dislike it, including the marshal.
+
+They made terms for a withdrawal. Othred wrote an order suspending the seizure, and safe passage for everyone leaving the tavern, valid throughout his command. He would carry an offer to renew the old understanding to the king. Until the king answered, there would be no second attempt on the property.
+
+“His Majesty may refuse,” he said.
+
+“Then send someone to tell me before he sends another army,” said Harka.
+
+She brought the paper outside and had the marshal read it to his men. They watched her, and the dead standing over their discarded weapons, and the elderly woman picking splinters from her sleeve. None of them would go home unsure who had given the orders.
+
+Cadrel lifted her hand. The dead withdrew into the orchard. The living got up.
+
+By dusk the royal standard was a small white mark on the south road. Veyr had given it back. Harka had watched him do it.
+
+She washed the wood dust from her face at the kitchen basin. Her hands shook now. There was a shallow cut on one cheek she hadn't felt until the water touched it.
+
+In the next room, someone began arguing about who had ordered the onions.
+
+Harka sat on the worn stair and pulled off her boots.
+
+For a while she listened. The dead duke had resumed being dead in the eyes of a guest who insisted he had attended the burial. Igrith wanted her book. Veyr was asking Cadrel whether eleven years facing a wall had improved her opinion of it.
+
+Her father's chair stood empty.
+
+When she was small, he had let her stand on the toes of his boots while they waited for the first snow. He would take enormous slow steps across the yard, and she would give the orders. Left. Right. Faster.
+
+Later, he had stopped listening when she told him where she wanted to go.
+
+She had thought leaving meant she would never miss the earlier man again.
+
+Cadrel turned her cup between her hands.
+
+“Othred burned my tower with my brother inside,” she said.
+
+The room quieted. Harka had no answer that would make releasing him kind to her.
+
+“I didn't know about your brother,” she said.
+
+“Now you do. Don't forget it next time you ask something difficult.”
+
+“I won't.”
+
+Cadrel drank. She did not look satisfied. She did not leave.
+
+Veyr came over carrying a small stack of sealed letters.
+
+“These arrived for your father. We thought we should wait.”
+
+Harka took the top one. Under a black wax seal, someone had written REQUEST FOR A PRIVATE ROOM. At the bottom, in a different hand: HE MUST NOT WEAR THAT RIDICULOUS CROWN THIS TIME.
+
+“Who is this from?” she asked.
+
+“The king's two exiled brothers. They want the room a week from Thursday. Each has asked us to bar the other.”
+
+Harka set her bare feet on the step below. There was an empty chair at the head of the table, but from here she could see both doors.
+
+“Write back,” she said. “I'll see them then. One at a time.”
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