“Tell me what’s happened.” Isolda dismounted and Liv fell into step beside her, healer’s satchel slung over one shoulder.
What followed took the better part of two hours. She sat in Rolf’s cramped cottage with both parties and listened as each side laid out every bushel of grain consumed, every fence post mended, every bitter word exchanged since the Creagach families had moved back to their crofts.
The Dunmore elder, a stocky man named Ubbe, had tallied every mouthful with the precision of a moneylender. The Creagach elder, a wiry woman called Maeve whose sharp tongue could have cut steel, had countered with a list of detailed repairs.
Isolda let them talk, let them exhaust themselves against each other the way waves wore down stone.
Then she opened the ledger and laid the numbers bare.
“Dunmore consumed roughly a third more than usual while housin’ the Creagach families. That’s fact.” She looked at Ubbe. “Ye’re nae wrong tae raise it.”
The man’s chest puffed.
“And—” She turned to Maeve. “The Creagach folk repaired Dunmore’s seawall, mended their fishing nets, and worked the barley fields fer three weeks. Which Ubbe conveniently forgot tae mention when he was tallyin’ up his grievances.”
Isolda valued the labor against the grain and found the difference came to four sacks of barley and a barrel of salted herring. A pittance from the castle stores, but to Dunmore it closed the ledger, and to Creagach it proved their work hadn’t been forgotten.
“And the next time ye have a dispute,” she added, rising from the bench and brushing dust from her skirts, “ye bring it tae mebeforeye spend the mornin’ screamin’ at each other in front of yer bairns.”
Both elders nodded with the chastened look of people who’d been so thoroughly managed they couldn’t quite pinpoint when it had happened.
Rolf walked her to the horses afterward, his weathered face carrying something that looked suspiciously like approval. “That was well handled, thank ye, me lady.”
“Is that a compliment I hear comin’ from yer lips, Rolf?”
“‘Tis an observation.” But the corner of his mouth twitched.
By the time Isolda returned to the keep, the afternoon light had turned the castle stone amber and the courtyard hummed with the familiar rhythms of day’s end. She found Ragnar in the solar, still bent over his maps, and dropped the ledger on the table in front of him.
“Four sacks of barley and a barrel of herrin’,” she said. “From the castle stores.”
He listened as she laid it out––the numbers, the labor, the resolution. When she finished, he leaned back and studied her with those steady blue eyes that still made her pulse skip when they held her too long.
“I would have done the same,” he said quietly.
The words settled into her chest like something warm finding its place by the hearth. Not praise exactly—something better. Recognition. The quiet acknowledgment that she wasn’t being humored or permitted to play at leadership while the real decisions happened behind closed doors.
She was beingtrusted. With his people. With their grievances and their fear and their fragile, hard-won peace.
“There’s the coastal trade in three days,” Ragnar said, pulling her attention to the map. His finger traced the southern coastline to the narrow point where the shipping lane threaded between Uist and the mainland. “After that, nay foreign ships should be near our waters. And I’m hopin’ Douglas has the sense tae let the season pass quietly.”
She studied the map, her brow creasing. “Ye dinnae believe that, though.”
He never daes. That’s what keeps us alive.
“Nay,” he admitted. “I dinnae.”
Before she could respond, Freyr’s frame filled the doorway, sword belt already buckled. “Come spar wi’ me. Ye’ve been starin’ at maps long enough tae go cross-eyed.”
Ragnar glanced at Isolda. She shooed him with one hand. “Aye, let’s go. I’ll nae have ye broodin’ over parchment all evenin’.”
The training yard blazed gold in the late afternoon sun. Isolda settled onto the stone bench beside Liv, who was already threading a needle with the practiced calm of a woman who’d stitched these two men back together more times than anyone cared to count.
“Ten silver says Freyr eats dirt within’ the first two minutes,” Liv murmured.
“That’s a poor wager, considerin’ ye always win.”
“Aye, but it never gets old.”