Grist for the Mill.

[Waldemar]

He found it in a nameless crease in the hills between the Silver Lake and the Silver Mountains, silent and secluded and all but forgotten. By mirror-still water beneath crow-haunted trees, squat and hunched into the hillside, the mill had lain abandoned for some years. Indeed, it had long since begun the slide from disuse to outright ruin.

Picking his way along the banks of the reed-choked tail race, the marks of neglect became clearer with every step. The great wheel, a dozen feet across, slumped into its pit where the unchecked flow from the millpond had reduced its timbers to spongy black rot and green slime. Fire and time had caved the roof and gnawed the rafters to brittle stubs, while probing roots and bitter winters had clawed at the mossy stone walls below. The interior was little more than a tangle of charred and broken beams and splintered wheelwork; the millstones, having plunged through collapsing floors to rest in the cellar below, now lay a foot deep in stinking, waterlogged leaf-mould.

He made inquiries, discreetly. No two accounts could agree on what had become of the last Miller - some thought plague took him; others blamed the Baie's followers; yet others maintained he'd been one of the Pritchite faithful and had abandoned Myrken years before. The fire? Vague memories of such, but no answers as to whether the mill was still working at the time. Had he family? No one could recall. Certainly none with any interest in a derelict old mill.

It was perfect.

[Waldemar]

Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and firmly in the grasp of middle age, the man who would be the new miller had given his name, when asked, as Marek Waldemar. Beyond that he had been content to reveal very little of his past - harmless scraps here and there, depending on the questioner.

What had he admitted? That he was not long returned to Myrken - it was his homeland, yes, but had been away. He was well-travelled, yes, though those details remained vague; he was well-read also, educated and erudite with an expressed preference for histories over poems, plays or suchlike frivolity.

What could be observed? He was now a man of reduced means, clothes once respectable grown tired and shabby; his meals were limited to simple peasant fare - soup or stew, coarse bread and ale. He still dressed for warmth despite the milder weather of Spring, coat and cap and scarf and gloves of the sort that left fingertips bare, all in sombre black or faded approximations thereof. He was pious, a regular attendee at the Chapel of St. Iona every Sunday, the prayers and hymns well known to him. He was lamed, relying on a walking-cane to support his uneven steps, his left hand used only for that which did not require a firm grip. He was intensely, habitually private - and that much anyone could learn for free.

In town he haggled with stallholders and shopkeepers for certain items - stout twine, a sickle, chalk sticks, a hatchet, candles, sulphur-matches, salt, an assortment of sundries - and paid from his dwindling store of coin. His forays to the ruined mill became more frequent, departing his lodgings at the Broken Dagger early in the morning and not returning until past sunset, shoes muddied, coat skirts laden with burrs. At first, in any case. After a time he took to leaving the Inn with the setting sun and not returning before dawn the next day. A simple meal and he would retire to his room for the rest of the day.

[Waldemar]

The changes around the ruined mill were slight at first, small attempts at imposing order upon the place; the path cleared somewhat, or at least rid of nettles and grasping branches; reeds cropped along the tail race and heaped in twine-tied sheaves upon the banks; saplings felled from the nearby woods, fallen branches laboriously dragged from the undergrowth, clumsy hatchet-work dividing twigs from boughs and rotten wood from more-or-less sound; daytime work, more endured than enjoyed.

Once those first steps were taken, though, once the groundwork was laid, once he began coming to the mill at night, each dawn brought fresh changes to the mill and its surroundings. The heaped twigs and branches vanished, the bundled reeds likewise, and heavier work began; certain young oak trees marked with chalk were felled and dragged to the clearing that grew around the mill; the useless wheel itself was pulled apart, sodden fragments piled carelessly some distance away. The wheel pit was cleared of muck and debris, the mill race dredged of reeds until the water flowed swift and strong. A heap of mud-caked stones appeared, and a farmer on the edge of the woods woke to find his field unexpectedly harrowed and ready for planting, a full acre of earth new-churned during the night.

Heavy work, for all that no workmen were seen taking the track through the woods.

[Waldemar]

The nights resounded with strange noises, distant and echoing strangely through the woods; the low groan of gently swaying trees, for all that the air was still; the brittle reports of shattering stone, though the hard winter frosts were well past; the creaks of protesting, splintering wood, but no crash of fallen boughs to follow.

And then and again, among it all, a single human voice.

The mill's resurrection continued apace, night by night. The clearing around the mill grew wider, felled trees shaped into beams and rough-split planks, fieldstones knapped and chipped into flat-faced blocks. A reek filled the woods for after the millpond was dredged, silt and weed and slimy leaves heaped on the banks, the water running black and foul downstream the next day.

Where fire had failed to gut the building the job was finally completed. Charred and worm-riddled timbers were stripped out and set aside, fallen stones carefully saved and stacked nearby; years-worth of seeping muck was scooped from the cellar, spread in a stinking layer over the forest floor downwind, and the great millstones, stained and mossy, hauled up from the depths to await their restoration.

When that work was done the walls stood empty, picked bare, stripped to their age-stained bones. Then, and only then, could the mill's rebirth begin.

The stonework was freed of the embrace of roots and crawling ivy, foundations shored, gaps in the masonry meticulously filled until the walls stood firm as the mountains that loomed above. A frame of sturdy posts and beams rose above, pegged braces and studs forming a skeleton of pale timber that gleamed faintly under the stars.

[Waldemar]

From ruin to shell to building, the mill draws ever closer to its eventual rebirth; the main body of the structure as big as a barn, with a squat tower of sorts at the far end overlooking the millpond. Young saplings harvested, split, woven into panels and daubed with riverbank clay and straw to become walls; thicker boughs cut and shaped to form shingles for the roof; long split-timber planks make up the floors inside, creaking underfoot with every step. Rough-crafted, odd-angled, barely a straight line or true vertical to be found in the entire building, but it was complete; though beams groaned in protest as the unseasoned timbers shifted, the whole sat resolute upon its foundations, crouched against slope of the millpond dam.

Yet it remained a husk, the windows nothing more than dark holes staring out onto the forest, the rush of the mill race serving only to emphasise the stillness and silence of the building beside it. But that too would change, as work began on the guts of the mill, the great wheels and axles which would bring it to life.

Felled trees and timbers selected for strength and straightness of grain, where the mill's fabric was rough and ramshackle, the machinery itself was notable for the precision of its parts. Chalk-marks upon the wood, scrawls and sigils linking this piece to that, dedicating each component to its destined role; the inner shafts and gears found their place first, wheels of stout wooden teeth which would clatter and gnash and turn the babble of water into the inexorable grinding of stone; the millstones themselves were scrubbed and scoured, inner faces smoothed and re-dressed before being installed, bedstone and runner meeting almost seamlessly.

While the machinery was assembled piece by piece within, stout sluice gates blocked the mill race outside as the great wheel was wrought anew. A perfect circle the height of two men, struts and spars and boards and braces centred on an axle of iron-bound oak, nails and billets purchased in town and fashioned by unknown hands. The same hands finally heaved the immense wheel to rest in its pit, where it awaited the command that would wake it at last.

[Waldemar]

"Don't look like much."

Farmer Gilbert Burnsley spat over the side of his cart as it rattled along the newly-cleared track, years of grass and leaf-mould not quite enough to smooth out the ancient wheel-tracks that marked the way to the mill. He'd expressed some surprise when a man claiming to be the new miller had knocked on his door. Some suspicion too, though the man had spoken like a local and made him an intriguing offer. Or more correctly, an invitation, and one he'd be a fool to ignore. So, being no fool, he brought his son along as well. Just in case.

Young Gib Burnsley, fifteen-year-old heir to the Burnsley fortune (such as it was), kept his thoughts to himself; more used to working in the fields than quick thinking, he was still sharp enough to stay quiet when it'd earn him a clout not to.

To his eyes the place looked a sight better than it had when he'd last seen it a couple of summers back. A combination of idle curiosity and youthful bravado had found him and the two Stocksted boys trying to track the stream back to its source, picking their way along fern-fringed banks and between mossy stones until they'd come across the ruined mill, much as the new miller had scant weeks ago. Charred timber and crumbled stone, dark water beneath crow-haunted trees

They'd explored a little, paced along the brow of the dam, peered in through gaping doorways and empty windows, but no amount of jeering or goading could provoke any one of them to step into the building itself. Something about the way it sat silently beside the still, black water of the millpond, soon had them hurrying downstream again with the mocking croaks of the crows in their ears. After many backward glances and nervous jokes they'd finally laughed at one another for cowards and gone to pilfer apples from Farmer Dace's orchard to restore their honour.

The mill had been incorporated into their stories, spinning tall tales supposedly heard from their gaffer about how the old miller still haunted the place, the woods echoing to the grinding of ghostly stones; they told each other how he was a knave and a drunkard who cheated his customers and beat his prentices; how he got his comeuppance in the end, though the exact details varied from telling to telling such that the villainous miller suffered a dozen dreadful deaths. In some stories he locked himself in his rooms to count his cheated wealth, but knocked over a candle and burned alive with his mill; in one he fell in a stupor in the grain bin and was gnawed to pieces by rats; in others he staggered drunk into the head race and got caught on the wheel, drowning by degrees he was ducked under the water with each turn; in yet others he swung to strike a prentice but got tangled in the mill's gears, dragged through stout wooden teeth like washing through a mangle until at last he was pulled between the millstones themselves and ground to dust. Will Stocksted was especially proud of that last one.

These explorations - and the grisly speculations accompanying them - earned the boys a certain degree of renown among their peers. Even Lily Aldridge had seemed impressed, much to Gib's secret delight. But eventually Farmer Burnsley had caught wind of it and gave young Gib the thrashing of his life for going so far into the woods, with a promise of more if he spoke of it again.

So today he kept his fool mouth firmly shut, and watched the new-restored mill draw closer between the trees.

[Waldemar]

"Visitors!" The mill had been quiet for the morning, awaiting the farmer's arrival, and the cart's rattling approach was announcement enough. The miller hurried down the stairs onto the stone floor, stirring up his recently-acquired assistants as he went.

Red-haired Kotek he found dozing on a heap of sacks, and roused him with a kick that earned the miller a sullen green glare; only for a moment, though, before the youth stretched and yawned, rubbing the band of cloth around his head that covered an empty socket and a web of thin scars. Oldest, tallest, strongest, his main duty was keeping the others in line. Until they'd a steady supply of grain, though, there wasn't much to be done.

Furtive Padalec, as expected, he found hiding in the corner of the mill furthest from Kotek. Hunched in the shadows of the pit floor, the boy nodded nervously and scurried up the stairs to the stone floor; careful to stay well out of Kotek's reach but still flinching at his every move. Shortest, youngest, all weak chin and outsized ears and anxious pink hands clutching at one another.

Last came Cherny, stick-like limbs draped in oversized shirt and britches, dark eyes glittering like polished stones, hair a mess of oily black tufts; drawn down from the crown floor by the bustle of activity below, he took his place by Padalec with an insolent grin at the miller's impatience, hastily ducking back as Kotek lunged to box his ears. Younger than one-eye, skinnier than big-ears, and quick to laugh at either.

"Enough." The miller's voice was stern, glaring at each of them until they fell into some semblance of order; their homespun clothes and wooden-soled clogs could be a uniform of sorts, purely by dint of being purchased as a set, though with little thought given to style or cut. By no means ideal, barely even adequate, but one worked with the materials at hand. His walking stick pointed to Kotek first, brisk instructions to follow.

"You. Open the gate. You and you. Crown floor. Wait for the grain sack to arrive, then ring the bell when the hopper's filled. Understand?" A moment for each of the assistants to nod their reply, and his stick thumped sharply on the floorboards. "Go."

His assistants hurried to their appointed tasks, Kotek slinking outside to open the sluice gate, the other two hurrying upstairs with a rattle of clogs and a harsh laugh from Cherny as the younger boy stumbled and barked his shin.

Meanwhile the miller stepped out to meet the Burnsleys, tugging his features into some semblance of a welcoming smile.

[Waldemar]

At his father's instruction Gib set about retrieving the grain sacks from the back of the cart while the farmer himself went to meet the miller. Two bushel sacks from last year's wheat harvest, necks tied together and slung over his shoulder, as much as the elder Burnsley was willing to risk. The sound of running water grew louder as the trio of miller, farmer and son neared the mill. Sluice gate opened, the great wheel creaked into motion slowly at first, but soon building until the rush of the race was answered by a low rumble of machinery from within.

The interior of the mill was a far step from the last time Gib had seen it, dark and tumbled, stinking of damp and rot. Now it was light clean, new. A double-height room with sturdy rafters far above and floorboards of bright timber underfoot, shivering with the turning wheels below. Directly ahead lay the heart of the building, spanning two levels: the stone floor above, the millstones in their tun, and the meal floor below, where the flour chute and sacks stood ready.

"Over here please, young sir." Gib hauled the sacks to where the miller pointed with his stick, a steelyard set into one of the upright beams; once the sacks were hung from the hook indicated there was a moment of adjustment, nudging the counterweight back and forth along the arm until the scales balanced.

"Very good. Kotek. Hoist." The red-haired youth, loitering silently beside the door, stepped forward to unhook the sacks and heft them to where the hoist chain dangled from the floors above; a loop of chain had the sacks secured, and the miller's pull on the hoist cord saw them rising with slow majesty through the trapdoor overhead.

"We've a moment before we can start grinding, sir; might I ask who's been milling your grain before now?" Making conversation with the farmer while they waited, though even Gib could see what direction the miller had in mind.

"The one down in town."

"That's a fair step, sir. And what's the multure on that?"

"Three pecks on the quarter, on a good day. As much again, when he fancies a new hat." Burnsley's tone made it clear what he thought of the Myrkentown mill, and it was only consideration for the clean floorboards that kept him from spitting in disgust. Little wonder millers had such a poor reputation with a robber like that among them, taking between a part in ten and one in five of the grain brought to his mill. Exorbitant. "Weren't like that before old Jessup's burned down, couple of years back - at least then they'd to vie for custom. Now the town mill's the only one between here and Stonebrook, and the roads ain't all that safe."

The new miller tutted in sympathy at the farmer's plight before assuming a thoughtful expression; only the music of the mill was heard for a time, water rushing outside, wheels and axles creaking and clacking, the hoist chain chiming softly overhead. At last he seemed to come to a decision.

"Well, no multure on this first load, as I said before. But if you were to bring your grain here in future, I can offer... let's say a flat half-bushel on the quarter, fixed for the first year. Quite reasonable, I'm sure you'll agree."

"Almost generous, I'd say." A part in sixteen - more than reasonable, to gauge from how the farmer's brows lifted, and he nodded slowly; he was Myrken-born, however, and knew better than to take good news like that at face value. "What's the catch?"

"No catch, sir - only that I'm newly in business, and must attract custom if I'm to remain in business."

"Won't find it hard, with rates like that." Burnsley rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "All depends on your flour, o' course."

Any further talk was stilled at the sound of a small bell ringing from above; the miller was suddenly animated, his walking stick thumping the boards as he hurried across to set the stones in gear; a tug on this lever saw wooden teeth mesh and chatter, then over to the flour chute as power ran through wheels and shafts to set the stones grumbling inside their tun. Grain hissed and rattled down from the bins on the floor above, and moments later a thin stream of flour began to trickle from the chute.

Stick tucked under his arm for the moment, glove tugged from his right hand, he stood before the flour chute with an air of intent concentration; one hand on a horizontal lever above, the other cupped under the flour flowing freely into the sack below. Testing it, tasting it, feeling it between his fingers; small adjustments to the lever's angle changing the gap between the turning stones and the quality of the flour. Finally he seemed satisfied and wedged the lever in place, leaving powdery prints as he dusted off his hand on his threadbare coat and turned back to the Burnsleys, dark eyes glittering.

"I do not boast, sir, when I say you'll not find finer in all Myrken."

[Waldemar]

Gilbert Burnsley was by no means the last farmer to visit. The miller travelled to every farm between Myrkentown and Oakhollow making the same offer - in return for a few hours of their time he'd mill a bag of their grain at no cost, as a demonstration of his skill.

In Myrkentown the miller carefully selected a number of bakers - a small handful in each district, never close enough to consider one another direct competitors - and gifted them with small sacks of flour, asking that they simply bake it into loaves and note the quality for themselves; or better yet, he suggested, they might ask their customers. Different flours for different bakeries, depending on their class of patron - sifted wheat flour for baking high-quality wastel, pale and sweet; meal ground with the husk for coarser loaves, brown and nutty; and for bakers in the poorest districts, dark flour for rye bread which, while cheap, the miller promised would not feel like a penance.

His prices were as good as the mill on Main Street, his flour undeniably better; in return, he set only two conditions - the first, that his meal under no circumstances be mixed with that of any other mill; the second, that the bakers charge no more than the going rate for similar loaves. Hold to the first, he said, and they'd soon see business enough not to begrudge the second.

Days passed, and the slow creak of a cart here or a mule there became a steady rumble of traffic up the track to the mill. Those who had brought a single bushel were soon bringing four, eight, more; at first the miller had simply taken his half-bushel on the quarter, but before long he was able to buy the grain outright, and at a fair price - better than the town mill could offer.

Carts bringing grain from the farms were soon joined by those taking flour to Myrkentown's bakeries as news of the miller's skill quietly spread. The bakers noted the improvement his flour brought to everything from pastries to penny-loaves, and how their shops were increasingly a-bustle.

They were not the only ones to take notice, however.

[Waldemar]

One night, some weeks after farmers and bakers had struck their bargains with the new miller, a pair of visitors came to call on his establishment. Not the usual sort, of course - those visited only in the daytime, leading donkeys and ponies, driving carts and wagons, laden with grain in one direction and fine flour in the other. They were rustic sorts, all calloused palms and weatherbeaten complexions.

These visitors were quite different. Their dress marked them as town folk, albeit of a certain type; clothes of a cut aping a merchant's finery, but loose enough to conceal a multitude of sins. Scarred knuckles and sturdy boots, one man with a nose badly broken, the other missing the better part of an ear.

They didn't even take the rutted track, instead picking their way through the woods by a sliver of light from a shuttered lantern. They spoke but rarely, and even then in whispers, as both knew well enough the task they'd been assigned. A deniable meeting with a forgettable man in a Wharf Street tavern, talk of interested parties, of inconveniences, of unfortunate accidents. Special mention made of a certain mill in the woods, and how flammable such structures tended to be. A suggestion that they might take a visit and see for themselves.

Which is why each carried a sloshing skin of cheap lamp oil on their midnight hike.

[Waldemar]

A long summer, a prosperous summer, a summer of bountiful plenty; a strange summer, a dreaming summer, a summer of fevered fancies. The miller had done well out of it, whatever the case, for all that he'd lost a worker to the Lady's whims and youthful aspirations; he'd found a replacement in the form of a squat, sleepy-eyed youth with bad skin that earned him the unfortunate name of Wart.

The mill has barely stopped grinding all summer, the track through the woods rutted by the passage of laden wagons that creaked and rattled to his door; in part thanks to the Lady's good favour, but more likely - to the miller's mind - because his flour was the finest and his dealings the fairest. Flour fine as chalk-dust for the baking of sweet cakes and snow-white bread; rye and barley meal for the bakers who served the poorer parts of town, baked into penny-loaves that proved not coarse but hearty, flavourful and nourishing. The miller's prices were fair, his bookkeeping scrupulous, though his humourless insistence upon precision in weights and measures earned him a reputation for something like parsimony - not a grain less, not a farthing more - but for all they might grumble among themselves the farmers still brought him grain by the sack and cartful.

As the wheat ripens in the field the mill experiences a few weeks of construction - ramshackle walls erected to expand the grinding floor, new wheels and belts and shafts put in place, a barrel-shaped granary sprouting from the building's side to replace the now-overflowing bins upstairs in anticipation of the late summer harvest.

New millstones arrive soon after, settling into place to either side of the main stones in their tun, and he invites his most valued customers - farmers, bakers, their wives, their eldest offspring - to see them set into motion for the first time; the great stones will be for wheat henceforth, he explains; this one for barley and rye, this other for oats or what-have-you else. To each guest he presents a small bag of fresh-milled flour - in thanks for their business, and long may it continue - before his workers move among them with platters of spice-cakes and currant buns, still-warm bread rolls and pots of rich yellow butter; a cask of excellent ale is tapped and the gathering grows more convivial as the evening progresses, ruddy-cheeked farmers vying with one another as to whose fields will yield the most wheat, the bakers raising toasts to flour that damn near bakes itself. The miller moves among them, graciously accepting their compliments and wishing them an excellent harvest in return.

Afterwards, a few of the guests even tell one another that they might have seen the old bastard smile once or twice.

* * *

The locusts change all that. What should have been a record harvest is devoured in the field, acre upon acre of crops ravaged and ruined. The miller hears it from one farmer after another - oh, they'd time to bring in some of their crops, but nowhere near what they'd expected. It'll be a lean winter, likely, as the town'll have to bring in supplies by road, costing coin that'll not be going to Myrken's farmers; all anticipate hard times ahead, with a few facing outright ruin.

The miller considers this, for a time, before he makes a proposal to those worst affected. He's no moneylender, and he'd not make debtors of them. But acorns, he says. If the harvest's as bad as they say it is there'll be shortages before the winter's out, and not enough wheat or even barley to go round. So bring him good, sound oak-nuts and he'll pay a fair price - he can make flour of them, and maybe it'll be enough to see them all through the winter.

Can't say fairer than that.