"Crack my head open and take a look."

I paused, looking up from my ledger and staring at the chef.

Iva Lane was a wiry woman of around sixty, wearing an apron over a cream-colored dress. Her hands were buried in a ball of dough, thick arms with muscle like ropes beneath her skin worked it with the same ease I might wring out a sponge.

Elsewhere in the kitchen a cauldron of oatmeal simmered quietly on a fire, and Bramn, the stout forty-something man who served as chef's assistant, chopped vegetables.

"I take that to mean," I started, keeping my tone gentle – I didn't want to antagonize this important woman – "that the list of weekly food requirements exists only in your mind?"

"I'm in this kitchen ten hours a day. I don't have time to sit down and make notes. But if you want to go into the larder and count every bean, you're free to do it by me."

I turned back a page in my ledger, to the inventory I'd taken of the fort.

I remained measured as I replied. "Miss Lane, I have counted the beans. The number was zero. We have two casks of flour, a sack of barley, and precious little else. I'll need your help to work out whether we should be worried."

By 'barley' Iva was looking at me sharply. She peered into my eyes, and I felt she was trying to guess what I was thinking. I made no effort to keep the concern from my face.

She stopped kneading, long strands of dough grasping at her fingers like the tendrils of some sea creature, and marched into the larder, returning a few seconds later with a stack of steel buckets of various sizes. The smallest was the size of a drinking cup, increasing up to one the size of my head.

She started placing them on the bench one after the other.

"Flour. Oats. Barley. 'Bega. Salt. Oil. I get Bramn to fill them in the morning, and what's in them is enough for the day. Them upstairs like a bit of cheese or meat, and whatever fruit or forage we've got."

I made notes as she spoke, writing down my guess on the size of the measuring containers.

"Is there much forage?"

"Greens. Garlic. Depends on the season."

"How many of these buckets would you get out of a cask, or-" I broke off without finishing the question. Iva had given me a shrug and from her expression I understood it wasn't something they usually needed to keep track of.

"May I borrow these?" I asked, indicating the measuring containers.

I left the kitchen, carrying the measuring buckets down to the undercroft, where things were as I'd left them.

I began using the buckets to measure the contents of the casks, transferring flour to an empty cask rolled in from the other chamber. It took some time, and it was messy work. By the time I was done my face and clothes were dusted with flour, but after repeating the process with the barley, and the roots, I felt I had a fairly accurate estimate of how long our current stores would last us.

Nine days. Nine days until the barley ran out. Then another three until the flour was gone – or less, since we'd likely eat correspondingly more of it.

I dusted my hands off, clutching my ledger under one elbow.

How had things got to this state. The fort was in a concerning situation, and I couldn't help but feel that it was my responsibility.

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This kind of work was really the job of a quartermaster, not an administrator, and certainly not a librarian.

I suddenly felt like I was drowning, my future sinking into opaque depths below me, its weight pulling me down after it.

I missed the Library. Its shelves probably held some book with tables of how much a person needed to eat. There were probably formulas for calculating how well one food supplemented another when stores were low. I didn't even know the trade well enough to know how much a cask held without measuring it out by hand. I had never expected things like this would fall to me. I was in over my head.

But...

But the people in the rooms above would never know just how deeply in over my head I was.

I ran my hand down over my face, wiping away sweat and flour. I slapped my waistcoat and pants clean, and wiped the powdery fingerprints away from the cover of my ledger. I cleared my throat, took a breath, and turned to head back upstairs.

"We have nine days until things start to run out, and everything else will go quickly after that," I said to Iva, lowering the stack of buckets back onto the counter.

She stared at me, and I stared back. She wore a somewhat awkward expression, a grimace that suggested she didn't know what to say, or what our next moves would be.

"How often are deliveries?" I asked her.

"The wagon comes once a month."

"When is the next one due?"

"We should have just had one. Wilf always looked after the unloading."

I had a strong suspicion that the wagon I rode up from North Hill was the scheduled monthly supply trip, but on my journey there had been no supplies for the fort. No food beyond what I, the driver, and the horses needed.

"Is it possible that he also handled the monthly orders?"

Iva slammed a ball of dough, now tight and elastic, down onto a metal sheet.

"I'm sure he did. But it's not like we all died when he did. They should have just kept it coming."

"It seems that they didn't," I said.

I had surprisingly little trouble believing that we had slipped through the cracks of the Polity management at North Hill, however I was surprised that nobody else at Fort Amalveor had taken up Wilfram's duties after he vacated his role.

Chains of authority existed for a reason. Somebody here should have assessed which important tasks were being missed and taken them up, out of a sense of self-preservation if nothing else.

"A person can go three weeks without food," a deep voice said from the other side of the kitchen, startling both Iva and me.

We both turned slowly to look, and saw Bramn dicing vegetables, the blade moving in swift, precise cuts.

"More if they have a little extra meat on the bones. Less if they're light, or water is short. Or if it's a child."

We both stared at him for a few seconds longer before resuming our conversation.

I turned back to Iva and spoke more quietly.

"It won't come to that. We'll find a solution."

Iva nodded, then lifted another ball of dough and slapped it down beside the first. She didn't look overly concerned. I took that as a sign of faith and allowed myself to feel bolstered. I had projected confidence, if nothing else.

I snatched a tin cup from a high shelf and filled it with oatmeal from the cauldron, before thanking Iva and leaving the kitchen, heading for the stairs. I had a meeting to schedule.