Chapter 101 — Morton's Last Accounts

The autumn harvest ended with FireStorm richer in grain than Morton had dared predict. Newly reclaimed fields filled the granaries, monthly shipments from Braavosi partners continued arriving, and the steward's final calculation showed enough food for roughly a year and a half at current consumption.

Blackstone Creek was producing steadily. Dwarf artisans and local smiths had begun turning the new ore into consistent high-quality steel, while the Black Armor Army continued drilling at its two-hundred-man establishment.

A message from Braavos brought another success: Wayne's three ships had arrived safely. Red Sun Flame and clear glass were drawing orders, and the first reports suggested demand beyond what FireStorm's current kilns and stills could immediately supply.

Everything improved at once. For Morton, improvement meant more pages. The steward had spent half a month keeping candles lit late into the night while reconciling harvest yields, imported grain, workshop shipments, and the new hereditary land grants. Clerks could help copy numbers, but Morton still insisted on checking the final totals himself.

Morton collapsed over the harvest ledger. He was sixty-seven. He had entered House Ashenblade service at fifteen, long before Arlan was born, and had remained through bad winters, raids from the Red Mountains, declining revenues, deaths in the family, and the years when FireStorm seemed to shrink with every season.

After Ser Edwyn died, Morton kept the household accounts when there was almost nothing left to count. When Arlan awoke into a half-ruined holding facing another raid, the old steward had been the first person beside him who chose loyalty without first asking whether survival was likely.

Since FireStorm's recovery began, Morton's work had multiplied. Fields, rations, workshop accounts, refugees, taxes, military households, trade cargoes, land grants, construction, and now a mine all passed through hands that had never learned how to stop merely because they were old.

Arlan had ordered him to rest more than once. Morton had responded by moving his chair closer to the ledger.

On the last day of the harvest count, he finished checking the final grain entry, stood from his desk, and fell before the clerk beside him could reach the door.

Maester Velyn examined him in the steward's room. The prospecting maester had forged enough links in healing during his Citadel years to recognize what herbs could and could not repair. He listened to Morton's breathing, checked his pulse, and came outside with an expression that told Arlan the answer before he spoke.

"There is no single wound to treat," Velyn said. "Age, old illness, hunger from earlier years, and exhaustion have taken too much. I can ease pain and perhaps give him time. I cannot give him back what the years have spent."

Arlan entered alone. Morton looked smaller beneath the wool blanket than he ever had behind a desk. His face had thinned sharply, and every breath seemed to require a decision his body was growing tired of making.

Arlan pulled a chair beside the bed and adjusted the blanket where it had slipped from one shoulder. For a while Morton did not wake. The room smelled of bitter herbs, old wood, and the faint ink that seemed permanently attached to everything the steward owned.

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When his eyes finally opened, recognition came slowly and then all at once.

"My lord."

Arlan heard the old affection beneath the formal words. "I'm here."

Morton's hand moved weakly above the blanket; Arlan caught it before the effort could become another strain.

"The granary," Morton whispered. "A year and a half. If the monthly ships keep coming and the winter is ordinary. Do not let them sell the reserve because the price rises."

"I won't."

"Glass shipping accounts... third drawer in your study. The land grants are sealed. Copies in the iron chest."

Even now, the man was trying to finish work. "You arranged it," Arlan said. "Rodrick has the copies. The clerks know the ledgers. Nothing is going to disappear because you spend one day in bed."

Morton managed something close to a laugh, though it ended in a cough. "One day."

Arlan tightened his grip on the cold hand. The first days of his second life returned with irritating clarity: a poor castle, frightened villagers, too little grain, and an old steward who had produced the household's last flour and a stored sword because his answer to disaster was to give Arlan whatever remained.

In the months afterward, Arlan had fought where Morton could not; Morton had made sure there was still something behind him worth returning to.

"Ser Edwyn would be proud," Morton said after a long silence. "Lady Ellyn too. To see the house recognized... the fields full... people coming here instead of running away."

His cloudy eyes filled with tears that embarrassed him more than weakness did. "I only kept it from dying," he whispered. "You made it live again."

Arlan shook his head. "You kept it alive long enough for that to be possible."

Morton closed his eyes, still holding his hand.

News spread through FireStorm despite orders not to crowd the castle. People came quietly and left eggs, smoked meat, dried herbs, wool, and other small offerings beside the outer door. Many had received land or emergency grain from Morton's own hands and apparently believed the correct treatment for a dying steward was to create one final inventory problem for his staff.

Nobody complained about the pile. A clerk eventually began writing down the names of people who left goods so Morton would know, if he woke, exactly who had created the disorder outside his door. It was the sort of solution he would have approved while insisting the eggs be moved somewhere cool.

Brienne visited each morning before patrol. Cade came after drill and stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed as if facing an enemy he could not order into formation. Bor brought broth twice and pretended he had not made it. Rodrick took over more of the daily paperwork without moving Morton's ledgers from their usual places.

Velyn returned every day. Each time his answer became less hopeful. Morton's waking periods shortened. Sometimes he stared at the ceiling and murmured Ser Edwyn's name. Sometimes he asked whether the southern granary had been roofed, though the work had been finished weeks earlier. Once he woke convinced Arlan was still preparing to face the first raiders and tried to tell him where the old sword was stored.

Arlan spent evenings beside the bed after council business ended. He had watched people die before, in both lives, and knew enough to understand that familiarity did not make the waiting cleaner.

There was no enemy to kill and no contract to purchase from the Forging Group that turned sixty-seven years of wear into a young body again.

On the sixth evening, Velyn left after changing the herbs and paused at the door. "He is holding to something," the maester said quietly. "Sometimes people do."

Arlan already knew. Morton had started one sentence twice during clearer moments and stopped both times. Something remained beneath the accounts, the harvest, and his relief at seeing House Ashenblade rise again.

Arlan returned to the chair and waited beside him in the lamplight.

Whatever the old steward had carried for a lifetime, he was running out of lifetime in which to say it.