The Latch

The storm came down on the seventh day and shut the keep like a book.

It was not the kind of storm Ilse knew from Brennock, which arrived with thunder and left with a mess. This one arrived without a sound. In the morning the valley was there; by noon it wasn’t, and the windows showed nothing but a white so total it looked solid, and the wind moved round the tower with a long, patient pressure that made the shutters creak like a ship. Nobody went out. Nobody could. The fire in the kitchen was fed every hour by a rota, and the rota was posted on the pantry door in Wenna’s handwriting, ruled into columns.

Ilse spent the first day on the cipher and got nowhere.

She spent the second day on the cipher and got a little further than nowhere, which was worse, because it meant she…