"Aye," agreed Dalhousie, kneeling as he wrapped his own sword in a sleeve of felt. "I never said it wasn't."

There seemed to be something in these words that Bram couldn't understand. For a man stealing a weapon in broad daylight Dalhousie looked remarkably bullish. "Go," he said.

Bram considered his options. None seemed good. He was sweating fiercely from the training session, and he'd been bashed so many times around the head that he wasn't certain he was capable of rational thought. He did know that you didn't pick a fight with a swordmaster unless you were pretty sure you could beat him. And then there was Millard Flag to consider. The head dairyman was awaiting his presence in the dairy, and after yesterday's bawling-out Bram didn't think it would be a good idea to be late.

As he turned to leave, Dalhousie said to him, "You're getting better on your feet, but you need to work on blocking. Fifty bull rings by tomorrow."

Bram nodded. A bull ring was a training sequence where you moved through a full circle while swinging your sword on its blade axis. Fifty would take some time.

Pol Burmish was entering the Churn Hall as Bram left. The tattooed and gray-haired warrior had drawn his sword in anticipation of a fight. He and Dalhousie often sparred together, keeping one another on their toes, and it was custom for a small crowd to gather and watch as they went through their paces. "Day to you, Cormac" Pol said, as he passed.

Bram nodded an acknowledgment and headed downstairs. Cormac. He was getting used to the name now and it no longer caught him off guard. Bram Cormac, son of Mabb: that was how he was known here. Pretty much everyone in the roundhouse was aware he was Robbie Dun Dhoone's brother, but apart from a few clan maids who teased him about it and Nathaniel Shayrac, the guide's assistant, who seemed to think it gave Bram an unfair advantage, no one ever mentioned it. Mabb Cormac was known and respected as a fine swordsman, and it was he who people named when commenting on Bram's kin. It felt strange but also good. At Dhoone he had been constantly measured against Robbie; his skin judged too dark, his shoulders too narrow, his height insufficient. Every time he had been introduced to someone as Robbie's brother he had seen disappointment in their eyes. At Castlemilk he was just another yearman, expected to work long hours, stay out of trouble, and keep up with his weapons training.

It was something Bram had not expected, this everyday acceptance. After he had spoken First Oath on the banks of the Milk, Wrayan Castlemilk had stood with her skirt hem floating in the water and said to him, "Now you are a Castleman for a year" Bram was only now beginning to realize the power of those words.

Reaching the ground floor, Bram decided not to risk the temptation of the kitchens and headed out the main door instead. Yesterday Millard Flagg had caught him pouring fresh milk into a vat that hadn't been submerged for sufficient time in the boiler. The punishment for this gross violation of dairy law had consisted of something the head dairyman liked to call "pat watch," which involved a lot more forking than watching, and left a man smelling so bad that afterward he had to roll in the snow. Besides, there was usually food inthe dairy. Cheese, curds, yogurt: you could scrounge something milky most days.

It had snowed a couple of inches in the night and Enoch Odkin and Beesweese were on shovel duty, clearing the front court of snow. Enoch waved to him, and Bram considering asking the yearman about Dalhousie's strange behavior with the sword, but decided he didn't! have time.

Hunching up his shoulders against the cold, he rushed down the Milkhouse steps. Directly ahead, the bargeman was pulling a man and his horse across the river. The horse's dark brown coat was so glossy it looked varnished. Its owner, who was standing talking to the bargeman as he cranked the rope, was dressed in a long wheat-colored saddle coat that was belted at the waist. He was holding something dark in his hand; it might have been a pair of gloves or day-pack. As Bram watched, the stranger's gaze turned toward him. It seemed a deliberate thing, as if the man had known Bram was there yet had delayed looking at him until he was good and ready. His eyes were yellow-green.

Bram turned away. A sharp breeze was channeling east along the Milk and it made him shiver. The dairy was situated to the rear of the roundhouse so he broke into a run to keep warm. It was two hours before noon and the sun was as small and pale as a chip of bone.

Last night's snow squeaked under his feet as he neared the first dairyshed. The hard standing would need to be shoveled so the cows who were due to calf could be walked, and Bram thought he might just as well get to it. Popping his head around the door, he called out a greeting. It was between milking times and the dairymaids were standing about eating fancies topped with dried cherries, and supping on watery mead they brewed themselves. They all swore they never drank milk.

"Bramee," they cried in chorus, teasing. There were five of them, dressed in stiff white aprons over blue dresses, and dainty caps that were worn in defiance of Millard Flag. The head dairyman would have preferred something bigger. "Bramee."

Every morning without fail this greeting accomplished two things: made the girls giggle uncontrollably at their own wit, and caused Bram's face to turn red. He couldn't work out why, after nearly a month, this continued to happen.

As soon as he'd unhooked the snow shovel from its peg behind the door, he went back outside. This morning's training session with Dalhousie had concentrated on the techniques necessary to block blows aimed at the head and chest, and Bram's ribs had taken a beating. He thought he might have blocked one in ten. Dalhousie was fast and he had countless subtle ways of varying an attack. They looked the same, but when they hit you each one felt different. Bram had given up worrying about bruises and now dealt with them the same way as Enoch Odkin, Beesweese and Trotty Pickering did: covered them in pig's lard and boasted about them. It seemed to work.

The new snow was fluffy and only a quarter-foot deep, and it didn't pain his ribs much to shift it. As he was finishing off, Millard Flag came out and informed him he was needed for heavy lifting in the milk room. "Boiler and count to ten a dozen times," he said wagging a finger.

That was the number of second-that you had to count off before you could remove the chums and steel pails from the hot-water bath and reuse them. Yesterday Bram had stopped count at eighty-four.

The milk room was large and noisy. Worktables lined the space, and both sets of double doors—front and back—were kept open throughout the day. Two dairymaids were skimming the cream from the new pails and a third was pouring milk through a wire strainer. Millard Flag and his apprentice, Little Coll, were tilting one of the big cheese vats to pour off the brine. Bram was told to carry various items—two sealed churns, some trays of newly blocked butter wrapped in cloths, and a stack of cheese in tin molds—down to the cold room which lay directly beneath the milk room. After that he was to head outside and feed the boiler fire.

Bram was on his third run down the ancient stone steps when Millard called his name. Hands full with a tray of butter, Bram called out he would be up in a minute. The cold room was dark and low-ceilinged, with crumbly stone walls and a limewashed floor. It smelled like fat and raw earth. None of the dairymaids liked to come here, and they usually sent for Bram or Little Coll if they needed something brought aboveground.

As he slid the tray into one of the deep recesses in the walls, Bram heard a footfall on the stairs.

"I see you are working hard," Wrayan Castlemilk said descending the final steps and entering the chill shadows of the cold room. Fine silver chains at her throat and wrists gleamed as she moved around the chamber. "I don't believe I have been down since I was a girl. I imagined it bigger and more … frightful. My brother once told me they slaughtered cows here. He bolted that door on me one evening. Didn't come back. The old dairyman Windle Hench found me here the next morning. Apparently I was sitting right where you stand now, calmly eating a wedge of cheese."