Ashwell Chapel becomes a recognized civic clinic. Morale holds because the ration rule is public.
By noon, Ashwell Chapel had run out of floor.
Children lay on door planks between the prayer benches. A mason shook under two blankets near the altar. The air smelled of vinegar, sweat, boiled fever bark, and old stone heated by too many bodies. Sister Nahla moved through it with her sleeves rolled to the elbow and a strip of cloth tied over her hair, touching throats, checking eyes, ordering mothers to lift cups one mouthful at a time.
"No more at the west door," she snapped when Adrian entered. "Put them in the vestry or take them to the street to die where I do not have to trip over them."
He stopped. Tomas Reed nearly walked into his back carrying a basket of salt packets.
Nahla looked up, saw Adrian, and did not apologize. "Duke or not, choose quickly."
Greyhold's famine had finally reached the part that no ledger softened. Hunger fever did not care that tax records had gained provisional recognition. It cared that bodies had burned through their last strength while false grain passed between Marrow hands.
The Duchy System opened across the chapel wall like frost.
ASHWELL CHAPEL: INFORMAL CARE SITE.
FEVER CASES: 47.
MEDICINE STORES: INSUFFICIENT.
RATION PRIORITY ORDER AVAILABLE.
COST: PUBLIC ANGER, REDUCED WORK RATIONS, MEDICINE RESERVE.
Mara Quill stood near the door with the ration list pressed to her chest. "If we move barley from wall crews, Oren loses half the afternoon."
"If we do not," Nahla said, "Oren buries workers by evening."
A man rose from beside his mother. "My house worked the wall. We were promised rations."
Another voice answered, "My child cannot stand."
The chapel began to tilt toward shouting. Adrian climbed onto the low step before the altar, not because he wanted height but because everyone needed one place to aim their anger.
"Greyhold's ration order changes for three days," he said.
The room went hard.
"Fevered children, nursing mothers, injured wall workers, and the watch on active gate duty eat first. Able workers receive reduced measures with salt broth until the fever count falls."
The first man took a step forward. "So my mother loses bread to someone else's child?"
Adrian looked at the old woman beside him. Her lips were cracked. Her eyes were open and furious. "What is her name?"
"Dena."
"Dena receives broth and fever check before sunset. If she worsens, she moves up the list. If she can swallow and stand, the child who cannot stand eats first."
"That is a pretty rule when it is not your mother."
"My mother died at court with physicians outside the door." Adrian's voice came out colder than he expected. "I know exactly how pretty rules sound beside a bed. This one is ugly and public."
Nahla watched him for one breath, then thrust a cup into his hand. "Good. Start being useful."
He fed broth to a boy whose teeth chattered so hard the cup clicked. Tomas knelt beside a girl with red hair plastered to her cheeks and told her, badly, that the salt made her strong as a gate hinge. Mara copied names from family mouths, not old tax records, and wrote symptoms beside them because Nahla demanded bodies, not households.
Outside, the reduced work rations arrived. Anger came with them. Oren Pike himself carried the first basket, jaw tight.
"My crew will curse you," he said.
"They should."
"I will too if the north brace slips."
"Then curse loudly and keep it standing."
Oren looked past him at the sick mason under the blanket. "That one is Hale. Hauled stone after his fingers split."
"He is first among injured workers."
That steadied something in Oren's face. "I can spare six men for stretcher boards. No more."
"Take four. Keep two on wall."
The system marked the order as people moved, not when Adrian spoke. That mattered. Lawful governance did not reward intention. It waited for salt to dissolve in thin broth, for a wall crew to accept less, for a clerk to write need where graft had once written names.
ASHWELL CHAPEL: CIVIC CLINIC RECOGNIZED.
CITY MORALE: 15 -> 15.
MORALE HELD UNDER HUNGER STRAIN.
STORES: 4 DAYS -> 3.4 DAYS.
Nahla saw his eyes track the unseen text. "Bad numbers?"
"Honest ones."
"Then listen to this one. Seven will die if fever bark runs out tonight."
Adrian's hand tightened around the empty cup. "Fenn brought enough for?"
"Five, if I stretch it. Four, if I practice medicine instead of prayer."
Mara looked up from the list. "There were medicine jars in the granary claim."
"Tea leaves," Adrian said.
From the nearest plank, the red-haired girl stirred. Her mother bent over her, weeping too quietly for relief yet.
"Mold man," the child whispered.
Nahla crouched. "What, little ember?"
"Mama bought flour from the mold man. He said scrape green off. Said Duke's store had worse."
Adrian knelt, every sound in the chapel sharpening.
"Where did he sell it?"
The child's eyes fluttered. "Under blue awning. Near old well. He had a silver ring. Split one."
Mara's pen scratched the page so hard it tore.
Outside, the chapel bell rang once for another fever arrival. Inside, the girl swallowed two drops of salted broth and kept breathing.
Adrian stood with her name on his tongue and the next fight already waiting under a blue awning.