Chapter 13: Hewitt’s Folly
The wind off the Waking Sea was a cold, clean slap after the heavy stillness of the council chamber. Up here, on the cliffside estate, it carried the distant, iron smell of salt and the earthy scent of turned soil. Kerr stood in the yard of Bann Hewitt’s manor, a steaming mug of something bitter the steward had called tea in one hand, his other resting on the pommel of the sword at his hip. He looked out over the rolling pastures where the legendary Hewitt herds were supposed to graze.He saw sheep. A few scattered dairy cows. Some pens of bleating goats. It was a pastoral scene, pretty even, but it was not an empire of beef.
“Beautiful land,” Kerr said, his voice conversational, almost lost on the wind.
Hewitt, standing a respectful three paces away, his jowly face still pale from the night’s dread, nodded too vigorously. “Yes, Your Majesty. Been in the family for seven generations. We’ve a… a deep connection to it.”
“I can see that.” Kerr took a sip.The tea was awful. He didn’t flinch. “Must take a lot of hands. To manage it all.”
“Oh, yes, Sire. Many.” Hewitt gestured vaguely towards a cluster of low, thatched cottages smoking in the distance. “Good folk. Simple, but loyal.”
Kerr nodded, his eyes still scanning the horizon. He let the silence stretch, broken only by the cry of gulls and the lowing of a single cow. “Let’s go inside, Bann. Get out of this wind. I want to see your operation up close.”
The solar was a testament to stolen wealth. Not gaudy, but deeply, solidly expensive. The hearth was carved marble, imported from Orlais. The tapestries were Antivan silk, depicting hunting scenes with threads of real gold. The ledger, when Hewitt’s trembling steward brought it forth, was bound in embossed leather and smelled of fine paper and ink.
Kerr took the seat by the fire, gesturing for Hewitt to sit across from him. He set his awful tea on a side table carved from a single piece of driftwood. He opened the ledger.
For an hour, he just read. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire, the turning of pages, and Hewitt’s increasingly ragged breathing. Kerr asked questions, his tone flat, curious.
“This entry here. Replenishment. One thousand, one hundred head. That’s the number you bring the herd back to, each season?”
“Y-Yes, Your Majesty. Standard practice. For… for consistency.”
“I see.” Kerr flipped a page. “And the Crown stipend. Based on that number?”
Hewitt’s handkerchief was back, mopping at his neck. “A subsidy, Sire. To ensure the stability of the kingdom’s food supply. My father, and his father…”
“I know what a subsidy is,” Kerr said, not looking up. His finger traced a column of figures. “Been receiving it for decades, this shows. That’s a lot of trust from the Crown.”
“We have always been loyal!”
Kerr finally looked up. His eyes were calm, gray, and utterly depthless. “Let’s take a walk.”
They walked the pastures. Kerr counted, not aloud, but his eyes moved, tracking, estimating. He visited the slaughtering shed, the smokehouse, the cold cellar. He spoke to the foreman, a grizzled man with knotted hands and wary eyes, asking about yield, about feed, about the winter losses. The man’s answers were halting, his gaze flicking constantly to the crimson-faced Bann trailing behind them like a doomed balloon.
Back in the solar, the afternoon light was fading, casting long shadows from the ornate furniture. Kerr didn’t sit. He stood by the window, looking out at the manicured gardens below, their paths lined with the flapping crimson-and-gold banners of Ferelden.
“It’s a beautiful estate,” Kerr said again, his voice soft.
Hewitt, who had been hovering near his chair, dared to hope. “Thank you, Your Majesty. We take great pride in—”
“Shut up, Hewitt.”
The words weren’t loud. They were quiet, final, and they cut the Bann’s voice off like a knife through a throat.
Kerr turned from the window. He picked up the ledger. He held it up.
“One thousand, one hundred head. Replenished yearly. For decades.” He dropped the ledger on the desk with a thick, definitive thud. “I saw maybe two hundred animals out there. No more.”
Hewitt opened his mouth, a protest forming.
Kerr didn’t let him speak. He pulled a second, smaller book from inside his cloak—the Crown’s own ledger, the one he’d spent nights cross-referencing. He flipped it open to a marked page.
“A fully grown steer yields about seven hundred and twenty-five pounds of usable meat. That’s standard.” Kerr’s voice was a teacher’s now, patient and deadly. “One thousand, one hundred head? That’s… let’s call it seven hundred and ninety-seven thousand pounds of beef. Every single year.” He looked up. “How many pounds of Hewitt beef entered the royal storehouses last year, according to the Crown’s receipts?”
Hewitt was silent. Sweat soaked through the fine silk at his armpits.
“Four thousand.” Kerr closed the Crown ledger with a soft snap. “Four.Thousand. Pounds.”
He let the numbers hang in the room. The crackling fire seemed to laugh at them.
Kerr’s gaze left Hewitt’s face. He let it travel, slow and deliberate, around the room. Over the marble hearth. Over the Antivan silk. Over the intricate marquetry of the desk, the silver inlay on the tea service, the imported glass in the windows.
“I look at these numbers,” Kerr said, his voice dropping to something almost conversational again. “And then I look at this room.” He turned his head back to Hewitt. “And I see a story. It’s not a story about farming, or loyalty, or generations of care.” He took a single step forward. “It’s a story about theft. Deliberate, sustained fraud against the Fereldan Crown. Against the people whose taxes pay your stipend. Against the queen whose treasury you’ve been robbing for, what, twenty years? More?”
Hewitt made a sound like a drowning man.
“I’m done making you sweat,” Kerr said, all pretense of patience gone. His voice was flat, cold stone. “Here is what happens now. Your right over this estate, its lands, and every stitch of wealth built on these lies is forfeit. As of this moment. You have a choice. You can walk out of this gate with the clothes on your back and whatever personal items my men see fit to allow you. Or you can choose imprisonment. A formal trial for fraud and attempted robbery of Her Majesty’s treasury. I’d recommend the first option.”
Hewitt swayed. His hand shot out, clutching the back of the carved chair to keep from crumpling to the exquisite rug. “You… you can’t… my family…”
“Your family’s legacy is a ledger of lies,” Kerr said. He gestured to the window. “The farmhands. The men and women who actually work this land while you counted imaginary cows. They’ll run it now. As a collective, under Crown supervision. They’ll have a real chance to produce what these books have only ever pretended to.” He leaned in, close enough for Hewitt to smell the cold sea air on his cloak. “Consider it a down payment on the decades of wages you stole from them.”
He straightened up. “My captain and his men will oversee the transfer. They will inventory everything. You will be removed from the property by sundown.”
Kerr picked up his dreadful, cold cup of tea. He looked into its murky depths for a second, then set it back down on the priceless driftwood table.
“Good day, Hewitt.”
He turned and walked out of the solar, his boots silent on the plush rug. In the hallway, his captain, a grizzled veteran from Highever with a scar bisecting his lip, stood waiting with four stone-faced soldiers.
“It’s done,” Kerr said, his voice low. “Start the inventory. The bann is to be off the land by dark. Treat him with no cruelty, but allow no sentiment. Every spoon, every tapestry. It belongs to Ferelden now.”
“Aye, Your Majesty.”
Kerr didn’t look back as he walked out into the courtyard. Behind him, from the open window of the solar, came a choked, wet sob, quickly stifled.
He mounted his horse, a giant Fereldan charger that sidestepped nervously at the tension in the air. He looked once more at the grand manor on the cliff, its banners snapping defiantly in the sea wind. Soon, he knew, those banners would be taken down. The marble and the silk would be sold. The gold would go back into the roads and bridges Anora had mapped out.
He nudged his horse into a trot, the wind drying the last of the manor’s oppressive warmth from his skin. He didn’t feel triumph. He felt tired. And he felt a cold, hard knot of determination settle deeper into his gut.
This was just the first stone pulled from the wall. He and Anora had a kingdom to rebuild. And he was starting to understand, in his bones, what that really meant.