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“A month of framing. Gray lumber. One shingle bundle standing there like a scarecrow. The dales road has been open all season, and my shingle order got lost. Twice. You stood up in this room and swore to me you’d get that roof done, and every soul present saw you do it.” I put the ledger on the bar. “So. As the keeper of the fund and the order and, apparently, my life, would you like to tell me what happened to it?”

Everyone in the tavern held their breath. Rufus looked at me a long moment, a tea towel draped over his shoulder, and I could see him working himself up to a lie.

“I lost the first order off the back of my own cart,” he said. “On purpose. Into the millpond. The second one I wrote wrong myself. I sent the dales man specifications for a shingle size that doesn’t exist.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Take it out of my hide if you’d like, but I’d do it again, and slower.”

Everyone in the room let out a breath. Somebody in the back began to giggle but suppressed it.

“You’d do it again?” I asked, half a shriek.

“We all would.” Mrs. Honeycake came over to stand by my elbow, her cane up like a shield. Her other hand fumbled for a spelled bun from her basket. She held it toward me. “Dear. Have a⁠—”

“Do not hand me an ensorcelled bun, Delia Honeycake. I’ve counted the buns. Every time I’ve asked about my roof since the fair, this village has fed me one. Not just Asha. Everyone. Nine buns, two seed cakes, and a jam tart, and every one of them bought a change of subject. I ate them all like a prize sow⁠—”

“You condemned my beams,” Goran said in a low voice.

The room turned.

He glared at Mrs. Honeycake. “Three site inspections. You stood in front of me in your flour-covered apron and told the carpenter the beams had worm.”

“They did have worm,” Mrs. Honeycake said with a stiffening of her spine.

“They were my beams. Off my land. I felled them in the spring. There has never been a worm on that hill.”

“Well,” she said, adjusting her basket. “Perhaps it was a very quiet worm.”

Giggling broke out in the back again. Bram. It spread down his bench and jumped to the grannies’ table.

Mrs. Piddock’s mother laughed until her funeral brooch came unpinned.

Goran came off the door and crossed the room to loom over everyone.

His looming was amazing, though it only lasted a short time, because Mrs. Honeycake reached up and put a warm roll into his opening mouth.

He pulled the roll out and looked down at it. “You can’t just⁠—”

She patted his forearm.

He ate the roll. His jaw worked the entire time, but he ate it because no one had ever found a counterspell to an Asha roll.

My champion. Unraveled by a bun. The village had used the same weapon on both of us all season, and we’d eaten it.

I climbed onto a chair. Somebody had to salvage this.

“All of you sabotaged a roof,” I said, over the din, which quieted to a simmer, every face turned up at me. “For an entire month. Rufus drowned an order. Delia slandered honest beams. The twins have driven more lumber away from my shop than toward it. Somebody walk me through the scale of this, please, because I’ve been out at Goran’s farm assuming my roof was being fixed, meanwhile half the county has been running a conspiracy.”

“Melissant kept minutes,” Old Tom said.

“Minutes?”

“There’s a subcommittee,” Bram said, wiping his eyes.

“For the record,” Old Tom added, standing, hooking his thumbs in his coat pockets. “I knew from the start. Called it at this bar the morning after the storm. ‘Mark me,’ I said, ‘that girl won’t spend a fortnight at that farm before⁠—’”

“You said,” Rufus cut in, “that the ogre would eat her cat.”

“Part of it I called.” Old Tom sat back down and lifted his ale, taking a long drink.

The Hollow had been caught red-handed.