Lime burned hotter than most men trusted.
It spit and hissed in the kilns dug into the hill, white smoke rolling out of rough brick chimneys.
The men working nearest wore cloths over their faces and muttered that their lord had taken leave of his senses, burning rocks while snow still lay in the ditches.
Then the mason showed them what the white powder did when mixed with sand and water and set between two stones.
They tested it with hammer blows. It held.
"Will it last?" one asked.
"Longer than you," the mason said, half in awe. "If we mix it right."
The first stone granary went up that spring at a village that had seen its wooden barn flood out twice in ten years.
Castor rode out to see it when the last stone went in.
It was not beautiful. Thick walls. Small high vents. A heavy door barred from the outside.
"Dry?" he asked the men who'd shoveled the last of the season's grain into it.
"Dry enough," they admitted. "Doesn't stink of mold. Rats haven't gotten in yet."
"Good," Castor said. "Next winter, when you're not scraping the bottom of rotten bins, remember why."
He didn't say what he was really thinking: that when another village's barn went up in flames, as they always did somewhere, he'd have spare grain to send. Or to sell. Or to withhold.
The road crews cursed his name with every rock they hauled.
Then, on market days, the carters started choosing the half-finished new route rather than the old one, even if it meant a small detour, because their wheels didn't vanish into knee-deep mud.
"You'll thank me in five years," he told one complaining lord plainly. "Or your son will."
The man grumbled, but didn't argue. No one liked their lord to sound that sure of something and then be proven right.
Bethany began wearing looser gowns.
It was subtle at first.
A different cut at the waist.
An extra layer of fabric where once she'd worn her dresses close to her figure.
The servants noticed. Servants always did.
They said nothing where it could be heard, but the looks passed from one to another.
By the time the first whispers reached the outer hall—that the Lady of the Dreadfort had not bled in some time, that she had taken to touching her stomach without realizing it—
Castor already had his explanation ready, if anyone forced him to voice one: grief, late fruit from an old marriage, the gods' odd timing.
No one forced him.
Old men in the yard watched Bethany walk past with her hand resting lightly on a belly that was only just beginning to show, and chose not to do the math out loud.
They'd seen what happened to those who asked the wrong questions under Roose.
They saw enough of Roose in Castor's eyes to keep their calculations to themselves.
At night, behind barred doors and hidden panels, Bethany lay with her head on Castor's chest and listened while he talked about roads and ledgers and boats on the Weeping Water.
"You sound more like a maester than a lord," she said once, not unkindly.
"Maesters advise," he replied. "I decide."
She traced idle circles on his skin. "And when you've finished all this deciding? When the roads are laid and the sheds are built?"
"Then," he said, "we'll see who's still standing when the realm starts to shake."
She didn't ask how he knew the realm would. She'd learned, in the last four years, that her son often spoke as though he'd already seen the pieces move.
In the morning, she straightened her dress, smoothed her hair, and stepped back into the role of Lady Bolton—colder and more self-contained than most, but visibly steadier than she'd been in Roose's last years.
A woman with something to protect.
Castor went back to his numbers.
To his roads.
To his river.
Lords in other keeps poured over their own concerns and only occasionally spared a thought for what was happening in the Dreadfort.
They would have time to regret that later.