Setting it up!
Three people ‘ran’ Windermere Castle: Duchess Carlotta, Lord Davies, and the Reverend Be-Not-Dismayed Baxter, representing the civil, military, religious authorities, respectively. Naturally they must meet to discuss the beacon-fire message. Naturally, Carlotta reminded herself.
Davies was reading the message, for the benefit of the reverend. “Fire in camp. Alchemists dead. Running low on peppercorn. Sickness soon. Help. Help — and then it started the message again.” The officer looked most exceedingly grim. “I have no idea how long they have been sending it out.”
“Can we speak back to them?” asked Baxter. He sounded tired and looked gray, half like a revenant himself. Three weeks of siege had bowed his back and stripped him of most of his hair. “Even if it is just to offer our prayers?”