A cart rattled along the road outside Hale Cottage hard enough to shake the latch. Someone shouted after a wandering goat. An axe struck wood in a steady rhythm, and sparrows fought beneath our eaves as if breakfast depended on it.
Brookhaven had been awake for some time. I buried my face in the pillow and tried not to join it.
“Edrin.”
My mother’s voice came through the door with dangerous calm.
I opened one eye. Maren only sounded that patient when she’d already won.
“If you can pretend you’re sleeping,” she said, “you can carry water.”
“Healer’s wisdom? Have you been speaking to Dalla?”
“I’ve been speaking to your empty breakfast bowl.”
That was a threat worth respecting.
I hauled myself from bed, found my boots, and pulled on my worn leather jerkin. The room still held the mild chill of spring night, though sunlight had begun warming the floorboards. Maren waited in the kitchen with two empty buckets.
She pressed them into my hands. “The north well.”
“I was hoping they might fill themselves out of affection.”
“Then be charming on the road. You’re late for Kade already.”
“I haven’t even eaten.”
“A tragedy I’m prepared to prolong.”
She pointed me toward the door. I gave her my most wounded look, which had never worked on her and probably explained why I kept trying.
Outside, Brookhaven opened around me in the clear, bright morning.
Our road curved between timber cottages with steep thatched roofs, their walls washed cream, blue, or whatever color their owners had managed to mix before patience failed. Gardens crowded the fences in unruly green. Pea vines climbed twine. Crocuses nodded beneath windows. Beyond the rooftops, fields rolled toward the eastern woods in bands of new growth, and the sky above them looked like a road I could walk into.
The road remained soft from old rain. Cart wheels had carved deep tracks into it, their edges drying beneath the sun. Woodsmoke tangled with wet soil, horse sweat, fresh bread, and the sharp green bite of crushed herbs. Chickens complained beneath a wagon. Two farmers argued cheerfully over a gate hinge. Near the brook, a saw whined through timber while the waterwheel answered with its slow wooden groan.
Brookhaven held only a few hundred souls, which meant privacy was a tale told to frighten children. Faces turned as I followed the north road, not because I was important. I recognized nearly everyone, and their raised brows asked the same question: why wasn’t I where I ought to be?
One woman sweeping her threshold pointed at the buckets. I pointed at my empty stomach. She shook her head and kept sweeping. Even the town’s sympathies had limits before breakfast.
The road narrowed between cottages, then widened past vegetable plots and low sheds. I passed the smithy, where sparks leaped blue-white from the forge, and the little shrine whose bell rope hung crooked from the eaves. A boy in a red cap chased a chicken beneath a washing line. The chicken escaped. The boy didn’t accept this result with grace.
At the northern bend, an old mile marker leaned beside the road, waist-high and mottled with lichen. Generations of weather and curious hands had worn its carved distance nearly smooth.
Two children chased each other around it, waving little wooden birds whose jointed wings flapped and whistled when they ran. One bird escaped its owner, circled a chimney twice, and landed on the head of a deeply offended scarecrow.
I laughed loud enough that both children looked at me. The cooper’s daughter bowed. Her brother retrieved his bird.
Beyond the bend, the roofs of Hale Cottage slipped from view. I followed the road past the last close-set gardens and into the well-square, where the road opened around a stone basin and a handful of broad steps. By then I’d spent several precious minutes admiring Brookhaven, though Kade would call it loitering and, annoyingly, be right.
I hooked the first bucket to the rope and worked the crank. Damp hemp rasped against my calluses. The bucket descended with a hollow knock, then vanished into the well. When I hauled it back, cold water splashed over my knuckles. I filled the second bucket, set both beside the basin, and rolled my shoulders.
They already ached. Kade had a talent for beginning a day before I did.
On the shaded side of the square, a child sat on a doorstep with one trouser leg rolled above a scraped knee. He was trying not to cry and failing with admirable dignity. Dalla crouched in front of him, her blunt dark hair tied back at her jaw with strips of cloth. Her patched wool coat bunched around sharp elbows, and herb-dry bundles clicked against her belt whenever she shifted.
She cupped both hands around the child’s knee.
Golden light gathered between her palms.
It spread across the boy’s skin like sunlight through honey. Torn flesh drew together beneath her fingers, redness faded, and the smear of dirt became the only evidence that anything had happened. Magic in Brookhaven mostly closed scrapes, coaxed seeds, and kept children in possession of their knees. Grander places could keep their miracles. Ours were practical.
The boy stared at his whole knee, flexed it twice, then sprang up.
“Walk,” Dalla told him.
He ran.
Dalla watched him vanish around the corner. “Remarkable how healing the knee also deafens the ears.”
“You’ve described my childhood.”
Her green eyes moved over me, then down to the buckets. “Your childhood had fewer healed knees and more broken noses.”
“All of them unfairly acquired.”
“Of course.” She gathered her cloths. “The fences struck first.”
I lifted the buckets. Their handles bit into my palms, and water slapped the rims with every step.
Dalla fell in beside me for the first stretch of the return, carrying her satchel and offering no help whatsoever.
“Healer’s hands,” she said when I glanced at her.
“Convenient.”
“Very.”
She turned down the herb row halfway home. I kept south, trading the buckets from hand to hand whenever one arm began to burn. Brookhaven was small until a man had to carry its water across it.
I passed the old mile marker again, then the blue cottage with the crooked chimney, then the orchard path where low branches reached over the fence. The buckets grew heavier. My shoulders tightened. Water sloshed over my boots, and I began considering whether breakfast could be swallowed whole.
Hale Cottage came back into view around the last bend.
Maren stood at our gate with her sleeves rolled above her forearms. Her iron-brown hair had begun escaping its severe knot, and flour dusted one side of her apron. Her gray eyes settled first on the water, then on me.
“You’re admiring the scenery,” she said.
“I gathered strength.”
“You gathered half the road on your boots. Bring the water inside.”
Her eyes brightened, which she’d have denied. I turned too quickly in triumph and sloshed water over one boot.
Maren laughed, full and sudden. “There. Now the road has had a drink too.”
I carried the buckets into the kitchen, set them beside the hearth, and reached for the bread waiting on the table.
She slapped my hand away with a folded cloth.
“Kindling first.”
“You raised me without mercy.”
“I raised you with breakfast. You’ve confused the two.”
The chopping block stood behind the cottage beside a stack diminished through winter to a few crooked rows. I split dry branches to fill the basket, each stroke sending a clean crack through the yard. Sunlight climbed while I worked. Warmth gathered beneath my jerkin, and bark flecks clung to my palms.
Maren inspected the finished pile as if judging a bridge she expected to cross.
“That’ll do,” she said.
High praise. I took the bread before she could reconsider and leaned down to kiss her cheek. She caught my chin, turned my face toward the light, and brushed a strand of hair from my brow.
“You’re late.”
The shrine bell rang from the center of Brookhaven.
I froze with bread between my teeth.
Maren’s eyes brightened. “Very late.”
I snatched up my shortsword and buckled the belt around my waist, nearly tangling the scabbard between my knees. My belt knife knocked against it as I lurched for the gate.
“Kade will have my hide.”
“Then perhaps he can teach it punctuality.”
I looked back once. Maren stood in the spring sunlight with the empty kindling basket against her hip, wearing a smile she might deny later. The house waited behind her, warm with bread and woodsmoke, and my breakfast waited in my hand, already losing its battle with haste.
Then the bell rang again, and I ran toward whatever punishment Kade had prepared.
By the time I reached Brookhaven’s training yard, the recruits were already moving through paired drills. Practice blades cracked together beneath the spring sun. Boots churned the softened ground into brown paste, and every face turned toward me with the eager cruelty of people delighted that someone else had drawn Kade’s attention.
Kade stood in the middle of them, weathered and iron-gray, planted as firmly as an old gatepost. The long scar from his jaw to his collarbone showed pale against his skin. His sword hung at his side, the faint shimmer along its edge visible whenever he moved. He let me cross half the yard before speaking.
“You’re late, kid.”
“I noticed.”
“Good. Saves me explaining.”
A recruit snorted. I swallowed the last dry corner of bread and raised a hand.
“Morning.”
“Is it?” Kade asked.
The laughter came quickly. Even I had to give him that.
He turned to the recruits. “This is Edrin Hale. He’s here to demonstrate the first rule of surviving an ambush.”
My grin held, though only because pride looked worse when it bled in public. “Which rule is that?”
“Be present when it happens.”
That earned him louder laughter.
“Get a practice blade,” Kade said. “Since you’ve spared yourself the warm-up, you can spend the morning discovering why we have one.”
The first drills punished me before any opponent could. Shoulder cuts. Thrusts from guard. Retreats across churned ground. Then the same movements again until sweat darkened the leather at my chest and my forearms began to tremble.
Kade corrected everyone else with a word or a tap. He corrected me by making me repeat the entire sequence.
“Your feet.”
I reset them.
“Those are still your feet. Put them somewhere useful.”
“I’ve grown attached to them.”
“That’ll pass when someone cuts one off.”
We worked through cuts from awkward angles, close work at the fence, and recovery after a stumble. Recruits changed partners, drank, returned, and changed again. The sun rose higher. Mud dried in rough scales on my boots. My shoulders burned with a deep, steady ache.
I kept making the same mistake when I tired. I watched the blade instead of the person holding it.
Kade struck my wrist with the flat of his sword.
“Eyes up.”
“My wrist disagrees.”
“Your wrist has poor judgment.”
Near midday, the younger recruits had begun dragging their feet. Kade crooked one finger at me and chose the broad-shouldered recruit who had laughed loudest when I arrived.
Of course he did.
“Bout ends when one of you yields or lands flat,” Kade said. “Try not to embarrass Brookhaven. Either of you.”
The recruit came at me with the confidence of a man who’d watched me suffer for hours. His first cut hammered into my guard and numbed my fingers. The next drove me backward. My heel slid in the mud and took the rest of me with it. I went down full length, tasted the yard, and came up with laughter stirring along the fence.
Heat climbed my neck. I attacked too quickly, reaching for his shoulder. He knocked my blade aside and struck me across the ribs hard enough to fold the breath from me.
“Pretty,” Kade said. “Useless, but pretty.”
I circled before the recruit could press me. The ground near the fence was firmer, packed hard by dozens of boots. He followed, eager now. That eagerness lifted his shoulders before every cut.
The next one came high. I slipped outside it, let his practice blade hiss past my ear, and struck his forearm. He grunted. I moved again, turning him until his boots found the slick patch I’d left behind.
He lunged.
I stepped aside, caught his wrist against my guard, and gave his shoulder a sharp shove. His balance vanished. He hit the mud on one knee, tried to rise, and found my wooden point resting beneath his chin.
For a breath, nobody spoke.
Then one of the recruits laughed at him instead.
I offered my hand. “The ground and I reached an understanding earlier. It likes you better.”
He took it with a reluctant grin.
“Again,” Kade said.
My grin died. “You said the bout ended when one of us yielded or landed flat.”
“He landed flat.”
“On one knee.”
“A spiritually flat position.”
The second bout lasted longer. The recruit had stopped chasing me. He’d also started reading my shoulders, which announced every attack a breath before my feet arrived, and clever feet are worth nothing behind a shouting shoulder. He clipped my thigh. I caught his blade too late and took a strike across the forearm. We broke apart, circled, and went in again until Kade stopped us with a bark.
“Drink before you fall over and make me teach the yard how to bury you.”
The last drills passed in the yard’s rhythm. We worked against uneven ground, retreated without crossing our feet, and closed until elegant swordplay became elbows, boots, and breath. By the time Kade dismissed us, my arms trembled whenever I lowered the practice blade.
I returned it to the rack and reached for my shortsword. Kade waited beside the fence while the others wandered toward Brookhaven.
“You made your point,” I said. “Repeatedly. Mostly against my ribs.”
He flexed one thick hand. His answer took its time.
“Your footwork was good.”
The ache in my side seemed to loosen.
“Not polished,” he continued. “Not disciplined. But good. You read the ground, changed your angle, made him follow. Corwin had that same instinct. Your father was the best pair of feet I ever trained.”
He glanced away, and the mention ended there.
I didn’t spoil it with a joke.
“Talent won’t excuse lateness,” Kade said.
“No, but it makes the humiliation feel more expensive.”
One corner of his mouth moved. “Go on, kid.”
I walked back toward Brookhaven bruised and filthy. The laughter still stung. By the yard gate, I caught myself grinning anyway.
Sera’s voice came from behind me.
“You won.”
She watched from the fence bordering the training field, her forearms folded over the sun-warmed rail. An orchard path ran behind her, and carts moved along the road beyond it, wheels creaking beneath baskets of spring produce. She’d chosen the shade beneath an old apple tree. White petals caught in the loose copper-brown braid over one shoulder.
Sera always seemed to know where to wait so I’d notice her, or I always seemed to notice wherever she waited.
I’d known her through missing teeth, muddy knees, and the summer she cut half her hair off with a belt knife. None of that prepared me for the woman leaning against the fence now. Green and russet, well worn and well kept. Tall and built for motion even while standing still, so that leaning on a fence looked like a decision she’d made rather than a rest she’d taken.
I noticed all of that before I reached her warm brown eyes.
My concentration had survived Kade. It hadn’t survived Sera.
“You sound surprised.” I stopped beside the fence and leaned against it before my legs made the choice for me. “You witnessed artistry.”
“I witnessed you fall on your face.”
“Then win.”
“Then win,” she agreed, and laughed with her whole face. “I nearly cheered. Kade would’ve put me to work.”
“A terrible risk. I’m honored.”
“I’ve had other concerns.”
Her eyes held mine.
Other concerns became difficult to name.
“Such as arriving late?”
“Such as whether you’d get up again.”
“I got up beautifully.”
She was near enough that I could see the faint weather flush in her cheeks and the soft wear in her wool cloak. Neither of us moved back.
Sera and I weren’t together, whatever Brookhaven had decided about us. I could’ve asked her to change that at any point in the last two years. Somehow I’d always found a joke that needed telling first.
Her gaze moved over my mud-streaked jerkin and paused near the bruising beneath one sleeve.
“Does it hurt?”
“Only when I breathe.”
Concern crossed her face before she saw my grin. She shoved my shoulder, careful to miss every bruise. “Idiot.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s called me today.”
A breeze shook the apple branches. One petal settled against her cheek. She didn’t brush it away.
I reached across the rail and touched it with the backs of my fingers. The petal came free. My skin grazed hers, warm from the sun, and I took my hand back slower than the job required, and she watched me do it.
Sera’s lips parted. Then she smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She squinted at me. “You’re thinking too hard again.”
“I try it once a season.”
“How brave.”
She reached through the rails and plucked something from my hair. I suspected there had been nothing there, but her fingertips brushed my temple on the way back. The touch lasted less than a breath. My skin remembered it longer.
“There,” she said. “Presentable.”
“Presentable? Unlikely.”
“I said presentable. Don’t become ambitious.”
“Too late.”
Her smile softened. For once neither of us hurried to cover the silence.
She pushed away from the fence and started toward the road, then turned and walked backward for three steps.
“Try not to lose another duel with the earth.”
“No promises.”
She turned, her braid lifting behind her, and joined the flow of carts and baskets heading toward Brookhaven.
I stayed against the rail until she vanished behind a produce cart. The apple petal was still between my fingers. I tucked it into my belt pouch.
By the time I reached Brookhaven Market, the midday crush had loosened into a lively afternoon drift. Cloth awnings tugged at their cords in the breeze. Children dragged a painted wooden wyvern between the stalls, its little wheels clacking over the stones. Someone near the food tables was arguing passionately with a goose.
The apothecary leaned from his stall as I passed.
“Edrin.”
That tone rarely led to anything pleasant. I stopped beside rows of stoppered glass bottles, where tonics waited in colors no sensible man would drink without witnesses.
“If this is about the liniment,” I said, “I maintain that the goat chose violence first.”
“Dalla left this for you.”
He pressed a simple healing vial into my hand. Red-gold liquid clung to the glass with a faint glow, warm against my palm.
“She heard you were training today,” he said. “Said you’ve more courage than caution.”
“She’s generous with half her judgments.”
“Which half?”
“Whichever makes me sound handsome.”
He snorted and waved me away.
I tucked the vial into my jerkin. It rested warm against my ribs.
A ribbon snapped loose from the cloth awning and streamed across my path like a bright blue snake. I caught it before it could wrap itself around the painted wyvern. The toy caught a wheel in the uneven stones and toppled beneath a basket.
“Well caught,” Lysa Fen said.
I knew her voice before I turned. In Brookhaven, I knew nearly everyone’s voice. Lysa’s was simply one I had more reason to remember.
She stood at the stall with three ribbons draped across her quick, capable fingers, holding them up to the light one at a time as though the light owed her an answer. She moved lightly, as if the market belonged to her and every crowded passage had been arranged for her convenience.
Her dark chestnut braid was tied with mismatched ribbons. Warm honey-brown skin made the dyed cloth look brighter. Her hazel eyes flashed green when she laughed, and the pale nick near the corner of her lower lip caught my attention with embarrassing reliability.
Familiarity hadn’t made her less distracting. It had only removed my excuse for staring.
I offered her the blue ribbon. “I’d claim it was skill, but the ribbon was poorly armed.”
“And here I was hoping Brookhaven bred heroes.”
“It does. We’re simply taught modesty before lunch.”
Her gaze moved over the worn leather at my shoulders and rested on my face a heartbeat longer than courtesy required. Heat stirred pleasantly beneath my collar.
I liked being looked at by Lysa. There was no honest version of me that didn’t.
“Which one?” she asked, holding up the three colors.
“For what purpose?”
“Does that change the answer?”
“Entirely. Blue if you want to be trusted. Green if you want to look innocent. Red if you’ve no intention of being either.”
She lifted the red ribbon to her hair. The motion bared the graceful line beneath her ear. It was useless information, which made it impossible to ignore.
“And what would you choose?”
“The red.”
“Because it suits me?”
“Because I value warnings.”
Her laugh came quick and warm. She handed the other lengths to the cloth merchant, who began winding the red around a carved spindle.
“Is that all the counsel I get?”
“There are more elaborate versions, but they cost extra.”
“Perhaps I’ll ask when I’m feeling extravagant.”
She looped the ribbon around her fingers and held my gaze. My mind supplied several extravagant answers, none improved by speaking aloud.
Movement beyond her shoulder caught me. Dark copper hair bright beneath the afternoon sun.
Sera stood near a basket of spring onions, one hand resting on the handle. Her loose braid lay over one shoulder. Her posture was easy, but the tilt of her chin suggested she’d formed an opinion.
Lysa’s attention had made me stand a little taller. Sera’s made me aware of every foolish inch of myself.
Lysa followed my gaze. “Sera appears to have reached a verdict.”
“She works quickly.”
Sera approached with that springy confidence of hers, turning her shoulders before her hips as she slipped between two baskets. Her gaze touched the red ribbon, then settled on me.
“You’re muddy again.”
“I’ve been unsupervised for several minutes.”
“A grave mistake.”
Lysa’s smile sharpened without losing its warmth. “He rescued my ribbon.”
“Did he?” Sera looked from the ribbon to me. “He didn’t mention that.”
“It was poorly armed.”
“He mentioned falling in the mud.”
Lysa laughed. Sera’s laugh followed, thin and careful. The cloth merchant handed over the spindle, and Lysa slipped it into her basket.
“Thank you for the counsel,” Lysa said. “I’ll remember the warning.”
“Most people don’t.”
“Then they deserve the trouble.”
She moved away between two passing carts, red ribbon trailing from her basket. My attention followed the quick weave of her walk for one foolish heartbeat before returning to Sera.
Sera’s eyes followed mine back. She shifted her basket to the other hand.
“You watched her leave.”
“Only for a heartbeat.”
“Long enough.”
“Cruel. Accurate, but cruel.”
Something went out of her shoulders. Then she stepped around me. Her shoulder brushed mine, light enough to pass for accident.
I didn’t believe it was accidental.
“Enjoy the market, Edrin.”
She walked away, and for once I had no clever answer ready before she was gone.
I watched Sera go, then looked down and discovered I was still holding a stranger’s blue ribbon.
The cloth merchant held out an impatient hand. I gave it back.
Oren Varn snapped his reins behind me, and I discovered that standing in the middle of the market nursing wounded dignity was unpopular with the man driving the Sleeping Badger’s handcart, especially when it was piled with turnips.
On market days, Oren made one late circuit between the stalls. Sellers dropped bruised onions, crooked carrots, and whatever else pride had failed to sell into his cart for the Badger’s common pot. By dusk, half the market would claim its own contribution had saved supper. Oren always awarded the honor to the ugliest turnip.
“Dream somewhere else, Edrin,” he called. “You’re frightening the vegetables.”
I stepped aside before his wheel found my boots. “They looked frightened when you arrived.”
Oren gasped as if I’d wounded him, then laughed so hard the cart rocked. “These turnips have excellent judgment.”
He leaned forward eagerly, steering between the stalls while a woman tossed him three onions and a boy added a bruised apple. Oren thanked each of them as if they’d entrusted him with treasure.
“The ugliest turnip wins tonight!” he announced to nobody and everybody.
“That’s not a contest,” someone called.
“It’s the fairest contest we have!”
His cart rolled toward the far end of the market, where another seller waved him over with a bundle of limp greens.
I took the south road, choosing home over another chance to demonstrate my gift for making simple encounters difficult.
Beyond the last close-set houses, the road widened beside gardens thick with young peas and onion shoots. Children crouched beside the ditch, racing folded leaf-boats through the runoff. One sank beneath a clump of duckweed.
“Sabotage,” its owner declared.
“Poor craftsmanship,” I said as I passed.
“You don’t know anything.”
“A sound defense. Use it often.”
The uneven road caught my toe at the next bend.
I stumbled, windmilled once, and recovered with the rigid dignity of a man hoping the children had been too busy accusing one another of naval crimes to notice.
The smaller child cupped both hands around his mouth.
“Poor craftsmanship,” he called after me.
I looked down. One wheel rut had sunk deeper than the rest where spring water softened the road beside the ditch. A fence post leaned over it, freshly braced with two pale boards. Nothing in Brookhaven stayed straight through thaw season. Roads slumped, doors stuck, and every fence eventually developed an opinion about where it ought to stand.
“Exactly,” I said. “The road is at fault.”
The children accepted this because it was funny, not because it was true. I stepped over the rut and continued home while Oren’s cart rattled somewhere behind me, carrying turnips toward their glorious fate.
The narrow path behind Hale Cottage had gone soft beneath the eaves. I slipped around the house, where evening light reached over the roof in long gold bars, and found the wash basin waiting beside the woodpile.
The pile leaned against its low stone wall under a shingled cover, stacked with more optimism than skill. Split oak crowded the bottom. Pine kindling filled the gaps. One stubborn log sat on top as if it’d appointed itself lord of the rest.
Someone had left a kettle beside the basin. Steam lifted when I poured the warm water over a cloth. I scrubbed my face, dragged wet fingers through my hair, and washed the training-yard mud from my neck and arms.
“Good footwork,” I told the woodpile in Kade’s rough cadence. “You read the ground.”
The lordly log remained unimpressed.
“He also said I wasn’t polished.”
The log continued its stubborn silence.
“There’s no pleasing some people.”
I moved Dalla’s vial from my jerkin to the protected pouch at my belt. Sera’s apple petal lay inside, bruised pink along one edge. I wrapped the glass in a scrap of cloth, then shifted the petal where it wouldn’t be crushed. A ridiculous amount of care for something that would be brown by morning. I closed the pouch carefully anyway.
I sat on the low wall and looked over the garden fence. Brookhaven’s roofs rose beyond it, pale repairs showing against older timber. Lamps kindled in windows one by one. Supper smoke drifted above the chimneys. A cart rolled home along the road, and laughter carried over the fence. Somewhere near the common, a fiddle missed the same note twice. A dog objected on behalf of the town.
Sera would’ve known why I’d kept the petal before I finished denying it. Lysa would’ve made me show her, then stood close enough to ruin whatever lie I tried. I smiled at the roofs like an idiot and was glad the fence hid me from the road.
A trade wagon rolled east beneath a blue canvas, its rear lantern bobbing above the hedges. I pictured it climbing roads I’d never seen, with me on the board beside the driver and Kade’s praise still warm in my ears. In the picture, I came back. I noticed that only after the wagon disappeared.
Next time Kade put me in the yard, I’d make him say the praise loud enough for somebody else to hear.
The wagon’s lantern flashed once between the trees and disappeared.
From the front of the cottage came Maren’s voice, calling me to wash properly before I touched the bread. I rose, pulled the jerkin back over my sore shoulders, and went around the cottage toward the door.
Warmth met me first, then the smell of onions browned in butter.
Maren stood over the pot with a wooden spoon in one capable hand, her iron-brown hair pinned away from her face. Silver threads caught the firelight where her knot had begun to loosen. The copper lid above the hearth rattled whenever the stew threatened to boil over, which meant it’d been rattling steadily.
She glanced at me. “You took your time.”
“I was considering the great questions of our age.”
“Were any of them how to wash before supper?”
I looked at my hands. Dirt marked the creases of my palms, and the training yard had left a brown edge beneath every nail.
“That one hadn’t presented itself.”
“Remarkable.” She pointed the spoon toward the washbasin. “Perhaps scholarship will survive without you.”
I obeyed. Cold water stung across my scraped knuckles, and soap took the worst of the day from my skin. My shoulders objected when I reached for the drying cloth.
“Hold still,” Maren said.
She came behind me with a damp cloth and wiped a streak of mud from the side of my neck. Then she tugged my jerkin straight where it’d twisted over one shoulder.
“You’re not a sack of flour,” she said. “Stop carrying yourself like one.”
“Kade disagrees. He struck me often enough to make his position clear.”
“Kade has always believed instruction improves when it hurts.”
“He called my footwork good.”
Maren paused with her hand at my collar. “Did he?”
“Quietly. After publicly comparing me to an ambush victim.”
“Then treasure it. Kade may not have another fit of generosity this year.”
She set bread and two steaming bowls on the table. The larger portion landed in front of me. I looked at it.
“Don’t start,” she said.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“Your eyebrows did.”
I sat and tasted the stew. The heat caught my tongue, but hunger won the argument.
“Sera was there,” I said.
“I assumed as much.”
“You assume a great deal.”
“I have eyes, Edrin.”
That explained very little and far too much. I concentrated on the stew. Sera leaning against the fence returned to me anyway, along with the touch at my temple and the way she’d smiled when I removed the apple petal from her cheek.
Lysa’s crooked grin followed close behind.
My appetite, it turned out, had no loyalty at all.
Maren watched me over her bowl. “Whatever you’re smiling about, I doubt it’s the onions.”
“They’re exceptional onions.”
“Coward.”
I laughed, and she did too. The sound softened the cottage more surely than the hearth.
After supper, I carried the bowls to the basin while Maren covered the remaining bread with a cloth. She clicked her tongue at the way I set the bowls down and rearranged them herself, though they’d been perfectly safe where I left them.
“You’re favoring your right side,” she said.
“I’m favoring dinner.”
“You’re favoring your ribs.”
“They’ve been through a difficult afternoon.”
She came close and pressed two fingers beneath my arm. I flinched.
“That one?”
“That one has a complicated personality.”
“Put a cold cloth on it before bed.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“And don’t spend half the night admiring yourself in the washbasin.”
“I only need a few minutes.”
She reached up and mussed my hair, undoing the care I’d taken to make it lie properly. “There. Now you’re safe from vanity.”
“You’ve made me look like a disreputable hedge.”
“A familiar condition.”
Outside, footsteps passed along the road in familiar pairs and threes. A door thumped shut nearby. Someone called goodnight, and another voice answered from farther off. Brookhaven settled around the cottage by degrees, not in some grand hush, but through the sounds of people finishing their days.
Maren banked the hearth. Then she touched my shoulder, careful of the soreness beneath her hand.
“Sleep,” she said. “You can become impressive tomorrow.”
“I was impressive today.”
“Then tomorrow should be easier.”
Upstairs, I set my sword within reach and left the belt pouch beside it, the buckle folded beneath. Fresh spring air slipped through the cracked shutter. Below me, Maren moved through the kitchen, humming without a tune as she finished the last of the evening work.
I pulled the blanket close. Maren’s door closed, and I was asleep before the cottage finished settling.