The man arrived while Ysabet was holding a hinge in place with her knee.
Mara had found two sound boards behind the old furnace, and the cooper’s brother had brought a drill. Neither gift had made the gate square. Every time Ysabet shifted her weight, the upper board slipped against the wall and the lower hinge turned in her left hand.
“Don’t move,” the cooper’s brother said.
“I had almost decided to.”
His drill squealed. In the laundry shelter Pip raised its head. It had slept little, and the smaller eye kept closing while the larger watched the mouse’s box.
A carriage stopped outside.
Ysabet noticed the horses first: good feet, a slight overreach on the nearer hind leg, clean leather without the white salt of hard travel. Two people got down wearing gray coats split for riding. The man who followed them wore an ordinary dark cloak over much finer clothes.
She knew him from the auction.
For a moment she thought he had brought her mother’s needle. It was an unreasonable thought. He had bought something else entirely, and the needle had gone to the man who had dug Pip out. Still, her hand moved against her coat before she stopped it.
“Ysabet Orre?”
“Yes.”
The cooper’s brother took the hinge from her. She stood carefully, waiting for her knee to remember that it could straighten.
“I hoped to call yesterday. The road was closed.” The man’s gaze passed over the blackened carpet, the pans still beside the wall. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Animals. Not badly here, except one.”
“I am sorry.” He waited, and when she supplied nothing more, bowed slightly. “Edris Keth. I believe we both attended Master Darr’s sale.”
“You bought the box.”
“The reliquary. Yes.”
One of the gray-coated people looked toward the laundry shelter. Mara appeared in the bathhouse doorway carrying a bucket of nails.
“Are these more repairs?” she asked.
“Not mine,” Ysabet said.
Edris introduced himself again, this time adding Precentor and the Ashen Spear. Mara’s fingers tightened on the bucket handle. Ysabet knew the order’s small roadside monuments: carved warnings, burnt spearheads sealed behind glass, bowls for travelers to leave donations. She had never met anyone who could have explained what a precentor did all day.
“I have come about the creature you purchased.”
From the shelter came the scrape of pottery against stone. Pip was dragging its bowl away from the drilling.
“Has someone claimed it?” Ysabet asked.
“No claim has been brought to me.”
That was a careful answer. She wiped her left hand on her skirt.
“Then what about it?”
“I would like to see it. And, if we can agree, to purchase it from you.”
“It’s not for sale.”
He accepted the words without a sigh or a smile. “May I tell you what I can offer?”
She should have said no. Behind her, the hinge fell against the wall with a sound like a dropped pan. Mara looked down at the nails.
“Yes,” Ysabet said.
The sum he named was so large that she thought she had misheard the unit. He repeated it without seeming offended.
It would buy the bathhouse. Perhaps not at Mara’s first price, if Mara could be persuaded there was money in the world, but it would buy it. It would mend the roofs, replace the split troughs and put winter fodder under a dry cover. Kettle would have an enclosed run with a low ramp. Sedge would never need another donated scrap of blanket while Ysabet lived.
Her right hand had curled against her stomach. She opened the fingers that would open.
Edris watched her. She disliked him a little for not pretending he hadn’t seen.
“Not simply a price,” he said. “I would retain you for a period of instruction. You have observed it for almost a week. Those observations are valuable.”
“Where would it go?”
“To a house prepared for such care.”
“In town?”
“No.”
“Could I leave with it?”
He hesitated. The hesitation was useful. She clung to it more firmly than she had clung to the sum.
“You would be paid to accompany it,” he said.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Mara set the nail bucket down. The cooper’s brother discovered work that needed doing on the other side of the gate.
Edris looked toward the shelter again. “May we begin by seeing whether it is willing to meet me?”
Ysabet had expected another offer. This was harder to refuse. She had spent the night watching an eye grow in a body that had eaten a cup. Somebody who knew what the box was might know why.
“No guards inside the shelter.”
“My attendants can wait here.”
“And you wait where I ask.”
“Certainly.”
She led him through the yard. Pip stood beside the half-covered box, all six feet spread. The original mouse had climbed onto the access strip. At the sight of Edris it backed beneath the covered half.
Pip moved between the man and the box.
Edris stopped before Ysabet told him to.
For the first time since stepping from the carriage, he looked uncertain. His mouth parted. Then he drew a long, almost noiseless breath.
“May I come nearer?” he asked.
Pip opened its sideways jaw.
The little kettle click came out low and hard.
“No,” Ysabet said.
Edris looked at her, then at the creature. His hands remained open at his sides, but the fingers had gone very still.
“Then I will wait here.”