The fever left her hungry before it left her steady.
At dawn Ysabet ate bread sitting on the bed, dropping crumbs into a cup because Mara had forbidden her to feed the blanket. Pip slept beyond the doorway, its jaw open a finger’s width. The damaged leg had drawn close to its body. No fresh limb waited underneath it.
Chaska was asleep on two laundry sacks, boots still on. Lilt lay outside under the repaired portion of the shelter, her broad edge rising and falling. Every so often her tail struck the threshold and Chaska moved in her sleep.
Mara came in carrying a slate.
“Don’t look like that. It’s my slate.”
“I hadn’t looked.”
“You were preparing.”
She sat on the chest and turned it so Ysabet could see the figures. Roof laths, tiles, a piece of coarse covering until they could get proper oilcloth. Below that, the copper spent on clean linen and the name of the cooper’s brother, who would accept labor rather than money for his evening.
“The dyer is coming this afternoon,” Mara said. “She sent word she can wait another day if we’ve acquired more weather.”
Ysabet put down the bread.
“Does she know?”
“She knows my roof has a hole. She wants the old furnace room. She doesn’t want a theological explanation of a hole.”
“Mara—”
“I need her rent. You know that.”
Ysabet did. Mara had paid for the last storm damage by selling two brass bath taps that had once fed hot water into rooms now full of baskets. The bathhouse did not become less expensive because nobody bathed there.
“I can’t cover that today.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” Mara rubbed a chalk mark with her thumb. “I need to know whether it’ll happen again.”
From the doorway came a dry clicking. Pip was awake, trying to draw its body after the mouse. The mouse had climbed onto the cushion edge and was chewing a crumb Chaska had left.
“I don’t know,” Ysabet said.
Mara looked toward it for a long time. “Then we need someone who might.”
The pigeon objected to having its support checked. That was the first encouraging thing about the morning. It struck Ysabet’s thumb with its beak, failed to escape the cloth, and glared while she inspected the cut. No fresh bleeding. The skin beneath the cleaned feathers looked angry but not swollen. Its droppings on the linen were small and ordinary.
Chaska woke during this performance.
“That’s gratitude,” she said.
“Hold the cloth.”
“I recognize it from customers.”
Together they changed the lining. Pip approached once, then stopped when the bird flared its good wing. Ysabet let it watch from the edge of the cushion. The hollow sensation did not return. She did not seek it.
Outside, two neighbors had begun to argue over the pale patch where the spear had stood. One had brought a shovel. The other had brought a jar.
“No,” Mara said from the doorway.
“I only thought—”
“No samples. No digging. If you want something from my yard, take the broken trough to the bench.”
The jar disappeared into a pocket. The shovel found more ordinary employment.
By midmorning the hole was covered. Ysabet went outside long enough to look up at the work, then had to sit down. The cooper’s brother offered to send his son for a healer.
“Quirin Sile,” she said. “At the west holding pens.”
“He doesn’t come out much.”
“Ask whether he’ll see me. Tell him it’s something brought from a roadside sale.”
The man nodded without asking what she had bought. That courtesy nearly undid her.
Chaska found her looking at the invoice for the sluice hound. Ysabet had folded it open to a place where observations crowded around Vennick’s unpaid six silver.
“Do you want me to ask him again?” Chaska said.
“No.”
“You did the work.”
“I know. I also know what he’ll say about yesterday if I walk into his mill today.”
Chaska dragged a stool nearer. “You can’t stay here until he becomes decent.”
“I was thinking about writing to the licensing office.”
“And waiting?”
Ysabet laid the paper down. The right answer had become painfully expensive. She could imagine every form, every journey to deliver it, every time the matter would be referred to someone who had not seen the creature at the auction, the cage, the way Edris had presented his ring.
“I need to know what he can ask them to do.”
“Quirin may know that too.”
At noon the messenger returned with a scrap of paper. Quirin’s writing leaned downhill.
After the evening feed. Bring what you saw. Not what you think it means.
Ysabet read it twice.
Chaska took a sheet from her delivery case and began to draw. She had not seen the lid uncovered, so Ysabet described it while she worked: six legs, the folded body, one eye beneath a ridge. Around the head the circle of blades grew under Chaska’s pencil.
“No, those were straighter.”
“These?”
“Longer at the top. Or perhaps that was the angle.”
Chaska put a small question mark beside the circle. She left the old line visible.
Pip watched the pencil. When Chaska turned the sheet toward it, the creature made a sharp click and backed onto the sack.
She turned the paper face down immediately.
They sat without speaking for a moment. Outside, Mara was showing the dyer a furnace she could no longer light, describing its virtues with a vigor Ysabet had not heard since before the fire.
Ysabet folded the drawing inward, so Pip would not have to pass its painted double on the way to water.