Rella tried to pick up Kettle by the front edge of her shell.
The tortoise withdrew so sharply that the young woman almost dropped her. Ysabet caught the rear rim with her good hand and lowered both of them to the ground.
“From the sides,” she said. “And only if you must.”
Rella stayed crouched. Her arms were white with furnace dust up to the elbows. The smith’s niece looked younger without the charcoal basket on her back, though she had been carrying it to customers for five years.
“She looks like something meant to be lifted.”
“Many of us do.” Mara stood behind them with a mug. “We remain difficult.”
Kettle put out her head and assessed the three women. After a moment she began the laborious turn toward her food.
“She’s quicker downhill,” Ysabet said. “Remember that.”
Rella watched the missing-leg side. “Ramp against the wall, then.”
“Yes. So she can’t walk off it.”
The ramp was a plank with thin crosspieces nailed to it. Ysabet had meant to build a better one before winter. Rella fetched two bricks, tested the slope, and moved one crosspiece that caught the edge of Kettle’s shell. Then she waited while Kettle climbed it.
The demonstration took long enough for Mara to finish her drink.
“Thrilling,” she said.
“She’ll have a second performance at supper.”
“I’ll sell seats.”
The dyer had taken the furnace room and the two empty rooms facing the lane. She would pay Mara directly, and keep her vats behind a nailed partition, away from the laundry shelter and its drain. Ysabet had walked the proposed line with her that morning. The woman had listened to Ysabet about runoff, then made her listen about fumes. They had settled on the far drain and an open flue; neither was allowed to pour waste into the animal pans.
Her first rent had changed Mara’s plans.
She could mend the roof without waiting for Ysabet. She could also let Rella have the little room above the pump at a reduced rent, in return for the morning and evening animal rounds. Rella wanted to leave the crowded loft over the smithy. She had asked to see the room before agreeing to anything involving Tallow.
Tallow waited beneath the low trough, licking offal from a flat dish. Rella put another piece near his nose. He took it, then bit the empty corner of the dish in case more was concealed inside.
“He’s an optimist,” she said.
“He’ll eat until he’s sick if you encourage him. That bowl, twice. Not a washing basin, however sad he looks.”
They measured his portion together. Mara watched, then did it herself. Ysabet made herself step aside while the two women compared their guesses.
For Sedge there were the dry blankets, the low water dish, and the narrow cloth sling that let her take weight off her weak hind legs while she moved. Rella’s hands were gentler with her than they had been with Kettle. She supported the marten’s body without trying to make its feet useful.
“My grandmother needed something like this,” she said.
Ysabet showed her how to wash and dry the skin under the sling. After that, Rella insisted on doing the evening change while Ysabet watched.
The three silver set aside for the current month’s yard rent lay on Mara’s table that night. Mara pushed them toward the supply list.
“The new tenant has paid me. You leave this for feed. We’ll use the ordinary shops, and Quirin can check the amounts on his rounds.”
“I’ll still owe—”
“You’ll owe me an animal yard without a spear through it when you return. I’m choosing what to do with the space until then.”
Ysabet took a breath. “What happens after that money’s gone?”
“We tell Quirin. The dyer has agreed I may keep the residents here while she rents. I can cover their food with her rent for the season. If that changes, Quirin has two foster pens and you will send a direction for letters every time you stop somewhere with a carrier.”
“All three?”
“Only if we need to. Sedge stays with me unless she’s too ill. I’m not sending her to a pen full of howling strangers.”
Rella looked up from her notes. “And I’m not leaving after one month. I’ve got a room now. I’d quite like to keep it.”
Ysabet looked at the list. It was not an endless purse. Mara had made a choice with rent she needed, and Rella had taken work that would sometimes be filthy and always interrupt supper. Quirin would inspect and provide a fallback. There was no part of the arrangement that improved if Ysabet kept refusing to hear it.
She put the silver in the feed jar.
Pip had watched from the shelter doorway. Rella crouched at a distance and offered the empty measuring bowl. It touched the rim, then walked past her to the crooked unfired cup on the bench.
“Does that one need measuring too?” Rella asked.
“I’m still learning.”
She wrote down what she knew about clean clay, chalk, and small portions. Then she separated that page from the residents’ instructions. Pip would travel. Its food could not keep emptying the jar she had just left behind.
At dusk Rella shut the marten’s box, leaving the proper opening. Mara counted the troughs and latched the repaired gate. Ysabet stood beside Kettle’s ramp with nothing left that needed her hand immediately.
It frightened her more than the list had.