Brenna set the three wooden bowls directly onto the scarred pine workbench beside the rivet box. He pushed aside a handful of copper trimmings with the heel of her hand. She was a lean woman with gray-streaked hair tucked under a linen kerchief and red chapped knuckles from scrubbing salt crocks in cold stream water.
“Eat while it has steam in it,” Brenna said. He handed one bowl to Tavan, setting the second in front of Nara, and calling Leni inside to wash the iron black off her wrists before touching bread. “There’s no salt left in the bin—I sent the last half-brick up to your healer girl at the hospice yesterday for the wound wash—and the turnips were dug after the first hard freeze. So the skins boiled bitter. But it’s hot.”
Nara picked up the horn spoon with her right hand and blew across the pale, cloudy liquid. Diced yellow turnip and a scattering of crushed barley floated in water that smelled faintly of woodsmoke and cellar earth.
She took a mouthful. It was flat, watery, and distinctly bitter at the back of the tongue where the frost-bitten turnip rinds had steeped too long in the iron pot.
