Mother Renn set the oiled-paper packet on the pine counter between two bundles of winter mugwort. She didn’t launch into a solemn speech about the fall of the Counterpoise Sect, nor did she bring up the night on the mountain burial shelf before the Twelfth Night when Nara had stood beside the restored memorial stone and told her what twenty-year-old Aven had actually been like before the siege.
That night on the ridge, when official history and Archivist Vel’s decoded inventory slips had only been able to give Renn her son’s burial number and the date of his death, Nara Soth had given her something no archive possessed. The memory of young Aven standing in the abbey kitchen arguing stubbornly with a senior teacher that marsh-leaf tea turned bitter if you poured boiling water straight onto the buds without letting the kettle cool for ten breaths first.
Now, in the ordinary morning clatter of Oran’s lower market, Renn returned the gift in the exact same coin.
“That’s half a pound of this autumn’s high-ridge black leaf, pan-roasted over chestnut charcoal,” Mother Renn said briskly. She tapped the oiled packet with a wrinkled forefinger. “It doesn’t go sour in damp sea air the way river-marsh leaf does. You don’t have to count ten breaths after the kettle boils before you pour it—which is just as well, because you never had the patience for kitchen rules anyway.”
