Hobb came in through the courtyard arch with a pine water-bucket in one fist, a bundle of dried pennyroyal tucked under his arm, and rain dripping from the point of his chin.
The big cook stopped two paces inside the threshold. He looked at Clerk Cale sitting stiff-backed on the stone bench with a half-eaten barley bun in his hand; he looked at the folded buff paper tucked inside Sella Rusk’s jerkin; and he looked at Tessa Dene standing with her arms crossed over her leather apron and her chin tilted at the angle that usually preceded a thrown hammer.
Hobb did not ask what the paper said. He walked straight to the fuel-less hearth, set the pine bucket down on the flags, and ladled three measures of rain-water into his battered tin kettle. When he set the kettle over the empty iron grate, the steady amber warmth of the limestone blocks rose to meet the tin with a soft, dry hiss.
“Wet boots rot the lining before they rot the leather,” Hobb said to the kettle, crumbling dried pennyroyal and wild mint leaves between his broad, scarred palms and dropping them through the spout. “Take your heels off the cold stone and put them by the curb, boy. The wall doesn’t charge by the toe.”
