Boiling turnip greens and hot tallow could not hide the cold grit of the road mud Tessa had tracked across the kitchen flagstones.
In his core niche above the cistern arch, Noll Vey watched through the water pipes as Fen unwound the Crown guard’s linen from Iri’s hand. The little healer worked with quick, careful fingers, sniffing the grease Brand had smeared into the scraped palm before washing the torn skin with a warm infusion of dried comfrey and willow bark.
“Good lard,” Fen murmured, setting the scrap of southern linen on the chopping block. “Salted enough to keep the rot out, but clean. The man who dressed this wasn’t trying to make an example of her.”
“He was trying to make sure she didn’t come back,” Tessa said. She sat on the low wood-box by the hearth, her elbows on her knees and her salvage bread knife resting flat against her thigh. Her work coat was soaked through at the shoulders, steaming in the fire’s orange draft. “And she won’t. Nor will any of the mill boys. Brand logged the barley as abandoned scrap by the willow bridge, but he gave his word that the next runner who crawls through the west ditch gets marched straight to Vane’s pen. Once a name goes into the auditor’s book, the bailiffs take the family’s winter firewood permit.”
