The latch on the cottage door had dropped half an inch in its mortise two winters back, and every time the river wind blew hard against the coal-wharf, the oak leaf rattled against the jamb like an iron spoon in an empty pail.
Tessa Dene kicked the door shut with her heel, dropped the ash bar into place, and stood in the dark front room while cold rainwater ran off the hem of her cloak onto the flagstones.
From the curtained alcove beside the hearth came the sound she had listened to every evening since she was twelve: four short, scraping rasps of air pulled through narrow pipes, a pause where the chest hitch occurred, and then a long, rattling whistle as the breath came back through phlegm.
“Tessa?” The voice sounded like dry gravel being turned with an iron shovel.
“It’s me, Father,” she said, hanging her wet cloak on the peg behind the door. “Don’t sit up yet. The floor is cold enough to freeze cabbage.”
She went straight to the small iron brazier on the hearth-stone. Breaking the smallest lump of hard Mere pit coal with the flat of her salvage bread knife, she banked the embers with dry birch bark. When the flame caught, she filled the tin kettle from the water-butt, set it over the trivet, and pulled Rella’s paper packets of bitter-root from inside her shirt. She cut the reed tie, tapped half a dram of the chopped dark root into an earthenware mug…
