Sister Oda did not enter the River Lantern by the front taproom door; she came through the scullery gate, her wicker basket balanced on her hip, her gray wool skirts pinned up with wooden pegs to keep the hems clear of street slush.
She was fifty-two years old, with the broad, muscular shoulders of an apothecary who had spent thirty winters grinding dried roots in stone mortars. Her linen wimple was tucked into the collar of a patched carter’s coat, and her hands were stained around the cuticles with the dark yellow dye of fresh celandine juice.
When Jon met her in the narrow corridor behind the kitchen, she did not ask why the cellar door was broken, nor did she inquire about the identity of the armored man sitting in the dark below. She simply set her heavy basket onto the flour chest and looked him up and down with those sharp, hazel eyes that had diagnosed three generations of timber injuries.
“Jon,” she said, her voice dry and brisk as salt. “Your wife told me the water was running sour in your cellar again.”
“It is running sour, Sister,” Jon replied, keeping his voice low. “The visitor has arrived. The rot is in his collarbone, and the core is humming like an angry hornet in a jug. It vibrates through the stone floors.”
