the stringently potent root-stock his own hand had collected last night, under influence of the autumn moon.
‘…must have heard about Efflin’s condition,’ Kerelie was saying. Her thick fingers, most reverent with anything cloth, refolded the packet and knotted the string.
The little pause floundered.
Her caller shifted, then cleared his throat. ‘I’d not heard your brother took sick, not precisely. Yesterday’s rumour said the apothecary refused to accept Tarens’s coin. You did send to Kelsing to fetch these same remedies?’ A suggestively weighted interval ensued. When Kerelie said nothing, the visitor added, ‘If Efflin’s down with a cough, surely you’ll need better help than a pennyweight parcel of herbals.’
The words kept the pretence of polite conversation. To the sensitive listener, such windy noise could be plumbed for the strains of true nuance: this predator had been stalking the family’s rough straits, poised for his moment to spring.
‘We have managed,’ said Kerelie, bitten to a snap.
From the stairway, the vagabond shared her contempt. The pervasive, bracing reek filled the kitchen: of stronger medicinals already provided for the ailing brother’s recovery.
‘Efflin’s sniffle’s improved,’ Kerelie dismissed. ‘The winter wheat’s being planted, besides. That’s hard work aplenty to fill our day.’ Her tart inflection meant anyone else underfoot clearly wasted her time.
‘You’d begrudge me a stirrup-cup?’ the caller pressed, although he had travelled from town, sleek under the comfort of carriage rugs. ‘Saffie always boasted your late uncle’s spirits took the bite off a brisk day.’
Cornered again, Kerelie sighed. ‘We sold off the whiskey. As you’ve been aware. Or didn’t I hear the complaint that your man lost the lot to the justiciar’s house steward?’
The stiff quiet deepened, coloured by her regret, that the corn still also had gone to raise cash, which was why the family had not made the mash this year to ease their stark hardship. The lurker had noted Efflin’s delirious rant, bemoaning the loss of the revenue.
‘If you’re chilled,’ declared Kerelie at freezing length, ‘I can offer you unsweetened rose-hip tea.’
The caller deferred with a smile that belied the miserly flint in his eyes. ‘Your company might warm a man well enough. That’s if you’d consider unbending for an hour’s playful enjoyment.’
‘Is this a courtship?’ Kerelie banged down the pan just unhooked to boil water and glared fit to singe her oppressor. ‘If so, then shame on you! My affection cannot be bought by a miserable bottle of cough syrup!’
A kindly man should have been taken aback. This one stood up, his shark’s smile all teeth. Surly confidence carried him across the room like a blast of cold air. That frisson of chill brushed the furtive watcher. His rapt quiet turned poised, where he crouched on the stair.
‘Must you stall until poverty leaves you as sour as a worm-eaten fruit?’ The caller stepped close and crowded himself against the reluctant young woman’s side. His covetous touch fingered the decorative garlands embroidered on her full sleeve. ‘How long will you defer the inevitable, Kerelie, and face that you must accept marriage? Soonest is best for the sake of your family. Why suffer a lean winter when your choice can spare your two brothers from beggary?’ Thick gold, his ring glinted, as he slid his eager palms up her arms to embrace her.
Kerelie’s adroit counter-strike elbowed the water pail. ‘Oh dear!’ As her splashed suitor jumped backwards, she blotted her soaked cuff on her apron and surveyed the puddle that flooded her hem-line and seeped into her scuffed leather shoes. ‘I’ll just step out and put on a dry skirt. Do me the courtesy while you wait? Shout outside for Tarens to draw a fresh bucket. If you insist upon staying for tea, he’ll certainly want to join us.’
Yet the caller refused to cede his advantage. ‘Why this belated concern for propriety?’ His expensive, waxed boots defeated her ploy: he advanced without scathe through the water, and captured her wrist. ‘Your older brother’s now head of your household. If his well-being’s improved, as you claim, and if he doesn’t favour a match, then why has your family’s upright westlands decency left you on your own to receive me?’
But she was not alone. The lurker on the stairway uncoiled and moved, his timing impeccable.
Tarens sighted the flashy carriage from the far side of the field, where he muscled the ploughshare down the next furrow to till the last acre left fallow. He paused only to knot the reins of the ox. If the beast broke its harness and wandered at large, he would deal with that nuisance later.
‘Grismard! You dung-feeding maggot!’ The opportunist had tried worming in once already, before Uncle’s corpse had grown cold. Swearing fit to scale a bagged viper, Tarens charged over the welter of newly turned clods, hampered painfully by his puffed ankle.
‘If that creeping slug’s laid hands on my sister, I’ll wring his greasy neck!’ Unless Efflin managed to totter erect first and gut the man’s paunch with the poker.
Tarens gasped another breathless obscenity. Lamed, he could not vault the fence. Forced to take the long way around through the gate, he sprinted at a hopping limp to the cottage, scrambled up the stone steps, and bashed open the door.
Inside, tubby Grismard stood in a puddle, backed up with his spine bowed against the hard edge of the copper-lined sink. The vagabond faced him. At least a head shorter and one-third the weight, the fellow should have been harmless. All the more, since the hand gripped to stay his loose trousers disarmed any threat at the risk of buck-naked embarrassment. Yet the feral green eyes pinned on the disgruntled suitor drained the man’s salmon flush to fish-belly white.
‘Grismard!’ Tarens opened in venomous delight. ‘Don’t you look like the bloke who just pissed his own breeks.’
‘Who’s your unsavoury visitor?’ snapped Grismard, chins quaking with sweaty unease.
‘That’s the foot-loose vendor who sold me the herbals,’ Kerelie smoothed over, shaken. The relief that acknowledged her brother’s arrival stayed charged with alarm, that something beyond a straightforward brawl might erupt in her sensible kitchen.
Tarens traipsed forward, thumbs hooked in his belt. A grin pasted over his clenched jaw, breathing fire, he kissed his sister’s scarred cheek. ‘You’ve scrounged some old clothing the peddler wants in trade?’
As though cued, the vagabond stepped back and unpinned his discomfited victim. He raised one arm and displayed his oversized raiment as if pleased by an exchange for his wares. The ferocious edge did not leave his eyes. He stayed placed between Kerelie and the importunate caller, no matter that the breached door to the kitchen flooded him with icy air or that the ludicrous fit of the breeches threatened to strand him, half-stripped.
‘I was planning to make tea,’ Kerelie announced to stem a burst of wry laughter.
Tarens snapped up the dangling line, ‘But at the moment, praise be to life’s set-backs, your sewing claims the more urgent priority?’ He strode forward, seized Grismard’s arm, and steered him on firm course for the exit. ‘Announce yourself, next time. We’ll be better prepared.’
The incensed visitor jerked himself free. ‘Best watch the quality you bring under your roof.’ He shot his cuff, yanked straight his mussed tweed, then warned in thwarted vindication, ‘Word’s hot about town, or haven’t you heard? The high temple examiner’s dispatched his diviners to hunt down a minion of Darkness.’
Before the electrified clash of bravado cocked Tarens’s protective fist, the vagabond moved. Snake quick, his slim hand skimmed the trestle and snatched up the abandoned packet of herbals. His gesture shouted scathing contempt as he tossed the spurned packet across the room. His aim could have been deadly, executed with force: the tied bundle struck the caller’s broad chest at the heart and rebounded.
Tarens’s reflex barely salvaged