Chapter One
Sorina
My husband’s boots are still by the front door. I keep meaning to move them, and I keep not doing it, the same way I keep not taking his coat off the peg by the window and not clearing the last of his things from the shelf above the washbasin. It’s been six months, I’ve scrubbed every surface in this house religiously every week, and I still step around that pair of boots every morning as though they belong to someone who is coming back.
Bran is not coming back. I should move the boots. I should’ve moved them months ago, but every time I reach for them I stop, and I don’t like to think too hard about why.
I stand at the basin and rinse my supper bowl, watching the water drain. Outside, the port is quiet. The gulls have gone to roost, and the market stalls are shut for the night. Bundles of herbs hang from the ceiling beams above me – lavender, yarrow, comfrey, and foxglove – plants I grow in my garden and sell at market. This is my life now, as small as it is. I tend my garden, make my tinctures, sell them to the people in town, eat supper alone, and go to bed. I built it this way on purpose, and if I think about it, it’s perfect. I don’t want anything else.
I’m halfway to the bedroom when someone knocks on the front door. Two firm raps, a pause, then two more. I consider not answering, but what’s the point? Whoever it is, they can see the lights are on in the house. I cross the living room and open the door.
Two Peacekeepers stand on my step, a man and a woman, both in grey cloaks. The man is tall and thin, with ink-stained fingers and a small notebook in his hand. The woman is shorter, wider, and she smiles at me the way people smile when they want you to relax before they start asking uncomfortable questions.
“Good evening,” she says. “Sorina Veld?”
“Yes.”
“We’re sorry to bother you at this hour. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your late husband, if you have a moment.”
I step aside and let them in. I offer them water, they say no, then we sit at the kitchen table, them on one side and me on the other. I fold my hands in my lap and wait.
“How was your husband’s health in the weeks before he passed?” the man asks. He opens his notebook to a blank page and holds his pen ready.
“He was well. He worked at the docks. Never complained about feeling sick.”
“And you’re an herbalist, is that right?” the woman says. She glances up at the bundles. “You sell remedies at the market?”
“Herbs, tinctures, poultices for aches and fevers,” I say. “I grow most of what I sell.”
“Do you prepare anything else? Anything stronger?”
“No. I treat sore joints and head colds. I’m not a physician.”
The man writes something in his notebook. I can’t see what, and I try not to stare, so he doesn’t get the impression that he’s making me nervous.
“Did your husband have any enemies?” he asks, without looking up. “Anyone who might have wished him harm?”
“No. Bran got along with people.”
The woman leans forward, resting her elbows on the table.
“Did you notice anything unusual in the weeks before his death? Changes in his behavior, his appetite, anything at all?”
“No. Everything was normal. He went to work, he came home, he ate supper. And then one morning he didn’t wake up.”
They keep going. The questions circle the same ground, coming at it from different angles, and I answer each one the same way I answered the last time other Peacekeepers came tointerrogate me. I make sure there is enough sadness in my voice to sound properly grieved, and it’s not difficult either.
I think about his parents while I speak, about his mother sitting in her parlor composing another letter to the Watch, and his father pacing the floor, telling her what to write. Six months of letters and accusations. Six months of their son’s widow being called a murderer by anyone willing to listen, and some people in this town have heard it so many times they have started to believe it.
“His parents have never accepted what happened,” I say, when there is a pause. “They’ve been writing to the Watch since the funeral. They come to my door, tell people in town that I…” I stop and press my lips together. “They need someone to blame. I understand that. But I’ve answered these questions before, and I don’t know what more I can tell you.”
The woman nods. She looks at her partner, then back at me.
“There have been a few other deaths in Tessana recently,” she says. “Young men, married, all died of natural causes. Did you know any of them?”
I keep my hands still in my lap.
“I may have known one or two from the market,” I say. “Tessana isn’t a large town.”
