Rowan rolled her eyes. She wasn’t in the mood to be baited this morning. “He woke up last night. The fever finally broke. Is your son around?”
Tilly frowned. “Still abed. Why do you want George?”
“I have a job for him if he’ll take it.”
“Paying?”
She nodded. “With the crown’s money.”
“He’ll take it.” Tilly climbed to her feet stiffly, brushing the ash from her nightgown. Her mornings were bad lately. She usually moved easier by afternoon.
Rowan followed her into the house. A small house by Sulen standards, but it was larger than the shack she shared with hermother. Tilly and George had three rooms to the place, which meant they each had a room to keep their bed and personal items. It made the central room seem spacious. Tilly had two tables, one for cooking, one for work.
Rowan made a note to keep the witch hunter away from this place. Tilly’s worktable was covered with the tools of her trade—glasses filled with strange herbs and oddly colored liquids, thinly-hammered metal disks etched with mysterious symbols, an odd assortment of feathers and the withered, dried parts of animals, skin and bone and claws and teeth.
It might look shocking to the ignorant eye, but there was nothing nefarious about it that she’d seen. Tilly didn’t go around killing people’s pets though she scavenged things she found dead in the woods. She carefully preserved her findings and used them to craft various charms and spells that George sold in the nearby towns.
There were the water purifying charms that she used regularly and which dependably worked. She had charms to keep you from getting lost in the woods which, so far so good on that. The love potions and such were complete bunk, though they made up the bulk of Tilly’s trade. At least, Rowan assumed they were bunk. She’d never actually tried one.
The witch hunter would take one look at this place and take out his branding iron, but Tilly was harmless and this was her main source of income since George was a gambler and a lousy cheat who’d gotten them run out of the last two towns they’d lived in.
Their loss. Rowan’s gain.
Tilly was a better neighbor than any of the assholes from Jarn had ever been. She hadn’t tried to kill her or her mother yet.
“I brought you some eggs,” she called out setting down the small basket on the corner of the kitchen table. Unlike Tilly’s worktable, the dining table was spotlessly clean.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Tilly said, tamping down her pipe and setting it aside. “You don’t eat enough as it is. You’re all skin and bones.”
“I hate eggs.” They were their main source of food. Boiled. Scrambled. Fried. Pickled. Every day for years. She should be grateful. Once a fox had got in and slaughtered most of the flock. They’d almost starved. “We have too many for us to eat right now.”
“Then feed them to your soldier.”
She wrinkled her nose. She’d rather throw them at his stupid face. “I tried bringing the extra to Sulen to sell but no one would take them. They probably thought they were cursed, coming from the woods.”
“They’re idiots in Sulen,” Tilly agreed. “I’ll take your eggs, but let me at least give you a charm in trade.”
She searched through a bowl with her bent fingers while Rowan leaned against the table.
“I could use another fire charm.”
It had been a wet year. Damp had soaked into everything including their wood stores. Some mornings it was impossible to get a fire lit.
Turning, Tilly dropped the small disc into her hand and looked up at her with her sharp, gray eyes. “Sure you don’t want one to keep a babe from planting?”
“You know I’ve got no need for that.”
Tilly raised her eyebrows. “You’re almost twenty years old, Rowan. It’s past time you had some fun. I’m disappointed in you. You’ve been tenderly nursing a handsome, injured soldier for two nights. It’s a recipe for romance.”
Rowan scoffed. “Two parts blood, one part urine? He vomited on me twice.”
“Pretty girl like you? He’s probably half in love with you already. It’s promising that you’re already sharing bodily fluids.”
She wasn’t even going to think about what Tilly was suggesting. “He’s been unconscious since I dragged him out of the woods.”
Tilly rolled her eyes. “There aren’t many young men who come through here. It wouldn’t hurt for you to flutter your eyelashes at him when he wakes up.”
“He’s a witch hunter.” And even though Tilly didn’t know the whole story about what had happened in Jarn—didn’t know that the man in her bed was the witch hunter who’d branded her mother—she knew enough to nod sympathetically.
