her chance for a comely match. Let her not be forced to the joyless choice of a suitor who preyed on the fact they were desperate.
The night passed as it had too often before, fighting the malady that had reaped aunt and uncle, and cruelly robbed two young nephews’ exuberance. Tarens changed his brother’s soaked bedding and hung the damp linen to dry. He plied Efflin’s forehead with cold compresses in a tireless, vain effort to draw down the fever. Left nothing else but to stroke the screwed hair from his brother’s furnace-hot temples, he tried to banish the creeping fear that such diligent effort was useless without stronger remedies from the apothecary. Efflin would waste away until death, with another pyre and body laid out for the True Sect priest’s final blessing.
Bitter, as the hours wore on, Tarens rested his cheek on crossed arms, helpless to stave off the turn of Fate’s Wheel. No older brother to stand at his shoulder would cripple him worse than the loss of a limb. Tarens covered his face with strong hands, unable to stifle his anguish.
Soft footsteps arrived. A comforting hand clasped his shoulder. Kerelie pulled up a stool and sat down, a fresh bucket of ice set between them. She retrieved the damp rag left draped on his knee and methodically started to refresh the cold compress.
‘Tarens?’ she said, hushed.
He did not turn his head, taut fingers in place to hide his sudden, useless tears.
‘We can’t give up.’ Kerelie rearranged the damp hem of her night-rail, huddled into the mantle thrown overtop, sharp-scented with outdoor air. The sheepskin slippers on her large feet were caught with moist leaves from her foray to skim off the bucket left by the well.
If Tarens believed the fight was not lost, his black despair whispered otherwise. Their late aunt had insisted the bountiful luck had deserted the croft years ago, when their father was conscripted to bear arms for the Light. No word of him had ever come back. No letter to say if he survived the harsh training, or whether today he still served, sworn to a dedicate’s term of life service guarding the sealed border of Havish.
‘We will weather this. No matter what comes.’ Kerelie’s chapped fingers tucked the packed cloth into folds and plied the wrapped ice to Efflin’s flushed forehead. ‘I’ll call if I need you. Best sleep while you can.’
Tarens lifted his tousled head and regarded his sister’s profile. By the seeped light from the fire’s banked coals, her unspoiled cheek wore the sweet flush of youth. Her upturned nose bespoke the light humour and innocence remembered from better days. Tarens chided gently, ‘Did you rest yourself?’
She sighed. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Then I’m sitting with you,’ Tarens insisted. ‘I’ll be at hand’s reach because I know you won’t leave Efflin’s side to ask for assistance.’
‘Ought to help yourself,’ Kerelie retorted. ‘At least strap that sprained ankle. Draw down the swelling, or else, come the morning, you won’t manage to pull on your boot.’
‘I’ll borrow your slippers.’ Already stiffened and not inclined to move, Tarens slept in the end, propped against the oak hob. Because he was peaked with exhaustion, his sister could not bear to roust him.
Kerelie nodded off also in the bleak hour before dawn. Despite the best intent to kick her brother awake to look after the livestock, she never opened her eyes until sunlight streamed through the casement. The astringent scent of cailcallow and wintergreen scoured her nostrils and shot her up straight.
‘Tarens!’ She reached out to shake him, only to find he had risen ahead and gone outside to mind the chores. Efflin languished, still gripped by high fever. But his tormented breathing had eased just a bit. An empty pan and a spoon at his bedside suggested that someone had dosed him with a strong remedy. The reek of herbals wafted from a second brew, brought to a low boil over the fire.
Kerelie paused and made certain the sick man’s sheets were not clammy. She tucked the blankets up to Efflin’s chin, then straightened her night-rail and crossed to the hob, prepared to return the profuse word of thanks to the charitable neighbour who had sent the bundle from town.
But no kindly matron’s unpacked basket rested on the kitchen trestle. Kerelie saw none of the apothecary’s phials of oil, and no string-tied packets of purchased herbs. Instead, the boards were spread over with root-stock, cut fresh from the bush, stripped of bark, and pungently grated. Also wintergreen berries and leaves, several rose hips, shredded willow bark, and two other twiggy plants that her country-bred knowledge failed to identify. The collection had arrived at the cottage bundled inside a frayed rag. She still stared, overcome by surprise, when Tarens ducked through the doorway.
He had been mucking stalls, by the barn reek breezed in with him. He also carried two muddied shoes and a bunched wad of damp, tattered clothing, which he unburdened into her dumbfounded hands. ‘Hang these up to dry.’
‘They belong to the vagabond?’ Not indignant so much as undone by the strain, she scolded, ‘Tarens! You didn’t –’
Her brother cut in, ‘Yes, I did. The fellow’s wrapped up in my second-best shirt. Asleep. I gave him my bed. Kerelie, be quiet! We owe him that much! He stayed out all night to bring Efflin those simples. You know the creek’s swollen too high to wade over. He must’ve stripped down and swum! I found him frozen nigh onto death, burrowed into the oat straw stacked in the hayloft.’
‘Where did he find these wild rose hips?’ Mollified, Kerelie ran on as Tarens stamped to the hob and shrugged off his cloak. ‘While you explain, give the pot a good stir. Use the wooden spoon. These rags must be wrung out before they’ll dry properly.’
‘I don’t know where the man found any of this,’ Tarens said, willing to do as she asked with the remedy but otherwise stiffly reticent. The apothecary had held his dried cailcallow dear, since the bush would not leaf over winter.
‘This paragon tracks down rare plants in the dark?’ Kerelie’s nagging sharpened in pursuit of the uneasy discrepancy. ‘Where under sky do you think he was trained?’
‘I have no idea.’ Tarens added, ‘He’s got a field-worker’s hands. I saw that much.’ The horn callus left by the scythe never lied. ‘The fellow’s mowed barley. And he’s got straw cuts from tying up corn shocks.’
‘Well, he’s done a countryman’s labour, perhaps.’ Kerelie eyed the worn garb in her arms, too concerned to let sleeping dogs lie. ‘Yet he wasn’t born to the life. Whatever mother gave birth to him, the specialized study of herbals is not common knowledge for farm help.’
Tarens kept his mouth shut, in dread of the day she encountered the shackle scars that marked the fellow’s ankles and wrists. Since Kerelie’s prying overlooked that detail, he might keep that questionable bit of the stranger’s personal history quiet. But the dangerous threat to his family’s security forced him to broach his earlier concern. ‘He might be clanblood, perhaps, from the deft way he snares wild game.’
Kerelie tossed the dreadful rags on the bench. ‘Look again!’ she demanded in withering scorn. ‘Tarens, you mean well, but are you stone blind? No clanborn ever wears woven cloth! Why would a skilled trapper not have deer-hide breeches at least, or a jacket of cured fur at this season? These shoes were not cobbled by free-wilds barbarians. I know my sewing. Have you found the seams in a field-hand’s dress done in a whip stitch? Or a shirt collar and fitted cuffs, laced with a pattern as these are? More likely we’re harbouring a simpleton servant, escaped from the Koriathain!’
‘Efflin
