Chapter 6
Rowan listened to the wind howl outside and tried not to think about wolves.
A storm had rolled in near dusk. It had raged for the last hour in fitful downpours of icy-cold rain, punctuated by the crack of ground-shaking thunder and flashes of lightning.
The door rattled every so often as if something were trying to get inside, and the shutters trembled with every gust. There hadn’t been a storm this bad in years.
“He’s not going to make it,” she said dispassionately, staring at the man sprawled across her bed.
A storm raged inside him too.
Sweat darkened his hair and glistened on his skin. There were two bright splotches of feverish color on his cheeks. His lips moved as if he were speaking to someone, though no words came out.
With a jerk, he flung out one arm and barely missed hitting her mother.
The thin blanket covering him shifted, baring his right flank.
A collarbone. A glimpse of a well-muscled chest. The white bandages stood out in stark relief against his tanned skin.
At least there was no red showing through anymore. They’d finally stopped the bleeding.
Bending down, she tugged the blanket back up to cover him.
She’d done her best by him. Cleaning and stitching up the cuts on his side.
Plundering their supplies for herbs to make a poultice when infection set in.
Tending him through the fever and wrestling him back into the bed when he tried to fight his nightmares.
Dribbling water over his parched lips when he became so unresponsive he would no longer swallow it down.
She’d gotten to him too late. He’d lost too much blood and his wounds—three great slashes across his torso that definitely looked like claw marks—had been open for hours before she’d cleaned them out.
She thought he actually might have dragged his belly through the dirt and muck of the forest floor trying to get to the river.
The fever had started before they even made it out of the woods.
Her mother wrung out the cloth in the basin beside the bed and continued to serenely wipe the sweat from his brow. “God’s will be done.”
Rowan flinched and walked away from the bed.
Her mother had only become more devout since their exile, believing that God would save them, disregarding the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
She’d always been a good woman, her mother.
She’d led a difficult life—disowned by her family for marrying a common soldier, losing the love of her life so young, the trouble she’d had fitting in at Jarn as an outsider and then the trial.
It was like all of that hardship had distilled her initial goodness into something so pure it was almost unnatural.
Even after everything she’d been through, she always tried to look for the best side of things in circumstances and people.
It was thoroughly annoying.
Throwing herself into the rocking chair beside the fire, Rowan said, “I should have just left him out there. What are we going to do with a dead witch hunter in our house? Someone will come looking for him eventually. It will only bring trouble to our door.”
“If he dies, we’ll call for a priest,” her mother said. “The priest will come and make arrangements for the body to be properly buried.”
“The priest won’t come here.” Not to their squatter town full of leaning shacks and dodgy neighbors.
They were all outcasts of one kind or another out here at the edge of the kingdom, and the Church had long since given up on them.
“Better we bury him in the deepest hole we can find and pretend we never saw him. I can’t believe it’s him. ”
The venom in her voice surprised even her, and her mother didn’t speak for a long moment. “Hopefully he’ll survive the fever and we won’t have to worry about what to do with his body. You could say a prayer.”
“I could make a charm.”
Her mother shook her head. “I hate that Tilly is teaching you such things. After everything we’ve been through, you should know better than to dabble in magic.”
Her mother believed in herbs and poultices and medicines, all things which were legal in the kingdom.
All things that were easy to call out as potions and charms by people who did not understand them.
Maybe Tilly did cross the line with her small magics, but those magics had saved both Rowan’s and her mother’s lives a time or two.
And they were both still sitting here, no demons to be seen.
Except maybe the one currently in her bed.
Frowning, she leaned forward to toss another log onto the fire.
It crackled as it caught, and her face briefly warmed with heat.
She’d need to cut more wood tomorrow and every day from now until winter set in.
They still had no meat. They did have a horse now, out in the lean-to at the back of the house.
She supposed she’d have to figure out a way to feed that mouth too.
Unless the witch hunter died, then she was claiming the horse as payment and selling it.
She wondered how much she would get for his horse in Sulen. It was a big town and would surely be worth the trip. She’d have to do it before her mother called for the priest or else the beast would somehow end up as a donation to the Church instead.
For a moment, she imagined climbing on the horse and just riding away from this place.
Away from the woods and the looming mountains.
Past Sulen all the way to the capital where her mother had once lived.
She could sell the horse there for a ticket on a ship that would carry her across the ocean if she wanted.
If she played her cards right, she might never have to stop moving at all.
She couldn’t do that. Not even in a daydream. Her mother wouldn’t be able to live that kind of life, and Rowan wouldn’t leave her mother here alone. She couldn’t, even if her mother wanted her to. Her mother wouldn’t survive it.
Breathing a sigh, she settled back in her chair. “I wish he hadn’t come here. The patrols never come out this far. What do you think he was doing in the woods?”
“Chasing something evil, I imagine,” her mother said. “That’s his job, though it’s strange that you found him alone without his men. You said it felt like someone else was out there?”
She shivered, thinking about it. That heavy feeling on the back of her neck. The way the muscles in her back had tightened, bracing for a blow. She’d never felt so much like prey. “Could’ve been the deer I was tracking, but it was probably just my imagination.”
Her mother placed the cloth in the water again.
Again, she gently wrung it out. This time she ran it down the side of the captain’s neck.
For some reason, this seemed to soothe him.
So long as her mother sat there, he didn’t cry out or try to get out of bed.
But it had been a full day since he’d opened his eyes with any clarity.
If he didn’t wake up soon and take food and water, his odds of survival were bleak.
“There’s a witch in the woods,” her mother said. “Everyone says so. I told you to stay out of there.”
She hadn’t needed to be told. “There was a doe. We need the food.”
Her mother sighed. “I suppose if you hadn’t chased the doe, the captain would have died out there all alone. I see God’s hand in this.”
Of course she did.
“The woods were the same as always.” Except for all the blood. “I didn’t see any sign of a witch.”
“The witch wouldn’t show herself to you,” her mother said. “That’s not the way they work. I’ve told you this time and again. Witches are deceptive creatures. They hide themselves among us.”
“They’re women.”
Her mother frowned. “They seem to be. At first, you can’t tell the difference.
It’s only little things. The cat’s gone missing.
Or there’s an outbreak of mosquitoes. Mold in the thatch.
Things that can be explained another way.
By the time the church is on fire and a demon is walking in the streets, it’s too late. ”
Her mother saw the world as a battle between good and evil.
God in his heaven, pouring his light and goodness into his followers so they might fight the evil that sought to overtake this world.
Something had broken in her after Jarn. Rowan didn’t fault her for that.
Nor did she want to encourage her. There weren’t any demons coming to Toam.
Even demons had higher standards than that.
Her mother turned her face in Rowan’s direction.
It gave the uncanny illusion that she was looking at her.
Firelight glittered off her blind eyes. Shadows pulled at the ruined skin at her brow.
“If he survives, perhaps the captain would be willing to help us move to another town. Somewhere closer to the capital. Somewhere with a church. He might know a priest who would speak for us. You could resume your training and—”
“We have no money for any of that,” Rowan said flatly.
There was no way a nice, safe, close-to-the-capital sort of town would welcome in a branded witch and her peculiar daughter no matter who vouched for them.
She knew her mother held on to that dream.
That some day they would live in a cozy stone cottage away from the woods in a town with a church and neighbors who would accept them.
She wanted a place where she could sit outside in the sun without fear.
She wanted Rowan to study medicine at the Academy, for her to fall in love with a good man and have a dozen chubby babies to bounce on her knee.
Rowan looked around at their shabby little shack with its crooked table, narrow beds, and stained curtains over the windows.
Sometimes she thought it was better that her mother couldn’t actually see this place.
She kicked her feet up onto a stool and leaned back in the chair. “I guess that is the bright side. If we actually manage to save his sorry ass, the captain will owe us, won’t he?”