Chapter 7

Wren's POV

Briar brought the bowl in at dusk and held it out with both hands, the way she would have carried something hot to the Luna's table.

"Old Hester got the receipt from the herb man who comes through on market days," she said. "Bitterwort, and something to bring it on faster. She says the women round here swear by it."

The steam smelled of rot and green bark. I knew bitterwort. I had measured it out in the stillroom for laundry girls who came to the back door at night and couldn't look at me, and I had sat with two of them afterward while it did its work.

Hester's back room was small and clean, with a straw tick on a frame and a window that looked out on her hens. It was the first place in a month where no one wanted me dead. In Silverkeep, they said, Duskmere had put up an empty coffin for me at the temple, and the Luna had kept the vigil herself. I was glad of that coffin, because nobody hunts a dead woman.

"Drink it while it's hot, my lady," Briar said.

I held my breath and took a long swallow.

Something moved inside me, a hard, deliberate push right up under my ribs, nothing like the flutters I had felt before. My stomach heaved against it, and everything I had swallowed came back up over the edge of the tick and down the front of my shift.

"My lady!" Briar dropped to her knees with a cloth.

"It's the smell," I gasped. "I can't keep it down."

That was not the truth. I had put my hands on a hundred bellies at Duskmere and felt pups kick against my palm, and I had always smiled and told the mother she had a strong one. I had never once felt it from the inside. I sat there with sour bitterwort on my chin and my hand pressed to the place, and I had the foolish thought that it knew what was in that bowl.

The door banged open.

"Don't drink that!" Hester came in with her apron full of beans, her face gray. "Maud from the east end took that same man's draught two nights back. For her courses, she said. They found her this morning, stiff as a board. Briar, girl, take it away."

Briar carried the bowl out at arm's length as though it might bite her.

Hester lowered herself onto the stool beside me and patted my hand with her rough one. "You think on it a bit longer, love. Four months and more, it's no small thing to tear out, and it'd likely take you with it. And you needn't fear for bread. While I've a crust in this house, you and the little one have half of it."

"Hester, I..." I couldn't find the rest of it.

"I know you've your reasons. Some great wrong was done you, I can see that much." She squeezed my fingers. "But the babe didn't do it. If you're set on it, don't go trusting herb men. Find someone who knows the work."

Under my palm the small thing shifted again, slower now, almost a nudge, as if it had heard her take its side.

I made myself think it through. I didn't know whose it was. I knew who had chosen him, and Sera would never have put a decent man in that bed. She would have found some hireling who would do anything for silver, or some poor wretch she held a secret over. Whoever he was, he would be in this child's face. I was afraid of looking down at my own pup one day and seeing him, and hating what I saw.

And I was afraid of the other thing too, of lying awake years from now remembering this push under my ribs.

"Tomorrow," I said, and my voice came out hoarse. "Would you find me a proper healer, Hester? Someone careful."

She looked at me a long moment and nodded. "I'll go at first light."

* * *

The healer she brought was a stooped old man from the next village called Master Corby, with no wolf in him at all, like me. He took my wrist, then asked my leave and laid his ear against my belly, because he couldn't hear a heartbeat any other way. He listened a long while.

"Your courses come only every few months, I'd guess," he said, straightening. "Always have."

I nodded. It was why Briar had never wondered, and why I hadn't either.

"Then it's a wonder you caught at all. A strong one, too." He began to roll down his sleeves.

Briar leaned in and asked the question low, for me.

His face changed. "Now? Going on five months? No. The root's gone deep. Anything strong enough to shift it will tear the mother open, and she'll bleed out on the floor before anyone can stop it. I've seen it. Two burials for the price of one."

I had my fists knotted in the blanket. I looked at them for a while.

"Then give me something to hold it," I said. "Whatever you'd give a woman who wanted to keep her pup."

Briar sagged against the bedpost, and Hester, in the doorway, put her apron over her face.

When Master Corby had gone, Hester went straight for the yard, announcing that she was going to wring the fat speckled hen's neck and make me a broth.

"Not that one," I said. "She's still laying. If you want to spoil me, a dish of coddled egg would do. I'm hungry."

Hester turned in the doorway, and her whole face changed. You would have thought I had promised her a feast day.

She brought it soft and yellow, with a little butter on top, and I ate every spoonful.

Afterward I sat by the window and did the sums I had been putting off. The Luna had promised five hundred silver marks in front of the elders. The bundle Mistress Ivers threw into my lap had held two old shifts, my mother's silver thimble, and four silver marks and some pennies. Hester was a soldier's widow with six hens. Four marks would not last.

"Hester," I said, "does anyone in the village take in sewing?"

She said the shops in Silverkeep bought plain needlework for next to nothing and fine work for a little more, if the stitches were small enough. I could do small stitches. My mother had taught me before she went back to the Ashlands, and for three years the Luna had worn my embroidery to every feast in the city without ever once saying where it came from.

When Briar went in to market, I asked her to tie a red cord on the old oak by the well. Whoever had carried my note out of Duskmere had never once shown their face. It was the only thanks I could send.

The pup moved again while I sat there. I kept my hand where it was.

Briar came back at sunset and sat down across from me without taking off her shawl.

"I saw him today, my lady," she said. "Lord Adrian."