The way she said it,the fire, had a weight to it that the words alone didn't carry.
"What was the fire?" Catriona asked.
Iona's hands slowed. She set the bundle down with the deliberateness of someone choosing their next words carefully.
"Ye live in the Dragon's keep and ye havenae heard?" A glance sideways, half measuring, half something she was deciding how to handle. "Nay one's told ye?"
"I've been tendin' the livin'," Catriona said. "History hasnae been me concern."
"Aye." Iona hummed. Low, noncommittal.
She turned back to her stall.
Catriona waited. She'd learned already that Iona's silences had different qualities. This one had the quality of someone who had decided something and was working out how little of it to say.
"It was years ago now," Iona said at last. Her voice was measured. Careful. "A bad night. The lower wing of the keep caught. The family. most of them, didnae make it out." She paused. "The ones that did didnae make it long after."
Catriona held very still. "The Laird's family."
"Aye."
"How many?"
Iona looked at her directly for the first time since the subject had shifted. The measuring expression was back, sharper now, running a calculation Catriona couldn't quite read.
"That's all I'll say on it," she said. Quiet. Final. The door closing.
Catriona held her gaze for a moment. Then nodded once, accepting it.
"Thank ye," she said. "For the lungwort and for the rest."
"Aye." Iona turned back to her stall without ceremony.
Catriona gathered her basket and moved away.
The fire. The family.
Most of them didnae make it out. The ones that did didnae make it long after.
She turned it over as she walked. Not the bare facts, which were few enough, but the way Iona had delivered them.
The deliberate slowing before each sentence. The sharp look when Catriona pressed too close. The way Iona had already returned to her lavender before Catriona had taken a single step away or said anything more.
There was a story in this valley that people still handled carefully. And she slept under his roof every night without knowing it.
She filed it away. She'd come back to it.
"Lass." Iona spoke without looking up. Quieter now, the market noise making a small private space around them. "Folk forgive healin' easy enough around here. They've seen the boy improve and they're grateful for it, most of them."
She set down the bundle she was holding. "But they daenae trust what they cannae understand. And there are those who've already decided what ye are, and James breathin' better only confuses them." She looked at Catriona directly. "Be careful."
Fox, who had been sitting patiently at the edge of the stall, chose this moment to step forward and sit down squarely on top of Iona's neatly bundled lavender.
Iona looked at him.
Fox looked at Iona.
Iona exhaled. "Aye," she said, with the weariness of a woman adding one more thing to a list that was already long. "That includes him."
