Then, and only then, I go back to work.
3
SYBIL
Ifind the livestock in the morning.
Three capra, all of them huddled in the far corner of the pen — which means they didn't run. They died where they gathered, and whatever killed them wasn't interested in eating. That's the part that turns my stomach, not the sight of it, which is bad enough, but the waste of it. Nothing was taken. Something came in the night and killed three animals and left, and I have to stand in the morning light trying to make sense of a violence that has no hunger behind it.
Gran finds me there. Her eyes move from the pen to me, and doesn't speak for a long moment.
"How long has this been happening?" I ask.
"Since early spring." She folds her hands over her apron. "It was one or two at first. Dae coming in wrong. A fox that tore through the hen house and didn't take a single bird — just killed them and went." She pauses. "Your father was reinforcing the southern ward posts before he got ill."
"Wards." I turn that over. "He knew how to do that?"
"Your father knew more than he ever told either of us." Her voice goes quieter. "He was a private man."
Private.That's a generous word for it. But this isn't the morning for that particular argument with a ghost, so I let it go.
I spend the rest of the morning doing what I can — cleaning the pen, checking the storehouse, building a list of what needs replacing before the harvest has any chance of producing something worth selling. The list is discouraging. Three months. I have three months to make this land profitable enough to satisfy creditors with dark elf financial backing and no patience for human sentimentality, and I am starting that three months with dead livestock, a broken fence line, and one very unsettling encounter with the town monster.
It's midday when I head to the square for replacement hardware, and that's when I see the children.
There are four of them, eight to twelve years old, trailing along the far edge of the square with the studied casualness of children pretending they're not following someone. I track their attention and find Rolin at one of the trade stalls, exchanging coin for a twist of dried herbs, not appearing to notice anyone watching him.
He turns to go. The youngest of the group — a small girl with a gap in her teeth and dirt on her coat — shouts across the square without any apparent fear: "Beastkeeper! Did you see any fire-serpents this week?"
He stops walking.
Something shifts in his shoulders. A hesitation so small I nearly miss it. "Two," he says, without turning around. "In the eastern ravine."
The children erupt. The gap-toothed girl grabs the arm of the boy next to her. "Itoldyou!" she shrieks. They all start talking at once, and Rolin keeps walking, unhurried, but there's something at the corners of his expression — just barely, just for a second — that might be something close to a smile.
Hm.I file that away next to everything else I'm accumulating about this man.
Gran is waiting at the gate when I get back, and she has the look she gets when she's made a decision and isn't particularly interested in discussing it.
"I've invited Rolin to dinner," she announces.
I stare at her. "You'vewhat?"
"He helped you. It's the right thing to do."
"Gran, the whole town already thinks?—"
"The town has opinions about everything and is wrong about most of them." She turns and walks inside. "He'll be here at sundown. Try not to look like you're being executed."
He arrives exactly at sundown. No knock — he's simply at the open doorway when Gran goes to it, like he materialized from the shadow of the eaves, and Gran greets him like she's known him for twenty years.
He comes inside. He fills the kitchen in a way that has nothing to do with his size, though his size is considerable. It's the stillness of him — the way everything in the room seems to quiet and orient itself around his presence, like a compass needle finding north.
His amber eyes find me across the table. "Sybil."
"Rolin." I make my voice pleasant. I'm very good at pleasant when I'm working for it.
Gran makes him try everything she's cooked, which is an alarming quantity of food, and I watch him slowly, gradually, lose some of the stone from around his posture. Gran asks him questions — not prying ones, just conversation — and he answers. Full sentences. Complete ones. I suspect this is not something that happens often for him.
