“I flinched because it’s cold, not because I’m frightened of you.”
“Hmm,” was all she said, smearing the stuff liberally over his wounds before taking up another bandage and setting it in place.
She leaned in close to wrap the bandage behind him. Her long hair slipped over his skin, light as a whisper. Her breath was warm and sweet against his neck.
He forced his attention away from Rowan’s touch and back to the hovel he’d consigned her to, back to her mother’s blind eyes. “Did the priest not try to help you?”
“Father Anson?” Mistress Yahl shook her head. “No. You’ll remember he cast the Church’s vote against me.”
“Most branded women remain where they are,” he said. “The crown doesn’t take their homes. You should have been able to stay.”
“The mayor wanted us out,” Mistress Yahl said. “And there was the fine to pay. The town council claimed my house and property to pay for it.”
“If you had petitioned the Church, they might have covered it. Most priests care for the people under their direction. They’re usually the ones who help the witch get back on her feet. The goal is restoration, forgiveness, renewal.”
Rowan scoffed. “Does the Church renew the skin back to their foreheads? Do they restore sight? Lost reputations?”
“There are other branded witches just as there are other thieves missing hands who still find a way to go on and live full lives.”
“It’s a barbaric practice,” she said. “It should be stopped. I don’t know how you can live with it.”
He caught her gaze and held it. “If you’d seen the damage a witch can do, you would understand the necessity of so harsh a warning.”
“My mother never hurt anyone.”
“That’s not what the town decided.”
She tugged at the bandage hard. “You were the one who branded her.”
There was that.
Mistress Yahl frowned at her daughter. “The mayor and priest cast the deciding votes, Rowan. You know that. The captain tried to convince them otherwise.”
“He didn’t try hard enough,” Rowan muttered as she wrapped the bandage around him again.
He’d given the townspeople every opportunity to change course. If anything, he’d given too much weight to his own opinion, believing he could sway the mayor and priest. He’d drawn the trial out too long, letting tempers rise. Asher had almost died because of his hesitation.
“If I encountered the same situation today, I would insist on a closed trial. I’d call in neutral judges as soon as I even suspected that one of them had too personal of a relationship with the accused.”
Rowan’s stormy gray eyes flashed up to meet his. “So you say.”
“I use Jarn as an example when I train new recruits. I don’t want anyone to ever be placed in that situation again. Not witch hunter or accused.”
Rowan gave him a disgusted look. “So you’ve just been telling our story over and over again to all of the new witch hunters for the last six years?”
“I don’t tell them your names.”
“As if that makes it better.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe they asked you to train people how to do a good job.”
He had to look away from the accusation in her eyes. “It’s hard to imagine normal townspeople turning into a pack of wolves like that until you’ve seen it for yourself. I didn’t believe it would go so far and then, when it did, there was no turning back.The vote had been cast. My men were being overrun. If the mob had reached the stage, they’d have torn you apart. I thought the brand would stop them.”
With more grace than he had any right to expect, Mistress Yahl nodded her understanding. “The crowd would have turned on you too if you’d done anything else, Captain. They would have turned on you next, Rowan.”
Rowan finished securing the bandage and pulled away to look at him. He could still see traces of the child she’d been. Now that he saw it, he didn’t know how he’d missed it. It was there in the curve of her cheek, that pointed chin, the stormy eyes.
“Of course it stopped them,” she said with a bitter twist to her mouth. “Why wouldn’t it? You gave the mayor exactly what he wanted. My mother was hurt and shamed. We were cast out of Jarn with nothing. We were only gone a day when the wound became infected,” Rowan told him. “I couldn’t?—”
The way her voice cracked ripped something open inside him.
