Page 1 of Bite Bonded Bride

1

CYBELE

The porridge is too thin again. I stir it anyway, adding the last of the dried herbs from the shelf above the hearth, the ones Eddie keeps insisting we can grow ourselves if we just source the right soil, and tell myself thin porridge with herbs is practically a delicacy. The hearth pops. Somewhere in the back room, I hear Edrin moving around, the familiar uneven rhythm of his footsteps before he finds his cane.

Our home is small enough that I can track his entire morning from the kitchen. Three steps to the washbasin. Pause. Five steps to the window. Pause. Then the slow, deliberate walk to the table that he tries to make sound casual, like the cane is a choice rather than a necessity.

"You're stirring that like it insulted you," he says, dropping into his chair.

"It did. It's watery."

"Everything you cook is watery."

"Everything you eat is free, so."

He grins. It's an unfair weapon, his wide grin looks too easy, exactly like our father's. I set the bowl in front of him and sit across the table with my own, and for a few minutes there's nothing but the sound of spoons and the distant clatter of the settlement waking up around us. It's almost peaceful.

"So I've been thinking, Sib." Edrin starts.

Here we go, using my nickname to get approval.

"About the silverbark compound," he continues, already animated, sitting up straighter the way he does when he's been mentally rehearsing something. "The girl at the apothecary sources it from the lowland traders, right? But silverbark grows on the north ridge. I've seen it. If I could dry and process it ourselves, we could cut at least a third off the monthly cost. Maybe more."

I eat my porridge. "You'd need a drying rack, a grinder and about six hours a week out of your sleeping time."

"I sleep fine."

"You sleep three hours when the cough gets bad."

"The cough hasn't been bad in weeks." He says it like a fact. Like saying it firmly enough makes it permanent. "Ly, I'm serious. I've been reading through Father's old herbalist notes and there's a whole section on compound preparation that's actually not that complicated. If we invested a little upfront⁠—"

"Eddie."

"—we could be mostly self-sufficient within a season⁠—"

"Edrin." I call his full name.

He stops. Looks at me. He has our mother's eyes, dark brown and too perceptive for his own good, and right now they're doing the thing where they read me slightly too well.

"What?"

"It's a good idea," I say, and I mean it. "Write it up properly. Source costs, time requirements, what you'd need to start. When I'm back, we'll look at it together."

Something shifts in his expression, just briefly, He knows I'm redirecting but doesn’t push.

"When are you leaving?"

"Midmorning." I don't look up from my bowl. "Contract's at Hollow Mountain. Survey work, mostly upper passages. Standard terms."

He is quiet for a moment. I eat, study the grain of the table and wait for him to decide how much he wants to say.

"Standard terms," he repeats, carefully.

"Good pay. Quick turnaround."

"Hollow Mountain." Another pause. "Ly, people have been saying⁠—"

"People say a lot of things about a lot of mountains." I stand, carrying my bowl to the washbasin. "The pay is real. That's what matters."