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FIONA
Ishift the basket of rirzed tinctures farther up my arm while Bran stacks the last of the tiphe firewood beside my clinic door.
Glass clinks beneath the wool covering the vials. The sound makes me wince. Every bottle represents hours spent grinding roots, boiling water, straining sediment, and measuring doses by lamplight. One careless movement could cost Lowtown medicine we cannot replace.
Bran lowers another log onto the pile. His breath clouds around his broad face, briefly hiding the coal smudge on his cheek.
“That’s the last of it,” he says.
I study the stack. It is smaller than the one he brought before the first frost. Those logs had been thick, evenly cut, and dry enough to catch fire quickly. Today’s delivery includes narrow branches and two pieces damp enough to hiss when burned.
It is still more fuel than most families possess.
The cold has already worked through my wool cloak and the patched dress beneath it. My shoulders ache from holding them rigid against the wind. The carved wooden comb securing my chestnut braid presses against the back of my head whenever I turn toward the marketplace.
A woman hurries past with a child wrapped inside her shawl. The child’s feet are bare. Across the lane, a man dismantles a broken stool, likely intending to burn it tonight. Nothing in Lowtown remains only what it was made to be. A chair becomes fuel. A blanket becomes bandages. Food becomes a calculation measured against tomorrow.
I set my basket on the clinic step and draw three dalers from the purse tied beneath my cloak.
Bran watches the coins land in my calloused palm.
“Fiona.”
“Four tinctures and three dalers,” I say. “That was our agreement.”
“Our agreement was made before I saw how little rirzed you have left.”
I remove four vials from the basket. The liquid inside them is dark amber, with pale shreds of root resting at the bottom. “Then you should be pleased I’m giving you the amount we agreed upon instead of charging you for criticizing my inventory.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is one.”
His grin lasts only until the wind catches him. He turns his head and coughs into his elbow.
The sound is dry and deep.
I stop arranging the vials.
Bran reaches for the coins as though nothing has happened. His fingers close around all three, but he returns one to my palm.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You hauled this from above the eastern cut.”
“I had help.”
“Your eldest is fourteen.”
“Fourteen is old enough to complain like a grown man. He may as well work like one.”
I push the daler toward him. He closes my fingers around it and steps back.
His cheeks are flushed beneath the grime. Not the healthy red left by exertion, either. The color lies too high across his face, and sweat darkens the hair at his temples despite the bitter air.
