Fennel Thistledown's Arc

Chapter 18 of 21

Fennel had named six poisons in the book when a wagon creaked up the path. She knew the sound. She limped to the door and found a merchant she had not met before, though he traded the same routes as Cornelius. His wagon spilled over with jars and bundles. A spotted duck rode on the seat beside him, its feathers marked like a leopard's coat. "I heard the herb woman here trades fair," he said. He climbed down and lifted a wrapped stem from a crate. He peeled back the cloth. Inside lay a wilted plant, its leaves gone gray and limp. Fennel's breath caught. She knew it at once. It was a poison she had planned to teach only from memory, since she had no real specimen. To let her students touch a true wilted stem, to smell it, would fix the lesson deeper than any words. "I need that," she said. "Name your price." The merchant smiled. "It's rare. I don't part with rare for coin." He looked past her at the garden. "I want a trade worth the risk I took to carry it." Fennel had little to give. Her coin was thin. Her herbs were common stock he could buy anywhere. She thought of the remedy book and shook her head. That knowledge was already spread and could not be sold. She stood in the doorway and turned the problem in her mind. Then her eyes fell on a bundle by the hearth. A gift a grateful family had left after the coughing sickness. Deep purple flowers, near black at the edges, tied with a dark ribbon. She had kept it because it was beautiful and useless. She fetched it and held it out. "For a man who trades on the road, this sells in any town. Nobles pay dear for a bloom like this." The merchant took the bundle. He turned it in the light. His eyes moved over the black-edged petals, then the wilted stem in his own hand, weighing one against the other. The duck shifted on the seat. "City folk do like a strange flower," he said at last. He handed her the wilted stem. "Done." Fennel closed her fingers around the cloth. The merchant climbed up, clicked his tongue, and the wagon rolled off with the duck bobbing beside him. She carried the specimen inside and set it on the table where Lily and Oliver waited. "This is the seventh," she told them. She did not unwrap it yet. "You will learn it by its true smell, not my old words." Her knees throbbed as she sat. Six poisons named, one real one now in hand, five still to teach. The list was long and her time was short. But she had the thing she needed, and she began.