Ire Taverness's Arc

Chapter 4 of 19

The morning after Kael finished the cellar, Ire took the wagon east with him on the bench beside her. They came back at dusk with the axles groaning. Flour. Salt pork. Oil in sealed crocks. Dried apple in sacks. Onions by the bushel. Kael carried the heavy loads down the back stairs while Ire logged each sack against her ledger. By the time the last crock hit the plank floor, the new room was full to the second shelf, and the old cellar held the overflow. She stood at the bottom of the stairs with the lamp raised. The shelves were exactly what she had asked for. Dry. Deep. Cold enough to keep the pork through a warm week. Her tail flicked once, slow, and settled. "A month," she said. "Maybe six weeks if the road stays open." "Longer if we're careful," Kael said. He wiped his hands on his trousers and leaned in the doorway. His ears tracked a sound above them, then relaxed. "You bought at spring prices. That'll show in the till by harvest." She walked the rows one more time. She touched a sack of flour, then a crock of oil, checking the seals with her thumb. Everything held. She had wanted this for two years. She had it now, and her husband had built the room that made it possible. Upstairs the tavern was already loud. The widow's boy called an order back to the cook. Boots hit the boards. A caravan had rolled in behind them off the eastbound road, and the main hall was filling fast under the loft. Ire heard the pitch of it and knew the night before she saw it. She climbed the stairs. Kael followed. In the main hall she counted the tables in one sweep. Every bench taken. Two parties standing near the door, waiting. Traders in road dust. A pair of guards drinking slow. The widow's boy pushed past her with four mugs balanced on one arm. "Told you," Kael said at her shoulder. His voice was quiet, near her ear. "Road's moving." She smiled while she tied her apron without looking down. "Please take the bar baby. I'll take the floor." He moved. She moved. By midnight she had turned three groups over twice and sent the widow's boy home with a full purse for his mother. The stockroom below her feet had fed the kitchen through the whole rush and barely showed it. She locked the front door and leaned her forehead against the wood. Kael came up behind her and set a hand on the small of her back, near the base of her tail. "We need another cook," she said. "I know." "And a girl for the floor. Tomorrow, not winter." "I'll ask in the morning." She turned under his hand and wrapped her arms around Kael’s neck to pull him down into a kiss.