Irina Jace's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

They reached the birch stand before sunset. The trees grew close to a creek, their white bark peeling in thin strips. Irina filled her bag with the cleanest pieces while Maren sat on a fallen log, breathing hard from the walk. On the way back, Maren told her about the memorial—a stone case shaped like an herb basket, sitting in the old guild garden. Three names carved into the base. Three herbalists who'd thought they knew enough. Irina listened and didn't speak. She'd been drawing stars in her journal for remedies she'd only tested once. The difference between her and those three names was luck, not skill. Back at the woman's house, Irina ground the birch bark into powder and mixed it with the elderflower paste. The woman unwrapped her hands. The skin looked better than yesterday, but Maren was right—red lines were spreading again from the deepest burns. Irina applied the new mixture and waited. Ten minutes passed. The red lines stopped spreading. Twenty minutes, and they started to fade. The woman flexed her fingers slowly, then looked up. "It doesn't burn anymore." Irina marked the time in her journal but didn't draw a star. She needed to see this work again before she trusted it. Maren stood by the carved boxes and ran her swollen fingers over the lid. "You earned these," she said. "But you almost didn't." Irina closed her journal and looked at the boxes. Inside were herbs she could sell for enough to start her traveling shop, to prove the guild's rules didn't matter. But Maren's words sat heavy. She'd been working like the three dead herbalists—fast, confident, alone. She opened her journal to the page where she'd broken her two-witness rule last spring and drew a line through the star. Then she looked at Maren. "I need you to test everything before I sell it. Not just the joint paste. Everything." Maren nodded once. The woman handed Irina the boxes, and Irina set them by her bag. She had the herbs now, and the knowledge that she'd been one mistake away from adding a fourth name to that memorial. Outside, the purple-stemmed plants still hung by the door. Irina took them down and wrapped them in cloth. She'd bring them to Maren's garden, plant them in a marked row, and learn them properly. The traveling shop would have to wait until she could trust her own work. That was the real cost of the boxes—not the remedies she'd traded, but the standards she'd have to meet before she opened for business.