Rosemary Thorne's Arc

Chapter 18 of 24

The letter sat on the table through the night. Rosemary woke before dawn and looked at it in the gray light. Black wax. A name Damien could no longer use. The road to the city was four days by cart, longer by post. Damien's father had weeks at best. The village post rider wouldn't touch a sealed letter bound for a great house, not with a steward already sniffing after Ashfords. Rosemary needed a rider who wouldn't ask questions and wouldn't be believed if he did. Damien came down in his shirt. He saw her looking at the letter and stopped in the doorway. "It has to go today," he said. "Or it won't matter." "I know." "Not the post. Not anyone from the village." "I know," she said again. She poured him tea. Her hands were steady now. She had thought it through in the dark. She went out to the garden with a bowl of cream and set it on the flat stone by the gate. She did not call. She waited. The cats came first, then the small brown shape she wanted, climbing down from the wall with his purple hat lopsided from sleep. Whisker Riddlewick sniffed the cream and did not drink. "A letter," Rosemary said. "To a dying man four days south. Sealed. Fast. No questions at the door." The gnome looked up at her with his blue eyes. "What travels the road but leaves no print, speaks for a man but wears no mouth, and arrives before the crow sits down?" "A letter carried by something that isn't a man." He smiled into his beard. "The price." She had known there would be one. "Name it." "A second bowl at moonrise. For a year past the year I already hold." Two bowls a night. Two years now. She thought of the cats she'd keep feeding, the cream she'd keep skimming, and a young man in the city who would open a letter before he died. "Done." Whisker held out both small hands. Rosemary went inside and took the letter from the table. Damien watched her lift it. "Him?" he said. "Him." "Will it get there?" "He said before the crow sits down." Damien breathed out through his nose. He touched the seal once with his thumb. He handed her the letter. She carried it out to the gate. Whisker tucked it inside his green coat. It vanished as if the coat had swallowed it. He drank the cream in one long pull, wiped his beard, and walked into the hedge. The leaves closed behind him without a sound. Rosemary stood at the gate a long moment. The letter was gone. The debt was heavier. Sunday was three days away, and whatever answer came back from the south, if any came, would come to a house where the banns had already been read.