Errin. Errin Vastel. I thought … I wanted to know who you are.”
“I’m no one, Errin Vastel,” he said, his lower lip twisting as he pulled it between his teeth.
There was something in the way he said both of my names that made me shudder, as though there was a curse in them, or a spell. There was an edge there, something to be wary of.
“You don’t live here,” I said. “That’s not your hut.”
“It’s mine for now,” he replied. “Why does it matter to you who I am?”
“I just wanted to know. This is the kind of place where strangers are a cause for concern.”
“From what I’ve heard, everyone in Almwyk is a cause for concern.”
“If Chanse Unwin found out…” I meant it mostly as a warning, not a threat, but his response came as a hiss.
“But he hasn’t. And he won’t. No one will. My being here will be our secret, unless you’d like me to tell everyone how we met. In the woods, you with a basket full of hemlock, and nightshade, and oleander.” He nodded to the mess at my feet. “It’s a hanging offence to gather them without an apothecary licence, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you have a licence, do you, Errin Vastel? Or am I mistaken and you’re the apothecary of Almwyk?”
I reddened, anger and fear vying inside me. Fear won. “No.”
“Well then, you keep my secret, I’ll keep yours. What do you say?”
What else could I say? I agreed, and I did my best to avoid the cottage he was living in.
But three days later I saw him again, back in the woods. It was after Unwin’s first town meeting, the day he told us that the Tregellian council would be dispatching soldiers to our village to guard the border, the day half the village packed up and left before they were arrested. Whilst they’d made a long, noisy caravan out of the village, I snuck into the woods for what I thought would be the last time before the soldiers came. He’d been waiting for me.
“I need a potion from you, if you can make it,” he said without preamble, hopping off the rotting oak stump he’d been perched on. He brushed dead leaves and moss from where they clung to his cloak, casual, as though we met in the woods often, as though we were friends, his head tilted like a bird’s as he did. “A tincture of henbane. Strong as possible. I’ll give you three florins for it, and I’ll tell no one where it came from.”
“Why should I?” As soon as the sullen words left my mouth I wanted to bite them back. Three florins was a moon’s rent, and then some. Enough to buy food to supplement my foraging. Three florins was another moon alive. I’d expected him to walk away after my rudeness.
I was wrong.
“Because you clearly need the money. And I really need the potion. We need each other. It makes sense.”
I stared at him in his hateful cloak, his stupid gloved hands, and I could feel him staring right back at me.
“What’s your name?” I said finally.
As he walked over to me I realized fully how tall he was, how lean he was. Last time we’d met, I’d been focusing on staying alive, but now… He reminded me of a silver birch, or a willow; a casual, insouciant grace to him, at home in the forest. He fitted here.
“Silas Kolby,” he said, stopping a foot away from me. I held my hand out, and he looked at it, puzzled, as though the gesture was alien to him. My cheeks flamed and I pulled my hand back, only for him to suddenly grasp it, his larger palm enfolding mine in a way that felt more like the sealing of a pact than an introduction.
It had taken a few weeks for me to shake my fears that he’d been the one to hurt my mother, but the nights of the first full moon after the attack proved it wasn’t him; he stayed infuriatingly himself, while she… It was pure dumb luck I’d taken to locking her in when I went out, to keep her from wandering and getting hurt again. It was pure dumb luck that I’d turned the key in the door after I’d given her supper, already half asleep and acting out of habit. It was luck that meant all she scratched that night was a door, and not me, while I sat behind