Est had asked him to come to a room near the crossing. Rowan found the entrance beneath a narrow stone stair, with the afternoon sun reaching the edge of the open door. Inside, a woman in a plum shawl was writing on a sheet held flat by her wrist.
He waited at the threshold. She finished the line before looking up.
“Rowan?”
“Yes.”
“Est. Come in.” She set down the pen and offered her hand. “Thane sent word you’d arrived.”
“Thank you for finding a time.”
“You caught me before I went out. Sit down if you like.”
Rowan took the chair beside the table. A shallow basket stood on the floor near her feet. It held several empty jars, wrapped so they would not strike one another, and a folded cloth with writing along one edge. On the table, two shorter lists lay beside the page she had been finishing.
Est followed his glance. “Returns. Some arrive with a name, some with an assurance that I’ll know.”
“Do you?”
“Often. I write it down anyway.”
She drew one of the lists toward her and added a mark. Rowan set the notebook on his knee but left it closed.
“Thane said Vessa had given you names,” she said.
“She did. I’ve seen Corren this morning, and Soren took me to Irma yesterday.”
“Then you’ve begun.”
She put the pen aside. “I meant to take you to Mare this afternoon. She’s working, but she agreed to see you at the shop. The others we can arrange when we know who’s here.”
Someone called from outside. Est looked past him and rose. A man beside the stair handed her a folded slip. The carrier was leaving before the evening carts, and the jars were wanted before his next journey.
“They’re wanted full,” she said. “Let him take the lower parcel. I’ll find another way for these.”
Est returned to change the collection. Rowan waited while she wrote.
“I can carry the basket.”
“Thank you. Mind the jar without a lid. It’s wrapped, but the rim is chipped.”
Rowan lifted it by both handles. The weight was modest, though the jars made him keep it level. Est closed a cupboard, gathered her papers, and led him out.
At the crossing they let a cart clear the narrower approach. Est greeted two people waiting on the far side, answered a question about a time, and changed it when she learned one of them would be out. She wrote the new arrangement on the back of her folded sheet before they continued.
Est looked at the basket. “We’ll put these down first.”
Mare’s shop stood along a street Rowan had crossed yesterday without turning into it. The front had been altered around a broad window, leaving older stonework visible beneath. A bell hung inside the entrance.
He felt the threshold before reaching it.
The protection gathered closer than he had expected, meeting him with a fine resistance across the skin of his hands. It shifted as Est opened the door, settling around her as she passed. Rowan followed with the basket.
The working touched him more distinctly. He paused with one foot inside, leaving the door clear behind him.
“Set that on the counter,” a woman said. “You must be Rowan.”
She stood behind the counter, short, with her sleeves rolled back and an apron tied over her clothes. A shallow dish lay before her. She put a small spatula across its rim and wiped her fingers on a cloth while Rowan set down the basket.
Est introduced them. Rowan had expected the name to fit someone he might recognize from an old station visit. It did not. He had seen Fenwick written beneath work done long before he arrived to read it.
He laid the notebook beside the basket while Est cleared a place for her papers.
“Usually Mare,” she said when he addressed her as Maris. “Did the door trouble you?”
“No. I stopped to feel the working.”
“It settles around anyone who comes through.”
“How much does it tell you?”
“Enough to make me look up. Less than a person who answers when I do. It’s on the way out that it’s really helpful.”
Rowan raised an eyebrow. Est removed the folded cloth from the basket and laid it beside the dish. “The carrier is leaving early. I’ve sent the lower parcel with him. These can go another way.”
Mare read the writing on the cloth. “These two are ready. This one needs another day.”
“Then don’t hurry it. I’ll change the collection.” She drew her papers out while Mare brought two filled jars from beneath the counter. Rowan stepped back enough to leave them room. Shelves lined the rear wall, glass and clay interspersed with folded packets and tins. Herbs hung where air could reach them. The room smelled warm without being close: dried leaves, something sharp beneath them, and honey. On a table beyond the shelves, a tray of biscuits was cooling beneath a lifted cloth.
Mare followed his glance. “Those aren’t for sale. Help yourself when we’ve put this away.”
“You’ve been baking?”
“Before I opened. There were more.”
Est took a biscuit from the tray on her way back to the basket. “There still are more. I put some out of reach.”
“Whose reach?”
“The people coming for jars.”
Mare took the empty jars out one at a time, checking their names against the cloth. At the chipped rim she stopped.
“This one doesn’t go back.”
“I marked it,” Est said.
“Good. I’ll use another.”
She set it aside and put the ready jars into the basket. Est tied fresh slips beneath their lids and wrote the missing jar separately.
The bell sounded behind Rowan. A woman entered carrying a tin. Mare moved the papers away from the clear end of the counter before greeting her.
“How has he been with it?”
“Better in the morning. He says the last of this wasn’t doing much.”
Mare opened the tin, examined what remained, and asked when it had been started. The woman gave her the date after thinking, then corrected herself.
“Does he use it every day?”
“When he remembers.”
Mare nodded as though this was useful information rather than a failure to be reprimanded. She asked two more questions, then brought down a fresh tin and showed the woman where its date had been written.
“Use it regularly. If he’s no better, come back and tell me. Has he seen Del since they last spoke?”
“Not since then.”
“Ask him to go. Del will want to know what has changed.”
The woman put the tin in her bag. Mare kept the old one, scraping its small remainder into a separate dish. When the door closed, she rinsed the spatula and returned to the counter.
“You know Del?” Rowan asked.
“Yes. We’ve worked together for years.”
“I knew him from station visits. I hadn’t realized he was still seeing people.”
“He sees the people he chooses to. This man is one of them.” Mare set the rinsed spatula aside. “If he comes to me because his last tin is empty, I’d rather he didn’t forget the person who needs to examine him.”
“I’m making resin, not medicine, at this end,” she told Rowan. “You can come nearer if you want to watch.”
He had stayed back while the customer spoke. Now he moved to the clear place Mare indicated.
The dish contained a pale, thick substance that yielded slowly beneath the spatula. He remembered the little jar beside Soren’s lamp.
“Soren was using this yesterday,” Rowan said. “Conduit resin?”
“Yes. You’ve found his shop, then.”
“Looking for breakfast.”
“Did you get any?”
“Elsewhere.”
Mare’s mouth moved slightly. She drew two small jars toward the dish and began filling them, turning each to leave the thread beneath its lid clear.
“Does this all go to him?” Rowan asked.
“Some. Several people buy it plain. Some want it prepared for their work.”
“You attune it here?”
“When I know what they need.”
She scraped the last from the dish into a third jar, then put it beside the others without closing it. From a shelf below the counter she took a small amount of resin in a covered bowl. It was darker than the fresh mixture.
“This has been waiting for me to compare it.”
Rowan looked from the bowl to the jars. “Has it failed?”
“Not that the maker could tell me. His working answers, but it doesn’t settle as it did. He sent this and kept enough to work without changing the whole piece.”
She brought the bowl into the light. Rowan could see nothing beyond the difference in color. Mare touched the resin with the clean end of the spatula and waited.
“May I take a reading?” he asked.
“From here. Let me put what I’ve used aside.”
She closed the filled jars and moved them aside. Rowan rubbed ash into his palm and brought the resin toward his sight.
Its preparation showed in a close, uneven pattern, a paler course gathering where Mare had touched it. He reached with moonlight across his fingers.
“There are two pulls,” he said. “One nearer the surface.”
He indicated them. Mare turned the bowl. The deeper response held; the nearer drew away sooner.
“That could be the preparation.”
“It could. I can feel it carrying something that shouldn’t be in this quantity. What is it like to you?”
“The joining holds, then gives before I expect it to. I can’t follow where it goes.”
Mare considered the surface again. “I get a bitter edge. It remains after the rest settles.”
Rowan let the moonlight thin. There was a slight ache between his fingers, more familiar than the reading he had just taken. He worked his thumb away from his palm.
Mare looked at the movement. “Enough for now. I have your reading.”
He released the thread and rested his hand. Mare moved the bowl aside.
“Do you taste it?”
“Not with my mouth. Not this.”
He looked at the bowl. Avel heard the bridge working; Mare tasted something he could only see withdrawing.
“Does the bitterness tell you what was added?”
“Sometimes. Here it tells me where to begin comparing.”
He let the altered sight go. Ordinary light returned to the bowl.
Est had finished the slips and was watching from the end of the counter.
“Can I send word that you’re keeping the sample?”
“Yes. I won’t alter it this afternoon. Ask him to tell me what else he has used with the piece.”
“He wrote that the preparation hasn’t changed.”
“Ask about the piece, then. Not only the resin.”
Est found the appropriate sheet and added the question beneath the reply. Mare turned back to the plain jars. She lifted one into her palm and rested two fingers on its lid.
Faint blue and gold gathered beneath her fingers and carried through the clay with an inner warmth. The sharper scent reached Rowan again. Mare waited until the glow settled, then placed the jar on the counter.
“For Soren?”
“For conjuration. He isn’t my only customer.”
Mare tied the preparation slip beneath the lid and put the jar beside the waiting orders. Rowan closed the ash pouch. He had used more on the way down than in an ordinary stretch of patrols.
“Do you keep cedar ash?” he asked.
“Yes. Plain?”
“For a focus. I’d rather prepare it myself.”
She took a tin from a lower shelf and brought a small sheet of paper toward her. “How much?”
He showed her the remaining ash in his pouch. She measured out enough to replenish it, folded the paper closely, and set it beside his notebook. Rowan paid her while Est collected the basket.
“I can take that back,” he said.
“It’s lighter. I’ll manage.” She looked at Mare. “I’ll send the two ready jars tomorrow. Is that late enough for the third?”
“After midday. If it changes, I’ll send word.”
Est nodded and tucked the papers beneath the folded cloth. Rowan placed the ash inside his cloak. Before picking up the notebook, he went to the table beyond the shelves.
The biscuit was still slightly warm. He ate it clear of the counter. Del had patients, Est had arrangements reaching beyond the town, and Mare had needed to know what both were doing. Vessa’s sheet had not begun to describe them.
He washed the crumbs from his hands at the basin Mare showed him, then took his book.
Est shifted the basket clear of the next customer, who had stopped inside the door. Mare greeted him and took the packet he carried. Rowan stepped away from the counter.
“Thank you for letting me watch.”
“You’re welcome.” Mare touched the unaltered sample’s lid. “If you’re passing when I’ve had his answer, ask me what he changed. You’ve seen what it’s like now.”
“I’d like to know.”
He nodded. Est waited outside while he followed her through the threshold. This time he felt the close protection and continued without stopping. It eased across his hands, then faded as he reached the street.
They walked back toward the crossing. Est carried the basket on the side away from passing carts, and Rowan kept pace without reaching for it again.
“Would you like me to arrange the others?” she asked.
“In time. Not all at once.”
“That will be easier.”
“And if I need to ask you about someone?”
“Come to the room. If I’m out, leave word with what you want to know.”
At the crossing she stopped to check whether a cart was going toward the place the jars needed to reach. The driver could take them the following afternoon. Est gave him the collection time and asked him to come to the room first.
Rowan waited until they had finished, then said goodbye. Est went toward the room to leave the basket. He crossed the road and turned into the lane beside the river.
He opened his notebook.
Mare. Small, rolled sleeves, quick hands. He drew the spatula across the dish, then the angle of her wrist as she turned the bowl for him. Beneath her name he wrote healer. After a moment he added apothecary, leaving room for the preparation she had made for conjuration.
He tried a small sketch of her face. The first gave her an expression she had worn while listening to the customer. The second was nearer the look she had given the resin. Neither brought back the person who had invited him to watch, noticed his hand and gone on with her own comparison. He left the second unfinished.
The ash packet made a slight ridge beneath his cloak. He closed the book and went down toward the water. He had seen the lower path from above yesterday; there was still enough afternoon left to walk it.