Ilain sighed deeply. “Then you mop the blood and build a pyre, and for all anyone ever need know, he slipped off the hay ladder and broke his neck.”
“We can’t just lie,” Jeph said. “If she killed someone…”
Ilain whirled angrily on him. “What in the Core do you think we’ve been doing all these years?” she snapped. Jeph put up his hands to placate her, but she pressed on.
“Have I been a good wife?” Ilain demanded. “Kept your house? Given you sons? Do you love me?”
“Course I do,” Jeph said.
“Then you’ll do this for me, Jeph Bales,” she said. “You’ll do it for all of us, an’ for Beni an’ her boys, too. There ent no need for anything what’s ever happened on that farm to reach the town’s ears. What they make up is bad enough, and to spare.”
Jeph was quiet for a long time as they matched stares and wills. Finally, he nodded. “All right. I’ll leave after breakfast.”
Jeph was up with the dawn, hurrying through his morning chores despite the tired ache in his bones. They had tried all night to get a response out of Renna, but she simply stared at the ceiling, neither sleeping nor eating. After breakfast, he saddled their best mare.
“Reckon I’ll avoid the road myself,” he told Ilain. “Take a shortcut through the fields southeast.” Ilain nodded, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. He returned the embrace, the pit of his stomach heavy with dread at what he might find. Finally, he let go. “Best to get going while there’s still time enough for a return trip.”
He had just mounted his horse when the sound of hoofbeats reached his ears. He looked up to see a cart approaching, carrying the Herb Gatherer, Coline Trigg, wringing her hands with worry, and the Town Speaker, Selia the Barren, looking grim. Selia was nearing seventy now, tall and thin, but still tough as boiled leather and sharp as a Cutter’s axe.
Beside the cart on one side rode Rusco Hog, and on the other Garric Fisher and Raddock Lawry, Garric’s great-uncle and the Speaker for Fishing Hole. On foot behind them were Tender Harral and what looked like half the men of Fishing Hole, armed with thin fishing spears.
Garric kicked his horse ahead when the farm came in sight, galloping right up to the porch where Ilain stood and pulling up so short the beast reared before settling.
“Where is she?” Garric demanded.
“Where is who?” Ilain asked, meeting his wild glare.
“Don’t play games with me, woman!” Garric snarled. “I’ve come for your whorin’, witchin’, murderin’ sister, and you well know it!” He got off his horse and strode up to her, shaking his fist.
“You stop right there, Garric Fisher,” said Norine Cutter, coming out of the house holding Jeph’s axe. She had lived on Jeph’s farm since before his wife died, and was as much a part of the family as any. “This ent your property. You keep back an’ state your business, ’less you’re looking to take a coreling by the horns.”
“My business is that Renna Tanner murdered her own da and my son, and I’ll see her cored for it!” Garric shouted. “Ent no point in hiding her!”
Tender Harral caught up and interposed himself between Garric and the women. He was young and strong, a match for the older if just as bulky Garric. “There’s no proof of anything yet, Garric! We just need to ask her a few questions, is all,” he told Ilain. “And you, if she’s said anything since Jeph left.”
“We need to do more than that, Tender,” Raddock said, getting off his horse. He was born Raddock Fisher, but everyone in the Brook called him Raddock Lawry, because he was Speaker for the Hole on the town council, and legal arbitrator of disputes in his borough. A mass of grizzled hair from ears to chin, the crown of his head was bald as an egg. He was older than Selia but shorter-tempered, full of righteous passion with a knack for stirring it in others. “Girl needs to answer for her crimes.”
Hog was the next to dismount. He was imposing as always, the man who owned half of Tibbet’s Brook outright and held debts from the rest. “Garric speaks honest word when he says your father and Cobie Fisher are dead,” Hog told Ilain. “My girls and I went to investigate some shouting we heard at the store last evening, and found them in the back room I rented Cobie, dead. Not just stabbed, they was…mutilated. Both of them. Stam Tailor says he saw your sister there just before it happened.”
Ilain gasped, covering her mouth.
“Horrible,” Harral agreed, “and that’s why it’s best we see Renna right away.”
“So clear the door!” Raddock ordered, pushing forward.
“I am Speaker in Tibbet’s Brook, Raddock Lawry, not you!” Selia barked, silencing everyone. Jeph reached out to help her down from the cart. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she gripped her skirts to keep them from the dirt and strode over. The younger men, outweighing her several times over, shrank back at the force of her presence.
One did not get to be Selia’s age easily in Tibbet’s Brook. Life in the Brook was hard; only the sharpest, most cunning and capable folk survived to see full gray, and the rest treated them accordingly. When she was younger, Selia had been forceful. Now she was a Power unto herself.
Only Raddock stood his ground. He had ousted Selia as Town Speaker more than once over the years, and if age was power in Tibbet’s Brook, he was stronger, if not by much.
“Coline, Harral, Rusco, Raddock, and I will need to go in and see her,” Selia told Jeph. It wasn’t a request. The five of them were half the town council, and he could only nod and stand aside, allowing them entrance.
“I’m going, too!” Garric growled. The crowd of Fishers, his kith and kin, gathered angrily around him, nodding.
“No, you’re not,” Selia said, fixing them all with a steely glare. “Your blood is up and none can blame you, but we’re here to learn what happened, not stake the girl without a trial.”
Raddock put a hand on Garric’s shoulder. “She ent getting away, Gar, I promise you that,” he said. Garric gritted his teeth, but he nodded and stepped back as they went inside.
Renna was still lying in the same position they had placed her in the night before, staring at the ceiling. She blinked occasionally. Coline went right to her.
“Oh, dear,” Selia said, spotting the bloody knife on the night table. Jeph cursed silently. Why had he left it there? He should have thrown it down the well the moment he saw it.
“Creator,” Harral breathed, and drew a ward in the air.
“And here,” Raddock grunted, kicking a basin by the door. Renna’s dress was soaking within, the water pink with blood. “Still think we’re just here to ask a few questions, Tender?”
Coline looked over the bruises on Renna’s face with a concerned eye and a firm hand, then turned to the others and cleared her throat loudly. The men stared dully for a moment, then gave a start and turned their backs as she drew back the covers.
“Nothing’s broken,” Coline said, coming over to Selia when her inspection was complete, “but she’s taken quite a beating, and there are bruises around her throat like she was choked.”
Selia went and sat down on the bed beside Renna. She reached out gently, brushing the hair from Renna’s sweating face. “Renna, dear, can you hear me?” The girl didn’t react at all.