The Sword and the Song Read Online Free Page B

Worries, complaints, small joys   —they flooded around her like rainwater poured into muddy footprints, filling any crevice of consciousness she did not deliberately seal. The growth in her powers might mean she had to exert less effort to pick out individual thoughts, but it also meant she had to expend more to keep them out.
    Aine kept her steps brisk and determined, avoiding eye contact that might encourage conversation. Instead of the usual glut of people wanting her attention, though, there was just a trickle. Only the women and children were at the cookhouse for the midday meal, the men long gone to their work assignments.
    When she burst through the door of the first cottage in the healers’ quarter, a gray-haired man was already bent over the workbench, the tendons and muscles in his trim arms straining as he ground something with the heavy granite pestle. “Good morning, Brother Murchadh.”
    He looked up immediately and set the stone into the bowl. “Good morning, Lady Aine. You’re tardy.”
    “Late evening,” she said, without offense. Murchadh was blunt with everyone.
    He grunted a response and gestured to a bundle of herbs hanging from the wire hooks over his head. “I’m making agrimony powder. We’re running low.”
    “We’re running low on a lot of things.” Aine moved along the wall of shelving that housed the prepared remedies in vials and jars, much like the workroom she had temporarily established at Forrais. “Bitterroot, heart’s ease   —I’m not sure where we’re going to find any of these things in winter.”
    “Not that it’s so essential with your presence, my lady.”
    “I won’t always be available. And it won’t be long before the city’s needs outstrip my abilities.”
    Aine dragged the bucket of tallow from its spot on the bottom shelf to an empty space at the workbench and selected several dark glass bottles of essences. She would start with one of her most useful concoctions, a healing salve for blisters and abrasions, something of which there was no shortage in Ard Dhaimhin these days. Some of the new laborers had been craftsmen and scholars, their hands more used to delicate tools and pens than shovels and picks.
    She measured out a scoop of tallow into a wooden bowl and then carefully added the lavender, chamomile, and geranium extract to the fat. After she finished several batches of skin salve, she moved on to preparing newly harvested herbs. Hot water from the pot over the peat-burning hearth was poured into jars containing herbs for tinctures. Other jars were filled with the clear grain alcohol that the brothers distilled under close supervision for medicinal purposes on the opposite end of the city. Drunkenness traditionally had little traction in Ard Dhaimhin, considering the high degree of discipline, but the kingdom’s men had changed that.
    The kingdom’s men had changed much.
    “You seem troubled,” Murchadh said after they’d worked silently for nearly two hours.
    Aine lifted her head. “I do?”
    He gave a single nod.
    “I suppose I’m concerned. More refugees arrive every day, and our stores grow more depleted.”
    “I’m sure the Ceannaire and the Conclave are taking steps to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
    Aine nodded, not bothering to argue the point. Murchadh shared the attitude of many of the elder brethren. They trusted their leadership wholeheartedly and devoted themselves to their own duties. Those in charge surely had a plan for allcontingencies. Aine wished she didn’t know how far from the truth that actually was.
    By the time afternoon sunlight changed to the bluish tint of dusk, Aine had filled one of the long, empty shelves with new tinctures and salves, all of which would need to cure before they could be used. She put the last jar on the board and pressed a hand against the sudden ache in her lower back.
    Murchadh shot her a knowing smile. “Have you told your husband yet?”
    Aine lifted her gaze in surprise. At least