Glass Under Water

The glasshouse rose from the marsh like the ribs of a drowned creature. Most of its windows had fallen into the shallow water. Inside the remaining panes, frozen vines pressed pale leaves against the glass.

Sella stopped at the threshold. A rusted lock hung open beneath her hand.

“Someone’s been here.”

Iven crouched beside a footprint sheltered under the eaves. “Recently. Narrow boots. Not Court issue.”

“Do you also inspect boots professionally?” Mara asked.

“Only when their owners chase me.”

They crossed a flooded aisle on broken benches. Beneath the ice lay pots of trees no taller than Mara’s knee, their branches carefully trained into fans. At the center stood a stone basin with three bronze swallows around its rim.

Sella reached beneath the nearest bird. Her fingers came back empty.

From the far doorway, someone cleared his throat.

A thin man in a green coat held the second crown fragment between two gloved fingers. His other hand gripped a crossbow, aimed low but steadily.

“My apologies,” he said. “I expected a buyer, not the original depositor.”

“Pell,” Sella said, with remarkable disappointment packed into one syllable.

“You remember me.”

“I remember paying you to guard this place.”

“Twenty years ago. There are limits to even my modest rates.”

Mara noticed the man’s boots: one sole was bound with string. His coat had been mended with thread several shades too bright. The crossbow trembled, though not from fear alone.

“How much?” she asked.

Pell named a sum none of them possessed.

“What were you going to buy?”

His eyes flicked toward a lean-to beyond the broken door. A cough came from inside, deep and persistent.

“Medicine,” he said. “And passage south for my sister.”

“The passes are closed,” Sella told him.

“Not to people who can pay.”

Mara lowered her satchel. “Let me see her.”

Pell raised the crossbow a little. “You’re not a physician.”

“No. But I can get a fire going.”

For a long moment he studied her empty hands. Then another cough shook the lean-to, and the bow dropped.

“Don’t make me sorry,” he said.

Mara thought of the shelter stove and hoped, fiercely, that she had learned.