Free Duainfey by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Page B

feverease."
    "Oh, aye, I'm satisfied," that worthy said, without raising her head from her task. "Until dinner time."
     
    "Feverease on that shelf," Becca said, pointing. "Leave me a cord for my folk here, but take however much you need of the rest. Is there anything else? Aleth? Poppy?"
    "No, Miss, just the feverease. The mistress lent half of our store to Tamli back in the fall when half her village went ill in the fall with the swamp-sweats. The season's too early for her to replenish us—and now we have this."
    "So we do," Becca said, rubbing her withered arm absently. "Well, let us hope that this fever does not blossom into an epidemic."
    "Oh, aye, we're all hoping that," Harin said seriously, "and planning, o'course, for the worst. Which is how the mistress gets her reputation, so she tells me, for being wise."
    Becca laughed. "Sonet gets her reputation for being wise from . . . being wise," she said. "Planning for the worst is hardly frivolous."
    "True enough." Harin nodded at the cords of dried plants she had laid out on Becca's work table. "These'll do us, Miss, unless it truly is an epidemic."
    "Praise harvest, it won't come to that," Becca murmured, as the 'prentice put her bag on the table and pulled out a cloth sack, the top tied firmly with a workmanlike length of cord.
    "Mistress sends you this, Miss, in trade."
    "Trade? There's no need for that! Sonet can repay the house when her stores allow it, just as—"
    "Said you might have more use of it where you're bound than she's likely to have, hereabouts," Harin continued, as if Becca hadn't spoken. "Had it from a cunning man, she said, in lot with some other exotics. Duainfey, is what the Corland-folk call it. Mistress says to look for it in your northland book, got sketches and the complete list. Use just a leaf-tip for clear seeing. If someone's all in pain and needs release, it's two leaves for an old person and three for a young."
    Becca bit her lip. Administering release was not something she looked forward to. During the big sickness she had of course worked at Sonet's side, and stood ready to do everything that was needful. However, Sonet had been clear on the point of protocol: only the healer in charge could offer and administer release.
    "Mistress says," Harin continued, putting the sack on the worktable and stowing the cords of feverease into her bag, "it's a rare one, even in the Corlands. These here're rootlings, all dry and ready to plant."
    She could not, Becca decided reluctantly, refuse the trade. A medicinal plant rare even in its native land? She would not be the herbalist Sonet had trained her to be, if she did not receive the gift—and learn from it.
    "Please tell Sonet that I am very happy to accept the duainfey in trade," she said in a composed voice that fooled Harin not at all, if the sideways glance beneath short, sooty lashes was any indication.
    "That's what she'd want, Miss, which you know and I do—having each of us stood her 'prentice." She slung the bag over her shoulder and gave Becca a grave smile.
    "I hope to learn as deeply as you have, if you'll hear me say so, Miss Becca. Between you and the mistress, I've lofty examples to guide me."
    Almost, Becca laughed. But Harin looked so grave and serious that she swallowed her merriment and instead gave the girl a careful smile.
    "You will outstrip us both," she said, the merely pleasant words heavy with a conviction she had scarcely intended. Are you, she asked herself crankily, a future-seer?
    Harin was bowing, even deeper than her usual, but not before Becca had seen the blush staining her brown cheeks.
    "Thank you, Miss Beauvelley," she said breathlessly. "Thank you."
     

Chapter Seven
    Becca lay staring up at the dark ceiling. The breeze murmured gently through the curtains, bringing her scents from the midnight garden below her window, the froglings paean to their pond, and the occasional giggle of a night hawk.
    Ordinarily, such homey sounds soothed her into slumber.