Wolfless Luna's Royal Return novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: First Bowl

Her broth heals a guard's old bite and the line grows; a grey-faced stranger collapses across her counter.

I did not sleep.

I sat by the fire with my hands in my lap, and I watched them for an hour.

They looked like hands.

Short nails, a burn scar across the left thumb from the Vandeleur ovens, a callus where the ladle sat.

Whatever I had seen the night before, it was gone.

I decided I had been tired and dizzy and heartbroken, and that pots do not glow.

Then the sun came up, and I had a fire to feed.

Wolfless Row woke slowly.

Hettie rattled the shutters of her pie stall.

A one-armed man set out buttons and thread.

Two old sisters began to argue about the price of eggs.

I ladled my broth into six chipped bowls that Hettie had lent me.

"Penny a bowl," Hettie said. "Don't smile at them, they'll think you're selling something else."

"I am selling something."

"Then smile at them," she said, "and charge two."

My first customer was a market guard in a leather jerkin, a wolf by his walk and the grey in his temples.

He paused at my counter and wrinkled his nose.

"Wolfless row," he said, bored. "What's this slop?"

"Broth."

"Looks like dishwater."

"Then it's cheap dishwater. Penny a bowl."

He snorted and tossed me a penny.

I handed him the bowl.

He drank it standing, in four swallows, with the expression of a man doing me a favor.

Then he went very still.

"Hang on," he said.

He set the bowl down and pulled up his left trouser leg.

A long white scar ran from his knee to his ankle, and the skin around it was puckered and black at the edges.

"A rogue got me eleven years ago," he said slowly. "Silver in the bite. It never closed."

The black edges were gone.

The scar was still there, but it was pink and clean.

He stared at his leg, and then at me.

"What did you put in that?"

"Onion. Bone. Thyme." I lifted my hands. "Salt."

"That's not salt."

"It is salt."

He bent, put his nose over the pot, and breathed in.

Then he straightened and looked down the row.

"Oi!" he bellowed. "Hettie! Who's the new one?"

"She's mine!" Hettie called back. "Leave her be!"

He did not leave off.

He took another bowl.

Then he said something to the baker across the way.

The baker crossed the lane with a cough that rattled his ribs.

By midmorning I had a line.

An old woman with trembling hands drank a bowl and held out her cup steadily, surprised to see it so still.

A wolfless boy with a fever sat on the crate, and the flush left his cheeks while he ate.

A wolf mother brought a baby who would not stop crying.

I fed the mother a bowl, and the baby went quiet against her chest.

I kept saying the same thing.

"It's just broth."

Nobody believed me, and I was not sure I did either.

My palms were warm all day, a steady hum.

Jory sat on the crate handing out spoons.

"Two pennies," he told every customer, grave as a banker. "My mama says smile."

Around noon a pair of market wardens in blue sashes pushed through the crowd.

"Who runs this stall?" the taller one said.

"I do."

"Where's your warden's stamp?"

I felt my stomach sink.

"I didn't know I needed one. I only came yesterday."

"Fine of ten silver or the stall closes by sundown."

Ten silver was more money than I had ever held at once.

The line behind me muttered.

The guard, still holding his empty bowl, stepped out of the queue and said, "She's with me."

The warden looked at his badge and shrugged. "Tomorrow, then. Get the stamp."

They moved on.

My shoulders came down and I turned to thank the guard.

He wasn't looking at me.

He was looking over my shoulder, at the back of the line.

A tall man in a plain grey coat stood there, swaying, with one hand on the awning pole.

His face was the color of old ash.

His lips were blue.

He took one step toward my counter, said, "Please," in a voice no louder than a breath, and fell across it.

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