Chapter 16: The Women Who Laughed

Rowan sent his fastest wolves after the covered cart before I finished speaking.

"Bring her back alive," he told their captain. "Do not touch a Redfern guard unless one touches her first."

They were gone in a breath.

"Now what?" the maid asked.

"Now I go to the lavender house," I said.

Rowan looked at me.

"Gareth can move a witness," I said. "He can't move sixty women who watched my daughter starve."

He did not argue. He lifted the Goddess's cup from the Elder's saddlebag and fell in beside me.

The lavender house stands at the bottom of the hill, where the pack's women wash and dry the linen.

It was full when we came in.

Sixty women sat at long tables, folding sheets, and every pair of hands stopped.

Nobody had spoken to me since I walked down from the mountain.

They were afraid of me, and some of them were ashamed.

I walked to the middle of the floor.

"There were three of you," I said. "I heard your voices when my daughter died."

Nobody breathed.

"One of you called the wolfsbane a mercy. I heard you. I looked for you at the feast, and you studied your plate."

At the hearth, a woman in a green shawl went white.

"You," I said. "And two more."

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

"Then you'll have no trouble with this."

Rowan set the cup on the table and filled it from the well bucket.

Silver light moved in the water.

"One swallow," I said. "Then tell the room what you did to Tilda."

"You can't make me."

"No," I said. "But every woman here will watch you refuse."

She looked around the room.

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