Page 4 of The Iron Dagger
His theory about her smile was confirmed as she broke into a grin. It was the widest and toothiest smile he’d ever seen, and her catlike eyes sparked with amusement. His earlier impression of her plain looks amended slightly. If one liked smiley women.
Gideon sipped his drink with a stony expression.
“You have been asleep for three days,” she said. “I found you near death in the woods, but with my poultice, it seems you have come out the other side.”
“What are you, a hedgewitch?” he scoffed.
“Yes,” she said.
Gideon felt a twinge of distaste deep in his gut.
Here in the south they were more accepting of witchcraft, and sorcerers were not uncommon in the royal court. But in the north, all those who practiced magic-craft were looked upon with wary suspicion. There were magic wielders with benevolent leanings to be sure, but for every good seed there were a hundred bad ones using their magic to trick or to harm. The lower hedgewitches could inflict their own kind of damage; babes born too early, cursed possets disguised as good luck charms, and, as Gideon had so recently discovered, poisoning.
He had never concerned himself with the prejudices that some at the Montag court held on to, having traveled the continent several times over and met with all manner of magic wielders. From what he had seen, most magic was middling power and happenstance, with some pastes and powders thrownin for dramatic effect. Magic could be useful when kept in check, like water held by a dam, and for most of his life Gideon saw witches as ultimately harmless.
But his opinion of witchery had changed now. A near-death poisoning had rather soured him towards the entire craft.
“My name is Angharad, but I go by Hara. What is your name?” she said.
“None of your business. Thank you for your help, but I will be on my way,” he said, attempting to stand. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he fell back onto the bed with a thump.
“You haven’t eaten in days and you’re still feverish,” said Angharad as she stood from the bed and went to her table. She took up a bowl and uncovered it, taking out a soft mound of dough. With deft hands, she began to knead it.
“All the same, I cannot stay here any longer,” said Gideon, thinking of how to get a horse and a messenger to his kingdom. Someone should have been sent to look for him by now.
“The snow is knee deep, so I don’t know how you’d go anywhere,” she said, fitting the dough into a clay bread pan. She slid the pan into a clever little ceramic door that adjoined the hearth, removing another loaf as she did so. “If you will not tell me your name, what shall I call you? I’ve been calling you Bitty Babe in my thoughts.”
“What?” he asked, choking slightly on his tea.
“I’ve had to bathe and dress you and change your soiled linens for three days now, like a baby.”
Gideon felt his face reddening, which was appalling. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so weak and helpless, and he couldn’t stand it. Fever be damned, he was leaving. He attempted to rise again. This time he gained his feet, but he winced in pain and stumbled slightly when he put weight on his heel.
Angharad was there, catching his shoulders to steady him. This woman had no boundaries, putting her hands all over him without fear.Changing his soiled linens.
With little murmurs, she settled him back down into the bed as though he were a fussy child. A warm whiff of something sweet and herbal met his senses as she plumped his pillow and moved away to her work table.
The cat jumped up onto one of the narrow shelves on the wall and walked to a platform that overlooked the bed. It watched him as it crouched into a round ball, a whiskered gargoyle.
Gideon rested against the pillows and rubbed at his face with the heels of his hands. The sharp throb of his foot was slowly ebbing down, and through his ill-temper, he had to grudgingly admit that at least the tea had helped with his headache.
Angharad gathered up some supplies from a store cupboard and began to use a mortar and pestle. She hummed a strange song and whispered as she worked. It made Gideon uncomfortable, as if he were listening in on something private.
When she came back to his bedside and uncovered his injured foot, apprehension tightened his belly. He winced as she brought his foot into her lap and began unwinding the bandages. The wound was nasty, and the bandages were stained with unsightly colors. At best he would be deformed, and at worst he would be rendered lame for the rest of his life.
She wiped at it with a warm cloth and said, “Well, Bitty Babe—”
“Gideon,” he said through gritted teeth. Though she was being gentle as she rubbed the poultice onto his wound, it stung like shards of glass under his skin.
“Gideon,” she murmured, her eyes dropping back to her task. She began to whisper and move her hands in a peculiarway, making his skin crawl. A thrill of unease shot through him when he felt his foot becoming numb.
“Stop!” he nearly yelped. “I want no spells.”
Angharad halted her odd hand movements. “It will ease the pain.”
“I can handle pain,” he said.
“Fine. We’ll do this the hard way,” she said, slathering another layer of poultice onto his wound. Gideon tried to ignore the stinging throb that radiated up his leg as he watched her spread the grayish paste.
