The pale woman sitting at his table shook, even under the thick woollen blanket he’d draped her in, even in the warm haze of the summer evening. Her seaglass green eyes watered in the glow of the oil lamp, short, pale hair too dry and brittle to catch any light. It was cropped, he noted, and her stained tanner’s apron was longer than her dress, though not long enough to save her tights from laddering - they were more thread than fabric. He straightened himself out, bringing out a pot of tea and two cups to the girl. She met his eyes, then looked away as if it stung to look upon him.

“Where am I?” She asked, voice brittle, fixing her gaze on one of the many trinkets dotted around the shelves.

“Hethith,” he said, then paused, letting the words roll around his mouth before he continued. “Sorry, you tried to break into my workshed, not knowing what town you were in?”

She shrunk back further into the blanket. “Sorry, sir.”

“No, I…what’s your name?”

The pale girl’s eyes widened, then settled in a split second. Like a mother hare, he thought, pretending she hasn’t sensed danger - but this girl seemed far too young to yet know the perils of such a role. Her nostrils flared.

“Bridgette.” She licked her lips and brought the tea to her face with trembling hands.

“Then you can call me Earl. Earl Grey.”

It took her a second, but she caught onto the joke - then caught onto the laugh spilling from her mouth and swallowed it down. Her face returned to stoicism. He took a lighter up from his pocket, holding out a tin of thin, hand rolled cigarettes.

“D’you smoke?”

The girl looked at him and licked her chapped lips. She did. With feigned hesitation, she reached a slender finger into the tin. Her nails were bitten, beds peeling and bloody. She was certainly a good actress, whether for politeness or dignity’s sake, he could not say - but she hungrily dipped her head - and cigarette - into the flame, shielding it from a wind that was not there, before adjusting. A painful cough, too dry to be natural, came out of her as she took a deep, desperate drag. He mirrored her, tapping the end of his own cigarette into a glass ashtray, nudging it closer into the centre of the table.

“I’m not angry at you, sweetheart. You didn’t have the money for an inn?”

She shook her head, absentmindedly watching the smoke curl in the air between them.

“I’m Hammond. Really.” The old man looked her in the eye. “Hammond Reilly.”

She looked up, meeting his blue eyes.

“Violet,” she said softly. “Violet Wrenback,” she said, fingering the apron. “Just Violet, really.” He didn’t push.

“Alright, Violet.”

“Look, I apologise, I…I was out too late.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“I was meant to be home before dark,” she continued.

“And who’s waiting for you at home? Your mother? Your fella?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. My little sister.”

“Your little sister?”

“Stepsister. She’s not really little…I just like to think of her as little. She’s only two years younger than me. Fifteen. She’ll be fine without me.”

He paused and mentally corrected himself. The teenager sat at his table shook, even under the blanket and in the summer haze of the evening. She took on a far frailer image now, smaller and younger.

“And where is she?” Hammond asked, concern washing over him. He considered taking back the cigarette - but it seemed to be calming her nerves, and he surmised one cigarette in a situation such as this wouldn't kill her.

“…Home. We live, uh…I took the ferry over.” Now, she seemed to realise what she was saying, tapering off into guarded silence.

“They won’t run this late,” he noted.

“I needed a place to stay.”

“And you have one. You can have breakfast with me, and I’ll get you on a ferry tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” She moved to get up.

“No, no. Stay here. It’s much too cold for me to turn you out onto the streets.” He smiled, and panic flashed across her face as the warm summer air lay between them. “I won’t have you sleeping in that shed either.”

“Here?”

He nodded.

“Really?

“Violet - Dia Brigantia. Goddess of rivers and pastures. My husband, may he rest in peace - he was devoted to Her. To caring for those who need it. He was a midwife.” Hammond took the gold ring from his finger, turning it over in the lamplight, inscription running along the inside. Do not fear to stain my hands with your blood - in Her rivers may we be cleansed, Her pastures may we be cherished. “He was brilliant, Danny was,” the old man chuckled and returned the ring. He plucked the statuette from where it stood, pressing the pad of his thumb into the brass of Her face. “Are you a religious woman, Violet?”

She shook her head. He set the figure down in front of her, next to the ashtray. Brigantia stood in tarnished brass, surrounded by sheep, dress flowing, hands clasped over heart. Violet moved to sit down again, wrapping the blanket around her tighter. “No, sir,” she said. Brigantia’s eyes followed her as she moved.

“I lost him three years ago. Myosotis.”

She took a long drag, straightening up. She did not take her eyes off of the idol, and nor did She, even through the stream of smoke Violet blew at Her.

"His church never found out until it was too late," he continued, as Violet watched in uneasy horror. "Wish they had. Wish Brigantia could've helped him." Now he looked the girl in the eye. She tapped the ash off of her cigarette, watching the ember break off into the tray.

"I'm not mad at you, Violet." He looked right at the pale girl, calm and collected. She tried in vain to mirror him, eyes wild in sickened panic. She shifted, holding her bag closer. She wanted nothing more than to swallow a mouthful of the drug down, close her eyes and surrender to the high; escape this man, this house. He knew.

“You’re doing this for your sister,” Hammond continued. “I understand.”

Her feet planted to the ground, blanket shed from around her. She scanned the small room frantically.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. It hung in the air, seemingly pathetic. “For your loss,” she added, and the hollowness of the statement only rang louder, with none of the weight she intended.

“Thank you,” he said. Then: “I’m not mad, Violet. You’re safe here. I’m not here to confiscate your product…or tell the authorities.”

She didn’t look him in the eye.

“Who were you selling to?” He asked.

She grit her teeth and stared at the floor.

“For your safety.”

“Eudora Martinza.”

He sighed. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Right,” he said. “Rest. We can sort this in the morning.”

She looked to him, then to the blankets on the floor. She sighed, slightly, covering it up with an even smaller cough. The blankets didn’t smell like home, but at least they were warm.

She did not sleep.

This was not unusual. Sleep had become, in recent months, a thing that happened to other people: people with softer worries, who fretted over sick chickens and dwindling firewood. People who did not have a fifteen year old sister in a rented room across the water. She lay in the borrowed blankets and watched the lamp burn low and thought about Maple.

Maple, who did not know where she was.

Maple, who would be awake by now, probably, sitting by the window with her knees pulled up, listening to the ferry horn and counting. Maple had always counted things when she was frightened. Steps. Heartbeats. The number of times a candle flickered in a draught. Violet had never told her she knew this.

There were a lot of things Violet had never told her.

Hammond was asleep in the next room, or performing it convincingly, which amounted to the same courtesy. She turned the statuette over in her hands in the dark: she had taken it from the desk without quite deciding to, and he had not said anything, which she suspected was intentional. Brigantia's clasped hands. Her patient, tarnished face.

Are you a religious woman, Violet?

No. She had tried, briefly, when their stepmother had taken them to the river chapel, back when there had been a stepmother and a river and a chapel and a version of things that had not yet come apart. Maple had liked it: liked the singing, liked the candles, liked the way the Faithkept spoke about Brigantia as if she were someone you might run into at market and find reassuringly sensible. Violet had sat beside her and looked at the idol on the altar and thought: you are made of brass and I am made of the same thing that runs in this river and neither of us can help the other.

She still believed that. Mostly.

She pressed her thumb into the face the way she had watched Hammond do it, and thought about Danny, who had been a midwife, who had been devoted, whose church had not found out until it was too late. She thought about what too late meant in a sentence like that. She thought about Eudora Martinza, who had a smile like a gutting knife and who had said, the last time Violet had shown up light: you have a little sister, don't you, pet?

She put the statuette down.

She would leave before he woke. She had decided this. She would take the early ferry, she would be back before Maple stopped counting, she would sort out the three weeks' problem and then she would sort out the problem after that and then there would be another problem and she would sort that out too.

She was on her feet before she had finished deciding.

The apron she folded and left on the chair. She tucked the statuette into her bag: she would post it back, she told herself. She would find out an address and post it back. She pulled her coat from the hook by the door and put her hand on the latch and then stopped.

On the table, next to the ashtray, was a folded piece of paper. Her name on the front, in a neat, unhurried hand.

She should not open it. She opened it.

Violet

The ferry runs at six. There's bread in the tin above the stove, and the money under the tin is for the crossing and to keep: don't argue with me about it, I'm asleep.

Eudora Martinza is not a woman to be in debt to. I knew her late husband. If you find yourself needing a way out of that arrangement, there is a woman on the docks, who runs a import-export ship left of legality. Her name is Capt. Cecelia Dodds, and she sails between here, the Cascades, and Etterdatch. Tell her Hammond sent you.

Come back and have breakfast sometime. Brigantia keep you, whether you like it or not.

H.

Violet read it twice. Then she folded it along its original crease and put it in her coat pocket, next to the money she had not yet found but went looking for now, quietly, in the dark above the stove. She let herself out into the early blue of the morning. The ferry horn sounded, two streets over. She walked toward it, hands in her pockets, paper against her palm.