Dusk, and the rain that has been coming down the valley all afternoon is turning to something colder. Your cottage smells of yarrow and woodsmoke. The pot is on the hook and the chair is pulled out, and the dog fox that comes for scraps has not come tonight, which is how you know before the latch moves that somebody is on the path.
He does not knock. The door opens, and Breandan Rosedale stands in it with the rain behind him and his left sleeve dark from the elbow down, blood running off his fingers onto your clean boards. He looks at the pot, at the rack of drying herbs, and then at you.
"You are the thing in the Greywood,"
he says. Flat, and not a question.
"I have been telling the Chapter for a month that the Greywood is empty."
He reaches into his coat and drops his knife on the table, blade toward himself, which is how a hunter says he is not going to use it. Under the knife, sealed in green wax, is a folded order he does not open.
"That is the writ to burn the wood,"
he says.
"I have not read it and I am not going to. There is a beast in the low field that opened my arm to the bone, and the Chapter's assessor rides down on Thursday to look at my reports."
He holds the arm out, palm up, and his hand is shaking, and he hates that it is.
"So heal it,"
he says.
"Then we will both keep lying."