A Willing Heart

Sixteen

It would be eight days before Inge would recover, the wound along her side requiring much more care than we had anticipated.  On the third day, I asked Bernd to help me move Inge to our house inside the town.  Her remaining animals had now been kept in our own stables and it only made sense to move her closer, and where it was safer.  

I took care of her as she healed, using up all her reserves of athelas and other herbs on her wound, which seemed to stem the infection more than anything else the midwife had suggested.  Using needle and thread soaked in manuca, I learned how to sew her wound shut and even that of my own, but not before drinking an ample supply of ale to dull the pain, and finding myself uselessly sobbing afterwards.  

The ale had dulled my senses enough to make me dream of Thorin and the first time I’d seen him walk past my window.  It brought back the moment when I spoke to him in Khuzdul and I saw in his eyes then that he knew who I was, his suspicions confirmed.  I dreamt of the necklace that he had given me, lengthened now with more links of mithril but now only a memory for I’d lost it during the night of the goblin raid.  But then my dream ended with him kissing me on that cave floor, where my own body yielded to his touch even when he was already spoken for to someone else.  It made me cry out in my sleep and when I awoke, I vowed to keep my mind too busy to think of Thorin and the life I’d never have with him.  

The days afterwards were filled with too many chores that left me too tired to think of anything else but sleep.  I tended to the animals first thing in the morning, before making food for Inge and myself, and caring for her.  I continued to sew like a madwoman, even fixing Thorin’s battered cloak no matter how much I told myself that I wanted nothing to do with him.  I started with the luxurious pelt, cleaning it and brushing it till it was soft and thick again before mending the rips with delicate stitches, using everything I’d learned from Jerrel about making things look like new once again.  When it was all done, two weeks had passed, and it looked as if it was new.  

For Bernd, I made him the coat he’d always wanted, one that almost matched Thorin’s in its grandeur but more similar to that I’d seen on King Thror when he stood before me that day.  It would be a coat that would make Bernd stand out from everyone else, much like Lialam did.  

He started coming to the house on the third day, first for his fittings and then to stay for the night caring for Inge.  He’d send me up to my room for the night, ordering me to sleep for he knew I’d been up since dawn to take care of everything around the house that once, we’d shared the duties together.  I never complained, only grateful that he still thought of me at least, once his sister, even though he now was the official and most importantly, permanent, mayor of Greenbanü.

I had set Inge up in the main room in the lower floor, where I sewed and took in the view of the courtyard between our home and Jürgen’s workshop as she slept.  I missed the sounds of the forge and the older man’s sweet smile, but Jürgen was needed elsewhere now.  He and Bernd had taken residence inside Lialam’s keep, with Bernd remaining as the new mayor and Jürgen overseeing the guards, punishing those who remained loyal to Edgard.  

Though they chose not to tell me the specifics of what happened after they found both Edgard and Lialam that night, I knew enough that Edgard was dead.  They burned his body along with rest of the goblins outside of the town that very day, leaving his head on a spike as a warning to anyone else seeking to betray the people.  

Ever since Edgard had joined Lialam years earlier, they had worked together in collecting the reward for any leads concerning my whereabouts.  They tracked merchant caravans returning home from their travels, raiding them with the help of goblins willing to work with them in exchange of livestock and human flesh.  They themselves had become merchants of death and deceit.