The boy liked pepper.
He put so much in his broth that Tarin swore at him. He coughed, grinning, and asked for bread. Selka cut a slice from the escort loaf, scraped the burned side with a knife and gave it to him. He accepted it without thanking her, then said, “Can you do that one too?”
She scraped another. Across the room Darr held the yoke against a block while Tarin hammered the brace into place. Each blow made Eska shut her eyes.
“Would you sing to her?” Selka asked the boy.
“She doesn't like my singing.”
“It might be better than hammering.”
He gave the matter serious thought. Then he began a song about a boat too short for its oars. Half the words were wrong, but Selka knew it. Her grandmother had sung that one too.
Ruun lifted its head.
The boy stopped. “I forgot.”
In tide tongue, Ruun spoke the next line. Selka gave the boy its newer words, and he sang them, pleased to have received assistance from an unusual source.
The god listened to the rest. At one point its mouth moved into something that might have been a smile. Then it looked at the bed.
Eska was awake. She had pulled the blanket over her mouth, trying not to interrupt with the sound of her breathing.
“Would you mind lifting her?” Ruun asked Selka.
She went to the bed. Eska recoiled.
“Not out,” Selka told her. “Only sitting.”
Tarin left the hammer on the anvil. “What for?”
“I don't know yet.”
“Then don't.”
Eska raised one hand. She had no strength to wave it, but Tarin understood. Tarin came around behind the bed, propped her against the pillows and held her steady.
Ruun knelt. Its stone knees struck the floor hard enough to shake dust from the rafters. It put a finger against the bronze strip on Eska's chest.
Light moved under her skin. Selka had seen healers' rooms in Harrowmere, where light came through the pipes and people cried in relief. This came from the finger itself: a small stream, almost clear.
Ruun's hand shook.
Eska drew a breath. Then another, deeper than the first. Her head turned toward the window as though she had heard something outside.
The god took its hand away. The last finger was stone from knuckle to nail.
“Can you feel that?” Selka asked it.
It tapped the gray finger against the bedpost. The small dry sound answered her.
Tarin was holding Eska's shoulder and had not moved during the gift. Now Eska pulled down the blanket, and Tarin touched her hair, once, as though uncertain what was allowed.
“When you go?” the smith asked.
“It stays,” Selka translated after Ruun answered.
“When they take you farther?”
“It stays.”
Tarin looked at the stone finger. “Why didn't you do it before?”
The boy stopped scraping his bowl. No one had an answer fit for the room.
Ruun stood with difficulty. Selka gave it her shoulder; it accepted the help, pressing the weight of its intact fingers against her coat. She smelled salt and hot iron.
At the carriage she asked, “You won't get it back?”
“No.”
“Could you leave the other parts?”
It looked at her with such weariness that she almost wished she had not asked.
“Could you give away the years you have had with your child?”
“They're over.”
“Mine are not.”
It climbed aboard, dragging its foot. The finger remained gray. Selka wanted to take it in her hand; she wanted to count all the little pieces of Ruun that must exist in Anet. She did neither.
Before dusk Tarin came out with a long lever and straightened the bent axle while Darr held the wheel. The smith brought the repaired yoke out afterward. Darr inspected it, then handed over the second bar. The smith accepted it and turned back toward the house.
“Thank you,” Selka said.
Tarin stopped. “Eska used to hammer like that. Before they took her. The boy still comes running when he hears it.”
There was anger in it still. Selka nodded. She did not ask whether the anger had lessened.
As they left, the boy came to the door and waved his bread. Eska sat in the light behind him, holding her own cup.