The River widow comes down the hill once a year, at best.
One of these days, Catch will be gone. One of these days, her face will be forgotten. And if neither of these things occur, one of these days she'll be powerful enough to make it happen.
Her daughter is older, now, and goes to the market alone. Seven or eight, wearing homespun -- there are so many of those dirty peasant children these days that another one goes unremarked. This one runs to the teahouse and the Calomel farm and the baker by the bridge and the blacksmith's, where Kaczmareks live and work. She buys buns and tea and delivers messages and flits on back home after playing ball in the alley with some of the other kids, and that's how the River widow functions. Sometimes there are sachets delivered to other widows. Sometimes there's the touch of foreign magic following her feet, but only a very few might see it. This kind of magic hasn't been seen since the paladin Aleksei River died, which might as well have been a hundred years ago.
After one of these visits, Petronela Kaczmarek appears at the door of her teahouse, dressed to the nines as she always is -- in that very particular Myrken way the women have taken to since the Lady. Not onstentatious, but layered. Moneyed. Delivers a letter to the place where Glenn Burnie is staying.
Burnie, it says,
Welcome back to town. You and your beloved are always welcome at my teahouse, of course. We have some new leaves from the Lost Seas, delivered through a connection in Orvere. It was so expensive to procure that you and she may be the only ones in this hilarious town who can purchase it.
I have heard from Agnieszka, who is upon Istota Gora still. She expresses her disappointment that you sacrificed a brand-new life in a better place to return, and asks me to inform you that she will not see you.
She says it's the magic, but frankly, I think it is because she's gained a little weight.
Petronela Kaczmarek Martel