‘Not ready yet,’ I said. ‘You want a much finer powder. Almost like dust.’ My mind went off on a path of its own, thinking about families and how different they were. Emer’s brother Fraoch was the local smith, the only man in Winterfalls who came anywhere near Grim’s size. Emer was a tall girl, strongly built; that would stand her in good stead as a healer, since she’d likely be able to handle bone-settng without assistance. She had soft brown hair and a thoughtful look to her. I wondered if Grim had ever fathered children, and if so whether they had grown into giants like him. I could have asked him. But that would be breaking our rule, and besides, it would give him the right to put the same sort of question to me. And I wouldn’t be able to answer, because the moment I started to talk about it I would break in pieces.

‘I keep thinking of my friend,’ Emer said, continuing to grind the seeds. ‘She loves music and dancing; she’d enjoy the betrothal celebration so much.’

I was glad of the diversion from my perilous thoughts. ‘This is your friend who not so long ago believed she could slip a potion into a lad’s ale and make him love her forever?’

‘Oh, not Becca. She’s already decided she doesn’t like Cathan anymore. No, I mean Ness, my friend from Silverlake.’

There was a note of such sadness in her voice that I asked a question, though I really did not want to involve myself in these folk’s business. ‘She won’t be at the betrothal?’

‘She’s gone,’ Emer said, the pestle stilling in her hand. ‘Everyone says she ran away with her young man. He’s a horse trader, one of the travelling folk. They say she slipped off secretly at night and took all her father’s money. I thought you would have heard the story. Everyone tells it. Everyone blames her.’

‘For stealing the money, you mean?’

‘Worse than that.’ Emer’s voice was uneven; her cheeks had flushed red. ‘Her father died the same day she left. A terrible accident. Crushed under his own grindstone. People were all too quick to say it was Ness’s fault. That she broke his heart, and that made him careless, so he wasn’t watching what he was doing.’

I set down my little pot of softened wax. ‘But you don’t believe that?’