Chapter 198 — A Packet from the East

Three mornings later, Nia was rolling a stone-grain flatbread thinner than the last one when someone knocked at the household entrance. Shen looked up from the small pot beside the hearth. His pale hair was tied back again, though one shorter strand had already worked loose near his cheek.

Nia dusted meal from her fingers and started toward the entrance.

“I have it,” Shen said.

“You’re stirring.”

“I can stop stirring.”

“That is how you complain when I leave a spoon in a pot.”

His mouth shifted, but he stayed where he was. Nia washed the meal from her hands at the basin, dried them, and lifted the entrance screen.

An unfamiliar male stood outside with a narrow carrying strap across his chest. A Hearthfang route worker waited a few steps behind him. The carrier held out a flat wrapped packet and a folded trade slip.

“From the eastern buying road,” he said. “The red-fox house sent it for the household that asked about food goods that travel well.”

Nia looked at the packet before taking it. “Did you carry it from the outside market?”

“Not all the way. I took it at the trade shelter from a man coming north.”

That made more sense than one carrier running the whole route for a packet small enough to fit beneath Nia’s hand. The carrier shifted the strap higher on his shoulder.

“He said the sample was inspected before it was tied. The seller calls it river-sour rind. Dried fruit peel. People near the lower eastern water eat it with fish and fatty broth.”

Shen had come close enough to hear without leaving the hearth unattended. “Who saw them use it?”

“The buyer named on the slip. He ate from the seller’s pot before he accepted the sample.”

Nia took the slip first and read the short marks. It named the buyer, marked the seller’s road location, and recorded where the remaining dried rind was being held. The fruit itself softened badly during travel, but the dried rind kept. A small household amount could be divided from a larger lot. The seller wanted an answer before sending anything heavier north.

At the bottom, another line had been added in a different hand: Long boiling makes the rind bitter.

Nia held the slip where Shen could read the warning. “Useful.”

“Yes.”

The carrier passed her the packet next. Two layers of dry cloth enclosed it, with only a faint sharp scent coming through.

“No payment for the sample,” he said. “If you want more, send back the amount you would consider and ask for terms. If you do not want it, say that too. The seller is not holding a whole lot for an answer.”

Nia glanced toward Shen, then back to the carrier. “Are you going back today?”

“Only to the trade shelter. Another man takes the eastern road tomorrow.”

“Then eat before you go farther. We have flatbread.”

The carrier blinked. Shen looked toward the hearth.

“One piece,” he said.

“I was told Hearthfang fed people who brought useful things,” the carrier said.

“Who told you that?” Nia asked.

“Three different people on the lower road.”

Nia glanced toward the remaining flatbread. “Then you’re lucky we made extra.”

She lowered the entrance screen enough to block the corridor draft without closing the carrier out. Shen folded one warm flatbread around a spoonful of broth-softened root and handed it over. The carrier ate standing near the entrance. Halfway through, he shifted his weight off one foot and flexed his ankle.

“Long morning?” Nia asked.

“Too much walking since first light. My ankle is tired.”

“Sit if you need to.”

He shook his head. “If I sit, I’ll stay longer than I should.”

He finished the last bite and tightened the carrying strap across his chest.

Before leaving, he tapped the packet lightly with two fingers. “The seller said the rind should stay dry until you use it.”

“We’ll keep it dry.”

The carrier left with the Hearthfang route worker. Their voices faded at the turn while the visitor complained that someone below had sent him around a drying frame instead of telling him the inner side was open.

Nia stayed near the entrance with the packet and trade slip. She set the folded slip on the stone beside the entrance, untied the outer road cloth there, and put the travel wrapping with the cloths waiting to be washed.

Then she washed her hands, lifted the waiting flatbread round from the work board onto the hot stone, and carried the inner packet to the board.

Shen stayed near the hearth until she opened it.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think the person who sent it listened.”

Nia opened the inner fold. Six thin pieces of dried rind lay inside, each no longer than her smallest finger. They were dull yellow-brown, curled at the edges, and dry enough to snap if bent hard.

She lifted one and smelled it without touching it to her face. The scent was sharp but quieter than sun-sour peel. Sun-sour usually gave off its aromatic oil quickly. This smelled drier and less fragrant.

Shen leaned closer. “It smells clean and dry, and there is no smoke on it.”

“And not much peel oil.”

Nia broke the smallest piece in half over a clean dish.

“Let’s see how quickly the bitter edge starts in hot water before we put it in food.”

Shen brought one small cup and filled it with hot water. Nia dropped one half-piece inside.

They turned back to the flatbread while the water changed. Nia flipped the round once, pressed down a puffed place with the edge of her turning stick, and glanced toward the cup. The water had taken on a faint yellow tint.

Shen lifted the cup, smelled it, and handed it to her. Nia sipped.

Sourness touched the sides of her tongue immediately, cleaner than the spring shoots and less sweet than ridge-sour. A dry bitterness followed, small at first.

“Oh.”

“Useful?”

“Maybe.”

She handed him the cup. Shen tasted once, waited, then tasted again.

“The bitterness is increasing.”

Nia took the cup back and tried it again. The bitter edge had climbed behind the sourness.

“It turns bitter even without boiling.”

“Then longer heat will not improve it.”

Nia removed the rind and placed it in the used-sample dish. She lifted the flatbread from the hot stone and set it on the cloth-lined plate.

“Without that warning, I might have left it in broth too long.”

Shen moved the small broth pot farther from the hottest part of the hearth. “Now food?”

“Now food.”

He spooned a little broth into a small bowl—pale frost-root, mountain onion, dried winter mushroom, nothing strong enough to hide the sample—and set the bowl on the work board. Nia shaved the remaining half of the rind down to one thin curl and added it while the broth was still hot. The small fragment left between her fingers went into the used-sample dish beside the piece from the hot-water test.

They waited only a short time before Nia tasted.

The broth changed more than she expected. The sourness cut through the mushroom and root without flattening them, and the bitter edge stayed low. There was much less aroma above the bowl than she