Read the Free First Chapter of Bride of the Mire Crown
Chapter 1: The Debt at Her Door
By the time our boat scraped against the warped dock, my hands burned raw, and my temper sat right under my tongue.
Reeds lay in a tangled heap at my feet. Half of them had rotted sweet in the sun during the delay at the market. The buyer laughed, waved a hand, and offered a handful of copper that would not feed a dog, let alone a house of three.
So I threw the bundle back on the boat, swallowed pride, and poled home with a load worth less than the sweat on my neck.
The river looked swollen, dark along the banks, as if the Mire’s shadow had crept farther north. Crows watched from the trees. No breeze. No relief. My shirt clung to my shoulder blades. Mud stank up from the shallows.
“Move,” I muttered at the boat, at the river, at every slow drag of the pole through muck.
For a breath, I pictured throwing myself in, letting the current drag me south until the Mire swallowed me whole. Debt collectors would get nothing then.
My father’s face rose in my mind. Elowen’s burning cheeks. The way her hand still sought mine even while she shook with fever.
I set my jaw and shoved harder.
By the time our cottage came into view, smoke thin and gray from the chimney, the sky held that flat color between afternoon and night where nothing had decided yet. Two horses waited in the road. Broad, heavy beasts with city shoes. A third figure leaned against our door frame, arms crossed, hat brim low.
My stomach dropped.
Debt men.
I jammed the pole down and forced the boat straight to the dock. Wood banged wood. Pain shot through my shoulders. No one on shore looked up at the noise. That insult burned more than the ache.
The one at the door straightened. Fine boots. Good leather coat. Hair slicked back with oil. Not from our village. Behind him stood two muscle lumps with fists like stones, one chewing a sliver of something between yellow teeth.
“Stay in the boat, Nerys,” my father called from the yard.
He sounded tired. Worse than tired. Hollow.
I ignored him.
I jumped onto the dock, grabbed the mooring rope, and tied off with quick jerks. Wet boards shifted under my boots. The river slapped a slow rhythm against the posts.
“Nerys,” Father said again, warning in the word, hand half raised.
I stepped past him. “Evening,” I said to the man in the good coat.
His gaze slid down my neck, across my chest, and along my legs before he bothered with my face. A leisurely survey, like a buyer at a livestock pen.
Heat flushed sharply under my skin. Fury, shame, something uglier than either.
“My, you grow up fast on these little river spots,” he said. “Garrick Valehart, this is your eldest?”
Father moved between us, shoulders squared in a way that betrayed the tremble in his hands.
“Leave her out of this,” he said. “Your letter named coin, Brenn, not my daughter.”
Brenn. The factor from town, then. I had seen him once across a market square, licking juice from his thumb while he watched a girl haggle over fish.
“Letter named repayment,” Brenn said. “Form did not specify where that repayment would come from. Your last delivery spoiled. Your last two payments never arrived. Debt grows. Interest grows. My patience does not.”
He smiled. White teeth. Bland expression. Eyes like a snake in the grass.
Elowen coughed from inside the house. A raw, tearing sound that hit me harder than Brenn’s little speech.
I tried to step around Father. He shifted, blocking.
“Our bundle turned bad when your dock handlers kept us three days,” I said. “Rot set in before market. You know that. Delay sat on your side.”
Brenn lifted one shoulder. “Weather delays. Boat traffic. Nothing personal. Risk of trade. Your family chose reeds as a business. My employer chose profit. One choice carries more weight than the other.”
One of the muscle lumps snorted, apparently amused by the word “business.”
I took a breath through my nose. The air smelled of river mud and horse sweat. My palms ached where rope burn had split skin weeks ago and never fully healed. Every part of me wanted to swing something heavy into Brenn’s teeth.
“Say what you came to say,” I told him.
Brenn tilted his head toward the cottage.
“You are behind three months,” he said. “Healer sent notice of unpaid fees. Sweet girl inside with swamp fever.” That bland voice did not change. “My employer holds paper on this house, this land, that boat, and half your future harvest. Debt stands higher than those reeds.” He nodded toward the boat. “We require one of three things. Coin. Property. Flesh.”
My father flinched.
“Property?” I asked, though I already knew.
Brenn gestured with two fingers, elegant, bored.
“House and land serve as property,” he said. “Boat and tools as well. That route starves you slowly, though, and my employer prefers debtors alive. Flesh offers more creative avenues. You have labor to sell. Two healthy bodies.”
His eyes rested on me.
My jaw locked so hard that pain shot up into my temples.
“You would drag a village trader off these roads and call that fair?” I said.
“I would sign a contract in town,” Brenn answered. “Refined version of dragging.” That smile stayed. “Some nobles like new servants, some city house needs hands, some merchant wants strong backs on ships. One family’s misfortune feeds another’s comfort. Balance. Stories older than any of us.”
Elowen’s cough scraped again from inside, followed by a faint whimper.
Father’s shoulders sagged.
“You know we lack coin,” he said quietly. “Swamp fever took our best harvest last year and half the buyers along with it. You already marked down this house.” He spread his hands. “Give us until midsummer. The market still holds three major fairs. I will work for one.”
Brenn clicked his tongue.
“I already gave you until midsummer,” he said. “That date passed three weeks ago. You failed to appear with payment. My men rode here once in good faith and found no one home. No boat at the dock. No coin on the table. Only a sick girl and an empty shelf.”
“We were at market then,” I snapped. “Trying to pay you.”
“Yes. And yet you return poorer.”
He stepped closer. Father tried to match the movement, but Brenn did not even glance at him. Those pale eyes stayed on my face.
“Here is my final offer,” Brenn went on. “Three days. No more. Find enough to cover half what you owe, prove that you do not sink without effort, and I stagger the rest into kinder pieces. Fail, and I take the boat and a body. The house stays for the sick girl, if she still breathes. My employer dislikes corpses on paper.”
“Three days,” Father whispered. “Goddess help us.”
Brenn lifted his hat, nodded as if we had agreed on the price of grain, and turned. The two muscle lumps followed, boots stirring dust. One spat in the yard before swinging into his saddle.
I stared at their backs until the hooves faded down the road.
After a while, Father’s hand touched my arm.
“We will think of something,” he said.
No “we.” Only me.
I forced my shoulders down and stepped away from his grip.
“We need Healer Marek’s draught for Elowen first,” I said. “Fever climbs higher every day.”
“We owe Marek already.”
“So I will owe more. Debt on top of debt.” I tasted iron behind my teeth. “What does one more piece matter?”
Father winced.
Inside the cottage, the heat struck me full in the face. Our little hearth burned low. Pots sat empty. The air held a sour-sweet smell. Sweat and old herbs.
Elowen lay on the narrow bed under the window, hair damp where it clung to her cheeks. Her eyes did not open when I sat. Her breaths came fast and shallow, chest working too hard.
“Hey, little river fish,” I whispered.
Her eyelids fluttered. A thin hand groped toward me. I caught those fingers and pressed them against my lips. Skin burned under my mouth.
Father hovered near the foot of the bed.
“Marek said the next draught costs silver,” he said. “No more credit. Said he will not brew that mixture for free again. Rare plants. Long walks. All his own complaints. He has muttered them three times.”
“I know what he said.” My voice came out flat. “Marek can mutter into an empty purse when fever takes her if he prefers.”
Father closed his eyes.
“I will go to him again,” he said. “He still owes me from the winter I poled him through broken ice. He will remember.”
He would not remember. Men like Marek remembered favors when those favors kept bellies full, not when a debtor lay weak in bed.
“You stay,” I said. “I will go. He sees me, he sees your desperate daughter, and maybe pride softens.” That word felt rotten, but I used it anyway. “You go to the shed. Bring every scrap we have not pawned yet. Tools, spare net weights, anything with shine.”
“There is nothing left,” Father whispered.
My head turned toward him.
“What about her things?” I said. “Mother’s chest.”
His shoulders stiffened.
“We keep that closed,” he said.
“Closed chests do not pay debts,” I answered.
His gaze met mine. Old grief sat there, layered with fresh shame. I did not look away.
“She wanted those things for you and Elowen,” he said. “Her keepsakes. Pieces from her home near the marsh. Strange things. Dangerous, some of them. Not for coin.”
“Three days,” I whispered. “Then Brenn takes a body. You heard him. Do you want me walking behind his horse on a rope? Or Elowen carried out of this bed in a shroud.”
Father flinched. That argument cut closer than any plea about sentiment.
After a long moment, he nodded.
“The key hangs on the peg by the stove,” he said.
The chest stood in the corner of the main room, under the shelf where Mother once lined jars of preserved roots and river berries. Dust coated the lid. Carved reeds wound along the sides, along with three symbols I never learned to read. Mother traced those lines when storms rolled over the house. I had watched from my bed, too young to understand why her fingers shook.
I unhooked the key and knelt.
Metal turned with a stiff scrape.
The lid lifted heavier than memory suggested, as if something inside pressed back. I smelled dried herbs, river mud, smoke from fires long dead, and a faint, sharp tang that did not belong to anything from our stretch of river.
Inside lay layers of fabric, rolled carefully. A shawl woven in a green so dark it almost looked black. A bundle of thin reeds bound together with gold thread. A small knife with a handle carved into a leaping fish.
Under those rested a wrapped shape, long and curved. Linen stained brown with age. That strange smell grew stronger.
My pulse climbed. Sweat slid down my spine.
“Nerys,” Father said from behind me. “Leave the last bundle.”
“That last bundle weighs more than every other thing in this house,” I said.
I reached.
Fingers closed on old linen. The fabric felt damp, although the chest held no water. A shiver ran up my arm, into my shoulder, into my teeth.
For one heartbeat, the sound of frogs outside faded.
I drew the bundle out and laid it on the floor. Cloth slithered back from the shape inside as if some patient hand peeled layers away.
A crown waited there.
Not a noble’s circlet of smooth metal. This thing looked grown, not forged. Pale reeds bent into a perfect circle. Thin lengths of bone, shaped and sanded smooth, joined with those reeds at regular points. Tarnished gold thread wrapped each joint, dull and dark. No jewels. No polish. A quiet wrongness instead.
I did not want to touch that circle.
My hand moved anyway.
Fingers brushed a reed. Warmth pulsed under my skin, like blood beneath a wrist. Air thickened in my lungs. The room dimmed at the edges.
Behind me, Father cursed under his breath.
“Your mother swore never to wear that again,” he said. “She swore never to speak of where that thing came from.”
“You kept it,” I said.
“I tried to throw it in the river once.” His voice shook. “The next morning, the crown lay on the threshold, dripping. She begged me not to touch it again. Said the Mire wanted her back. Said she would not go.”
I lifted the crown, slowly, that warmth sliding up my fingers into my arms. The reeds did not bend. Bone slats did not creak. The thing weighed more than such thin pieces should weigh.
“What place near the marsh gives a girl a crown like this?” I asked.
Father stared at the circle in my hands, face gone gray.
“Her village stood south of Ketta’s dock,” he said. “Right on the edge of the Mire. People there wore crowns like that during their oldest stories.”
My heart knocked once, hard.
“Stories of what?” I asked.
His gaze flicked to Elowen’s bed. A soft moan rose from that corner.
“Stories of princes in the water,” he said. “Stories of brides who failed to keep their word.”
The crown warmed again, as if some silent thing under the reed circle had heard that line and laughed.
Three days for debt. A sister burning up. A factor ready to cut our lives into pieces.
My throat felt tight, but the choice stood clear.
“Then Mother left more than memories,” I said. “She left something rare enough to pay for a healer and buy us time.”
Father stepped back as I rose, crown in my hands.
“Nerys,” he said. “That thing draws trouble.”
“So does debt.” My voice came out hard. “We need coin. Healers want silver, not stories.”
Outside, crows cried over the river. Somewhere farther south, the Mire stretched and turned over after a long sleep.
I held the crown tighter and walked toward the door.
