Petra
Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Petra is a cloth-trader who came up the col in the house's second summer, leading two pack-horses with a hired man walking behind. She had come looking for the house. Three travellers on the road below had told her the same thing: there is a house at the top of the col, they keep a copper kettle lit in the window, and the man who keeps it isn't fussy. She stayed a week, the longest anyone had stayed, carried wood and washed bowls without being asked, and never said what she was resting from. Oswyn never asked. On her last morning she said she would tell people about the place, the way it had been told to her.
