Page 37

After two weeks of research, with the frequent assistance of Dendy, Terlu had amassed a stack of spells that she didn’t think would cause anyone or anything to blow up or transform unpleasantly.

She was sorting through them when Yarrow poked his head into the sorcerer’s workroom. “Lunch?” he offered.

He was carrying a plate covered with a tea towel. She smelled the herbs as soon as he stepped inside. “That smells amazing,” she said. “What it is?”

“Carrot and zucchini bread. My own recipe.” He looked sheepish as he said it, as if it were of lower quality because he’d invented it. “It tastes better than it sounds. Inspired by my aunt Rin’s carrot muffin recipe.”

“It sounds wonderful.” She wondered if Aunt Rin was one of his relatives in Alyssium.

After she’d told him Marin’s news about the revolution, his face had squinched up in a worried kind of way, but he, of course, hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

He had, though, started baking more recipes that he said were theirs, so she knew he was thinking about them.

She cleared a spot on the worktable, and he set down the plate.

The aroma of baked bread wafted up. It smelled like a fall harvest. Or like a farmer’s market when the sun has been shining and the rain’s been falling and everything has grown so tremendously well that no one will be hungry all winter.

“When did you have time to bake this?” He, with Lotti and the other sentient plants, had been working to replant the rescued plants from the dead tropical greenhouse.

They had managed to save more than Yarrow would have been able to transplant on his own, but it was still only a fraction of what the sun-drenched room had held.

Yarrow shrugged. “Finished with the emergencies. Now it’s up to the plants themselves to root.

There’s nothing I can do to help them do that.

” Removing the tea towel, he revealed the loaf: golden-brown, with a beautiful split through the length of the top crust. He sliced the loaf with a knife he’d brought and passed her a wedge on a napkin.

“Thank you.” Inside, the bread was flecked with herbs, as well as curls of carrot and zucchini. It was as moist as a cake and smelled of cinnamon, nutmeg, and hints of sweet spiciness. She wondered whether it would be rude or flattering if she shoved the entire slice in her mouth.

“Wait.” He withdrew a small pot from one of his pockets, as well as a spoon. “It tastes better with honey butter.”

She smeared on a pat of honey butter and took a bite.

It tasted light, sweet, and full of herbs that she couldn’t name but knew she’d want to eat again and again.

Closing her eyes, she savored the next bite.

When she opened them again, she saw Yarrow was watching her.

He looked away quickly and cut another slice.

“If you ever want a second career,” Terlu said, “you’d make an incredible chef. ”

He shrugged. “It’s just bread. Glad you like it.”

It wasn’t just bread. It was the fact that he’d thought of her while he baked it, had carried it through the snow with a pot of honey butter in his pocket, and worried about whether she’d like it.

If she hadn’t, she was certain he’d have disappeared and returned with another even more delicious concoction that he’d describe as “just bread” or “just a snack” or “just breakfast” when it was a perfectly laminated almond croissant served inside a squash carved to look like a swan, or something equally exquisite—she wondered if a squash could be carved to look like a swan. Maybe a duck?

She spent a bit of time imagining what kind of animals could be created out of a squash before she turned back to her notes. “I think I found a few spells that could work.”

He quit chewing. “Why didn’t you say that when I first came in?”

“You brought bread.”

“This is more important than bread.”

“How could anything be more important than bread, especially with honey butter?”

“Terlu.”

“Sorry. It’s just that the key phrase is ‘could work.’ You see, Laiken liked to experiment, and while he kept meticulous notes about the ingredients he used in each experiment, he was less meticulous about recording the results.

Most of the time I’ve been drawing conclusions based on what he tweaked for his next iteration.

Anyway, I think I found the final version of his spell for the greenhouses—it’s a complex, multistage spell with interwoven effects that simultaneously fortifies the glass and insulates it to allow for the stabilization of the temperature and humidity within the structure, though”—she spread out the papers—“I question his use of rwyr-ent in line three… Anyway, the point is: to proceed any further, I need to experiment.”

He picked up the nearest spell and looked at it.

She did not tell him he was holding it upside down.

“You want to experiment?”

“Yes, preferably in a dead greenhouse. If you can pick one that’s far away from any other living greenhouse…” Just in case she was wrong about the effects of the spell.

Yarrow nodded and put down the spell. “Do you know what ingredients you need?”

She presented him with a list.

“Are the spells dangerous?”

Every spell could be dangerous, if you made a mistake.

There was a reason that the emperor had outlawed unauthorized magic.

He may have taken his edict too far, but the initial caution was rational, which was why there hadn’t been more than a handful of protests from scholars and other like-minded people when the laws were passed.

Well, that and the fact that the imperial guard had cracked down on all protests with overwhelming force.

Terlu shuddered as she remembered the fate of some early protesters: turned to ice in the summer.

They’d melted into the canals in the heat of the afternoon. “Yes. Possibly.”

Yarrow grunted. “I’ll ask Lotti to keep the other plants away.” He pulled on his coat. “Meet me by the roses. I’ll have the ingredients with me.”

She put on her coat too. “Can I keep the leftover honey butter?”

“Sure.”

“Do you care if you don’t get the pot back?”

Yarrow shrugged. “Do whatever you want with it.”

“Thanks.” She covered it and stuffed it in her pocket.

He stared for a moment, and she had the sense that he was struggling between his curiosity and his desire not to make extra conversation. “Is it a spell ingredient?”

That would be a lovely coincidence. “No. I just thought the dragons would like it.”

“You don’t need to feed them,” Yarrow said. “They have everything they need in the sunflower maze. Laiken ensured they were self-sufficient.”

“I know, but it might make them happy.”

He smiled. “Okay.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She tried to read what he was thinking, but she couldn’t guess.

“Let me know whenever you want more honey butter,” he said.

A few minutes later, Terlu solved the chrysanthemum puzzle on the door and let herself into the sunflower maze. “Hello?” she called. The pine trees at the start of the maze were already parted. As soon as she stepped forward, the sunflowers flopped their heads toward her.

Approaching the first intersection of the maze, she opened the pot of honey butter. “Hello, dragons? I thought you might like this, since you liked the honeycomb.”

She held it up on the palm of her hand.

A silver-scaled little dragon soared in a spiral above her. It cried in a caw, and it was joined by three others.

She didn’t move, keeping her hand upraised.

The silver dragon landed hawklike on her forearm, its talons digging into her coat, and she was grateful for the thick wool of the sleeve.

A falconer’s glove would be a good investment, she thought.

She wondered if she could request one the next time the supply runner returned to Belde.

The dragon dipped its snout into the pot of butter and licked with a silver tongue.

It let out a metallic catlike purr.

Lifting off, it flew into the air, and a second dragon, with green-and-blue scales, landed on her arm and licked the butter. “You can take it all,” Terlu offered. With her free hand, she scooted the pot closer to the dragon.

Another dragon flew down beside it, and together the two dragons lifted the little pot of honey butter into the air.

They flew up toward the rafters, where they were met by a small flock.

She heard them coo at each other, like the chatter of children but with no distinguishable words, and she wondered if it were possible to learn to speak dragon. A task for another time, she thought.

Terlu turned to leave, and she heard a chirp behind her. Turning, she saw the little silver dragon was holding a red rock in its talons. She held out her hands, and the dragon dropped the rock into it. “Thank you.”

Looking closer, she saw it wasn’t just a rock. It was a ruby, uncut but still a deep brilliant red that looked as if it had swallowed the sunset. A treasure from its hoard. “You don’t need to—” She held it out to return it.

The dragon squawked at her as if offended.

“All right, all right. I’ll take good care of it,” she promised. “Thank you.”

Tucking the gem into her pocket, Terlu exited the maze and returned through various rooms to the one overflowing with roses, where Lotti was in a heated discussion with Dendy about the proper way to trim a rosebush.

“Everyone okay?” Terlu asked.

Lotti broke off midsentence. “This nonflowering plant thinks that you’re supposed to cut all but three to five canes and leave only two or three buds.” She waved her leaves in the air to emphasize her outrage. “Can you believe this?”

Stretching out his leaves as if he were waking from a pleasant nap, Dendy said in his low and slow voice, “The caaanes will grooow stronger if—”

“Not if you mistake new shoots for suckers,” Lotti said with a dramatic huff. “You can’t just prune willy-nilly.”

Dendy sniffed. “I never dooo aaanything ‘willy-nillyyy.’”