Page 20

Nineteen

Lira punched the heel of her hand into the dough, satisfied when the elastic mixture cowered from her touch. A mage ? Her gran had been a mage?

She scowled as she worked the dough, ignoring the warning sounds from Crumpet who sat to one side holding his tiny hands together as if in prayer. Had everything she’d known been a lie—the small farm, the cozy house they’d shared, the simple life of selling eggs and raising hens?

She shook her head like she had a hundred times since she’d run from Iris and escaped to her room. She’d cried until her eyes were sore and her chest ached, but she’d finally come back to the kitchen. There was something about baking that calmed her, and this was a time she needed calm.

Despite being steadier, questions still swirled in Lira’s head. How had she not known she’d been living with a mage who’d run with an adventuring crew?

Then she thought of Iris and her bookwyrms. She glanced at Crumpet. Lira had no problem believing that Iris had been a rogue. It explained so many of the woman’s skills. Skills she had no business possessing if she was truly a simple village apothecary. But if Lira was being honest with herself, it had been a long time since she’d thought Iris was simply a purveyor of tonics and tinctures. So why was it so hard to believe that her gran—the woman’s best friend—would also harbor secrets?

“Because she was my gran,” she said to no one.

If her gran had possessed magical skills, wouldn’t she have used them? Wouldn’t she have saved Lira’s mother, located her father, and used her magic to make their lives easier? Why would she have lived the way they did if she had the power to change it? Was everything she’d always believed about her childhood false?

“Every memory I have is a lie,” she muttered darkly.

Not so fast, little one.

She could almost hear her gran’s soft voice, usually telling her to slow down when she was mixing ingredients, or to be more careful when she was measuring. But sometimes she’d warn Lira not to be so fast in leaping to conclusions.

Things are rarely what they seem to be.

Hadn’t that been what her gran had told her over and over? She paused and swiped the back of her forearm across her brow, avoiding the flour coating her hands. Had the woman been talking about more than the latest drama in the village, the latest rumor to make its way through the town?

Lira was suddenly viewing everything her gran had done through a fresh lens, which meant coming to terms with a different story than the one she’d always told herself. It also meant that she needed what she’d buried in the tavern’s cellar more than ever. She needed to hold the book that had been such a fixture in her childhood, the leather-bound tome that had stood propped up as she and her gran mixed up a batch of scones or teacakes. She needed it to prove to herself that her memories were real.

“They’re back,” Sass announced in a sing-song voice, as she strode into the kitchen and let the doors swish shut behind her.

Lira didn’t even try to mask her impatient sigh. “Who’s back?”

“Our regulars.”

Lira knuckled the dough viciously and Crumpet squeaked. “What regulars?”

“The haberdasher and the two guards.” Sass made a face. “I don’t count Silas as a regular since he nurses one ale all night, but he’s here too.”

Lira didn’t know that the town’s haberdasher had become a regular, but she did know which two guards Sass meant. Her stomach did an odd flip at the thought of the handsome orc. “You’ll have to tell all of them that if they want food, it will be a bit late.”

Sass worked the tail of her braid as she studied Lira. “This have anything to do with your friend leaving in a flutter earlier.”

Another punch into the dough and a pained sound from the enchanted stoat. “She’s not my friend.”

“So, that’s a yes.”

Lira looked up. She didn’t know Sass well, but so far the dwarf had proven to be steady and reliable, aside from her brief foray into burglary. Correction, attempted burglary, and not even a good attempt at that. “Have you ever learned something about your family that changed everything you thought you knew?”

Sass’s squat, brown nose crinkled. “Can’t say that I have, but that’s only because I left all that behind me.”

Lira had thought she’d done the same, but here she was back in Wayside, surrounded by memories she didn’t even know were true anymore.

“Come to think of it, I don’t know if I’d want to know everything those long-gone dwarves did. Not if they aren’t here to tell me the tales themselves.” Sass rested one hand on the thick leather belt that hugged her hips. “Seems a bit unfair.”

Lira abandoned her assault on the pastry. “Unfair?”

Sass leaned one hand on the wooden worktable and gave Lira a pointed look. “We all have secrets, don’t we? I’d hate to think of someone finding out something I did without knowing the whole story.”

Lira barely flinched when Crumpet nudged her aside and started rolling out the dough with the battered rolling pin. “This is different.”

“Maybe, but the past is the past. You can’t forge the way ahead by looking behind you.”

Lira shoved one of her sagging sleeves above her elbow. “More wisdom from your mum?”

“Dwarf mining wisdom.” Sass winked. “Maybe you came back here because of your past, but you also must have come because you want a different future. Am I right?”

Lira grumbled her agreement.

“Has anything you learned change that?”

Lira had to admit that it hadn’t. She still wanted a different life than the one she’d been living. She still wanted to return to the simple life she’d had before she’d left, even if that simple life might have been based on a web of secrets.

Sass straightened, not waiting for any more of an answer than Lira’s gentle shake of her head. “Good. I’ll keep everyone happy with drinks, and I won’t tell them that their dinner is being rolled out by a furry, winged beast.” She gave a wicked grin. “Or maybe I’ll tell Silas that the kitchen is run by weasels, and he’ll go do his scowling someplace else.”

Sass swished back through the doors, and Lira turned to see that Crumpet had the pastry dough rolled to the ideal thickness. “I can’t believe she called you a weasel, either.”

The flutter-stoat chittered his feelings about the misnaming, which made Lira laugh. Crumpet had clearly been enchanted to have wings, but she wondered about the whole story behind the little guy .

“One day you’re going to have to tell me how you learned to do all this,” Lira said as Crumpet flew back to the counter and sat on his haunches again, his white paws folded neatly in front of him as if he was finally satisfied that Lira could take over.

Sizing up the dough and the cooled pot of filling, Lira made the snap decision to create folded hand pies instead of freestanding ones, hoping they would bake faster. “Can’t let down our regulars.”

The idea of three patrons—and the grumpy Silas—making up the entirely of their “regulars” lodged a hysterical giggle in her throat. That wasn’t much better than when she’d first arrived at The Tusk & Tail.

“Lananore wasn’t built in a day,” she told herself, although the saying was small comfort. She sincerely hoped it wouldn’t take the centuries it took the elves. She might have elvish blood, but that didn’t mean she’s inherited their lifespan—or their patience.