Page 33 of Wizards & Weavers (Cozy Questing #1)

Chapter

Twenty-Three

Braiden Beadle dreamed of warm clouds. Or butter. Pancakes? Maybe all those things.

He was lying on something far softer and warmer than the icy cavern floor, though nothing quite as warm as Augustin Arcosa’s grasp. Elyssandra had a great point. Why did he have such strong arms for a wizard?

Braiden stretched one arm out, eyes still shut, hand tracing along the mattress. A mattress? They must have brought him into the cottage. His fingers crept farther, seeking out the empty space beside him, knowing even with his eyes closed that something was missing.

“Augustin,” he murmured.

“What was that?” asked Elyssandra’s voice.

And then the sensation of something looming closer, of sweet breath puffing against his cheeks. Her face. It was only inches away.

Braiden froze with the stark horror of realization. He was in bed, inside the cottage, inside his shared bedroom. Elyssandra must have been watching over him. And here she was now, the last person on earth he would have liked to hear him murmur the wizard’s name.

Actually, no. It would’ve been far more embarrassing if Augustin himself had heard it.

“I know you’re awake,” Elyssandra whispered. “Just admit you’re awake, and you’re saying things in your sleep, and we’ll get this over with much, much faster.”

Braiden snapped his eyes open. “Fine! You win.” He whipped his hand up and pointed one warning finger. “And don’t you dare tell anyone what I said.”

“Oh, good,” Elyssandra said, smirking. “That you’re strong enough to make idle threats is an excellent sign. He’s awake.”

That last part had been said much louder, called over her shoulder and toward the open door.

“He carried you here by himself, you know?” Elyssandra said, her knowing smile growing smugger and smugger with each passing moment.

“Who did?” Braiden asked, defiant, a brat to the bitter end.

“You said his name before, when you were having your lovely little dream. No harm in saying it again.”

Braiden snatched a pillow and smushed it over his face, silencing a frustrated grunt. Too late he realized that it was one of Augustin’s pillows. It carried his smell, that strange, salted fragrance of flowers and open ocean.

“Is he strong enough to eat?” Warren’s voice asked from the doorway. “What’s he doing?”

“Strong enough to go huffing pillows, at least,” Elyssandra said. “Bring it in.”

Braiden knew when he was beaten. He set the pillow aside and crossed his arms, frowning up at her face. She smiled sweetly back.

Warren strode in through the doorway, the tips of his ears brushing against the top of the doorframe. It was amusing to see the burrowfolk scout slip so easily into such a homey role, a frilly apron draped down his lean, furry body, his forehead knitted in concentration as he carried a wooden tray.

It was a breakfast table, actually, the kind with short folding legs, and on top of it —

“Oh, gods,” Braiden breathed. “Rooty tooty stew. That looks amazing.”

Warren grinned as he set the table down around Braiden’s thighs.

“Sit up so you can eat. I brought some from the village to fortify our rations. And it’s best if you eat it with this stuff.”

He pointed at a basket of white discs, their floury surfaces speckled with toasty brown. Braiden grinned. Flatbread, burrowfolk style.

“Tear them up to dip in the stew, or use them to scoop up the vegetables. It’s delicious either way.”

Braiden grimaced as he pushed himself up, his limbs still a little heavy, but his stomach pointedly ordering him to eat. He looked between the two before continuing, hands hovering over the basket of flatbread. Warren nodded.

“Go ahead. We had plenty to eat ourselves. There’s still some left over when you finish.”

Braiden cocked an eyebrow, glancing at Elyssandra, curious, yet still too stubborn to phrase his question. She rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Augustin already ate as well.”

That was all the permission Braiden needed.

He tore into the flatbread — literally — pinching up quartered potatoes with the skin still on, bright orange wheels of carrot, buttery bits of mushroom.

The rest he ate with a wooden spoon, scooping it out of the polished wooden bowl, soaking up the last drops of gravy with scraps of flatbread.

Elyssandra’s cottage really was so well stocked, all the matching cutlery, and a breakfast tray, too? He leaned back in bed, patting his stomach, savoring the rich remnants of the burrowfolk stew before he took a long, delicious drink of cool water.

“Hmm,” Braiden said, staring down into the glass. “It’s so different when the water isn’t fizzy.”

“We found a pool of fizzy spring water,” Elyssandra explained to Warren. “It’s very good with some crushed-up berries for flavor.”

“Right, right,” Warren said, nodding in understanding. “The fizzy stuff is good for a treat, but it gives you the rooty tooties something fierce.”

Braiden laughed, swirling the water in his glass until it made a little whirlpool, a tiny liquid tornado. He could tell Elyssandra was watching him, and he knew that she knew what he was thinking, too.

She heaved a great, exasperated sigh, then nudged her head toward the door. “He’s in the other room, cleaning up a storm. Frankly, I think the two of you are being babies about this, but you should probably go and have a talk.”

“Not a baby,” Braiden said, throwing the blanket off in a huff, then suddenly remembering himself. “And thank you for the lovely dinner.”

Warren swept into a low, slightly mocking bow.

Elyssandra coughed into her fist, disguising yet another amused smirk.

As Braiden stomped dramatically for the door, he noted his backpack sitting on a stool by the foot of the bed, presumably with all of those accursed Il-venessi dragons sorted back into his coin purse.

Wait. Augustin was cleaning up a storm? And what did Elyssandra mean by “the other room,” exactly? Braiden strode out into the cottage’s common room, fists held tight, full of vim and vigor — or was it piss and vinegar? He always hated that expression.

He passed the stove with its still-warm pot of leftover stew, eyeing the closed door leading to Elyssandra’s bedroom, then the slightly ajar one for the common lavatory. Was that what Elyssandra meant? Surely the Wizard of Weathervale wasn’t working out his anger by cleaning the toilet.

He turned around, gaze falling on the open door of the bedroom he’d only just emerged from — and then he noticed the fourth door in the corner. Huh. Braiden could have sworn that wasn’t there the night before, or even this morning. How could he have missed an entire other room?

Whatever. Fists balled, chin upraised, he took long, determined strides toward the fourth door, ready to fight — only for all his muscles to relax as he stepped past the threshold.

It was a garden, only indoors. A very, very sparse one, by the looks of it, only grass and a few bushes, but Braiden still marveled at the impossibility of the environment. The room had its four usual walls, covered in leaves instead of wallpaper.

He gazed up at the ceiling, jaw dropping when he saw that it wasn’t the roof at all, but a forest canopy. Between the boughs and branches — were those slivers of moonlight, or was it the glow of distant stars?

So fascinated was Braiden by the unexpected sight that he hadn’t even noted how the Wizard of Weathervale was raking leaves along the forest — no, along the room’s floor.

His muscles bulged and flexed as he worked, which was very easy to see because Augustin had apparently decided to strip himself to the waist.

The annoyingly enticing sight took some of the steam out of the boiling kettle of Braiden’s anger, even though the room itself was somewhat steamy. It was humid and quite a bit hotter than the rest of the house. Akin to standing in a jungle, Braiden imagined.

“How?” Braiden breathed, unable to keep the question to himself. It was hard to stay so annoyed with such lovely sights for his tired eyes to savor.

He meant the impossible miniature forest, naturally, and not the sweaty, olive-skinned, leanly muscled man presently raking leaves over indoor grass.

“The house appears to expand when it’s necessary,” Augustin answered, his tone just polite enough. “Now that there’s four of us, it’s making room. Literally. This must be the new expansion.”

Braiden could still detect the barest hint of animosity in there somewhere. Both a good and a bad thing, really. They were so close to the end of their dungeon adventure. This wasn’t the time for a blowup between Braiden and his strongest ally, certainly not one over a silly misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding over the Il-venessi coins, that is. Augustin still needed to explain all the nonsense with his whistle stone and how he knew — or how much he knew — about the elementals before they began the expedition.

Braiden approached Augustin’s side of the room, eyeing the tools he’d placed in the corner. “And I suppose you’re helping the process along? By pruning and cleaning, I mean.”

The wizard gave a grunt, his powerful shoulders shrugging.

“Mind if I help?” Braiden asked, picking up a pair of gardening shears.

Augustin grunted again. It was a better response than yelling, at least. The sulking, Braiden could deal with. It didn’t hurt as much as when the wizard had given him a look of such wounded betrayal back out in the icy cavern.

“Found them in one of the storage cupboards,” Augustin said, gesturing at the pile of tools. “You can start over there if you like.”

Braiden stared at the shears, then at one of the large bushes that Augustin had indicated.

He didn’t know the first thing about gardening, but a pair of shears was really just an oversized pair of scissors, wasn’t it?

This wouldn’t be any different than, say, shaping a bobble of yarn to attach to the tip of a knitted hat, or trimming some felted wool.

That they were very large scissors to begin with should have been warning enough for Braiden’s underused muscles. He snuck woeful glances at the wizard’s remarkably toned arms, telling himself he was only admiring them out of athletic curiosity and for no other reason.

Snip. Clip. And between the snips and clips came the rustle of leaves as Augustin raked them away from the floor. This was going to take forever — more and more of the leaves kept falling from the walls — but the room had to be cleared if they ever hoped to put any furniture in.

And the air, Braiden decided, very much needed some clearing, too. Breathing felt harder here, but he knew it wasn’t the moisture in the air. He had to say something.

But the wizard said something first.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said softly, sullenly.

It was still a kind sentiment, Braiden knew, and almost very sweet.

“Thank you,” Braiden said. “For thinking of me. And for carrying me indoors. That was very nice of you.”

Augustin shrugged. “I’m sorry I didn’t pick up the coins for you. Elyssandra was very quick. She collected them before they could freeze to the floor.”

Braiden lowered his shears and palmed the sweat from his forehead. “I hope you know that I didn’t take the coins to betray you. Elder Orora pushed them on me with a promise to pay her back. With interest.”

The wizard snorted. “I believe you on that, at least. That sounds exactly like something she would do.”

“I have every intention of giving the coins back,” Braiden continued. “And I won’t lie to you. Your grandmother and I, our goals just happened to align. Neither of us wanted you to seal the dungeon. She just asked me to keep an eye on you along the way.”

Augustin balanced the rake on the ground and leaned his forearm against its shaft, taking a break to talk.

“I don’t blame you, you know. You did say that your family’s shop wasn’t doing so well.

Those dragons would help a lot. Very rare.

It just stings that grandmother still doesn’t trust me enough to do the thing that I’m known for. ”

Braiden stabbed his shears into the earth.

“I told you, I’m going to give them back.

I don’t want to owe anything to the Lighthouse, and certainly not to Orora Arcosa.

No offense. And the burrowfolk — well, Grandest Mother Magda promised me I could harvest as much moongrass filament as I could carry if I helped to stop the source of the dungeon’s danger. ”

“Moongrass filament? What in the world is moongrass filament, and when were you planning to tell the rest of us about it?” Augustin picked his rake up the way a wizard might wield his magical staff in battle.

“I didn’t think it was important. It’s something I can weave into my work.

I can imbue my crafts with magic. I can finally make something worth selling.

None of us wanted the dungeon sealed, Augustin — and now, all of a sudden, you don’t want it sealed, either.

When were you planning to tell us about the whistle stone? ”

The wizard’s knuckles went white as his fingers tightened over the rake, his eyes going dark. “What about the whistle stone? I thought we were still talking about moongrass.”

Braiden frowned. “It was a simple question. You told us you were going down the dungeon for one reason until you suddenly weren’t.”

Augustin grumbled, raking the leaves hard enough to leave gouges in the grassy dirt.

“You have your reasons. I have mine.”