Chapter Twenty-Five
“You should stay here,” Caz said to Kiela.
“Meep,” the cactus agreed.
Kiela climbed out of the boat onto the rocks. She spotted a sliver of sunlight—the way out of the cave by foot. “I have to go back to the shop. Our only chance at dispelling suspicion is if I act unsuspicious. Wait, that’s not the right word. Guiltless? Innocuous? Innocent?” She looped the line around a jagged rock, securing the boat in place.
“And then what?” Caz asked. “Keep us plants hidden forever? Never use any spells again? Let the forest spirits lose their trees? Don’t save future merbabies or merhorses?”
She didn’t know. How was she supposed to know what would happen next? None of this was planned. She’d known what her life and her future was: the library, day in and day out, until her skeleton was swept away with the dust.
I could go back.
Back to the library. Back . . . home? Was that home anymore? When she thought “home,” she pictured a cottage, cradled by a forest, with an overflowing, barely tamed garden behind it. Don’t I want to go back to Alyssium?
Radane being here meant the empire hadn’t fallen, which could mean that the library was still there. Kiela could sail back to the capital, explain what she’d done and why. Heck, she could even be welcomed back as a hero for saving the books from the revolution.
If she left . . . She’d miss the cottage and the jam shop. She’d miss the bakery. She’d miss the cloud bears and the unicorn sightings and the mermaids. But was that enough to keep her here? This was only ever meant to be temporary.
Near the boat, the mermaid splashed her tail, and the sound echoed through the cave. Her baby cooed. He was swimming around the boat, plucking barnacles off the hull with his little fingers and showing each one to her as if it were a treasure.
“Meep?” Leaning over the edge of the boat, Meep poked a barnacle with a needle. The merbaby beached himself on the deck of the boat and attempted to pluck needles from the cactus. Waving his leaves, Caz shooed him back into the water.
I can’t return with Meep. Not if the laws were unchanged. He wouldn’t be welcome, and she could become the newest statue in whatever was left of the Great Library. It was only because of a lot of pulling of strings by influential librarians that Caz had been spared. There was no guarantee that Meep would meet with the same mercy. I can’t risk it. As tempting as it was to flee back to her lovely little alcove between the stacks, it wasn’t just her and Caz anymore. It was Meep too, and she couldn’t leave them.
Also, what about Larran, who was waiting for her at the shop? If she just vanished and ran, what would the imperial investigator think? She’d turn her suspicion on him, as well as Bryn, Eadie, and Ulina. No, her only option was to go back to the cottage, act innocent, and hope to convince Radane that there was no illegal spellwork on Caltrey. Just nice jars of jam. Maybe the imperial investigator has a favorite flavor. If that failed . . . “We’ll figure it out,” Kiela said. “One step at a time.”
“You have to promise to be careful,” Caz said.
“There’s just one of her,” Kiela said, trying to sound brave.
“And one of you,” Caz said, shaking his leaves for emphasis. “You promise me you’ll run if it goes sour. Come back here and we’ll sail away. Find a new island. Please, promise me. Don’t take any risks.”
Every single thing I’ve done since the library burned was a risk, she thought. But she promised anyway.
Leaving Caz, Meep, and the merfolk in the painted cave, Kiela picked her way across the island. She kept to the forest, away from the fields and the dirt roads that led to various farms and orchards. She wasn’t entirely certain of the way, which was a problem given the urgency. It helped that the island was, well, an island. She knew to keep the sun behind her and the sea to either side, at least when she could see it.
When she reached the pond with the willow tree, she thought, Almost home.
And the thought surprised her so much that she stopped walking. When did this start to feel more like home than the library? She’d only been here a short while, whereas she’d lived in the library for years.
The willow tree whispered as a breeze blew through its leaves. She thought she saw a wisp of a cloud bear dangling from its draping branches.
Feeling braver, Kiela pushed forward through the ferns and underbrush until she reached the brambles that marked the overflow from her garden. She circled around until she reached the corner by the front—
—and stopped when she heard voices.
“If my boat had not encountered that unfortunate storm, then I would have all the proper documentation.” It was Radane. She wasn’t shouting, but Kiela knew that tone of voice. That was the voice of someone who was used to being obeyed.
She heard Larran reply, apologetic and polite. He couldn’t allow her inside without that documentation. He was only obeying the law.
Kiela smiled. Clever boy.
“You do not want to obstruct me,” Radane warned. “Trust me on this.”
“It’s not my home,” Larran said. “I can’t let you in. Check your laws on that. The homeowner needs to say it’s all right—”
“Except in an official investigation,” Radane said.
“And I’d be happy to help if you’d show me the paperwork. I’m just trying to do what’s right, Radane. You wouldn’t want a stranger marching into your home.”
“Then where is the homeowner?” Radane demanded. “If she has nothing to hide, then why is she in hiding? Her absence alone is enough to qualify as obstruction—”
It was time to intervene. He’d kept Radane busy while the books were hidden, and that was victory enough. Kiela cast about for anything she could use to—Aha, there was a sprig of blue-black berries. She had no idea what kind they were, but it didn’t matter. She broke off the tip of a branch with a cluster of berries and came around a corner. “Larran! The foraging trip was a success! I can mix these huckleberries with raspberries and—Oh, hello, Radane.”
Larran broke into a relieved smile, which quickly turned into a frown. “Those aren’t huckleberries. You really shouldn’t mix them with anything if you don’t want your customers’ stomachs to, uh, rebel.”
“Eeks.” Kiela tossed the branch away and then smiled her best polite-librarian smile at Radane. “Would you like to try some jam that I guarantee will not cause any kind of rebellion?” She winced at herself. She shouldn’t have said “rebellion” in front of Radane, but Larran had planted the word in her mind and it had just popped out. Hoping the imperial inspector didn’t take offense, she pushed on. “I have raspberry and blueberry available. Larran, thank you so much for minding the shop. I really thought I’d find ingredients for a new flavor.”
Radane raised both her eyebrows. “You were walking in the woods for jam ingredients?”
“It is a jam shop.” Kiela pointed at the sign.
Larran chimed in. “You had one customer before Radane. He bought a jar of blueberry and said he hoped you’d make rhubarb jam next.”
“I’ll plant some rhubarb,” Kiela said, trying her hardest to keep her voice level, casual, and calm. She clasped her hands behind her back so Radane wouldn’t see them shaking. “Do you know anyone with seeds?” When Larran shook his head, Kiela repeated the question to Radane.
Radane was scowling. “Rhubarb is not my line of inquiry.” She took a breath. “On the authority of the emperor, I demand to search the premises for contraband material.”
“Okay,” Kiela said.
About to launch into threats or arguments or whatever she’d planned to say, Radane halted. “I am sorry? ‘Okay,’ with no further objection?” She glared at Larran. “Why have you been blocking me for the past half hour if she has no objection?”
He shrugged. “If it were your house, I’d do the same. It’s what good neighbors do. You didn’t have permission to enter her house, and now you do.”
He must have never told Radane how we met. He hadn’t been so scrupulous about private property then. Kiela resisted a smirk. “Can I get you a glass of water?” she offered Radane. “Or jam on toast, though I do have to charge for that. Business, you know.”
Glaring at her, Radane marched past Larran. He quickly moved out of her way to allow her inside. Larran met Kiela’s eyes, and she mouthed, Thank you.
Kiela slipped inside, and she and Larran stood by the sink while Radane searched the cottage, beginning with every shelf in the jam shop. Finishing those shelves, she spotted the closed door to the bedroom and strode across the cottage. Kiela silently prayed to the memory of her parents that they’d taken every book, every scrap of paper, and every note with the crates. Of course we did. She wouldn’t have been given responsibility for the entire Natural Sciences section of the Great Library if she had ever proven negligent with details. She’d never once misplaced a book or manuscript—why would she think she’d start now?
Radane rooted through the bedroom while Kiela and Larran stood in the doorway, watching as she flung Kiela’s parents’ quilts, looked under the mattress, and probed at each board in the floor to see if any were loose.
“What are you looking for?” Larran asked mildly.
“Hiding places,” Radane said shortly.
“I have nothing to hide,” Kiela said.
“Someone on this island does,” Radane said, “and I will not rest until I find it.”
That . . . wasn’t good. “I can assure you—”
Radane stomped out of the bedroom, pushing between Kiela and Larran. She began opening every cabinet in the kitchen. She pulled out Kiela’s parents’ cookbook. “Aha! What is this?” She slammed it down on the table.
Kiela started forward. “Careful. That’s—”
Radane flipped through the pages so fast that one ripped.
“It’s my parents’!” Kiela ached to grab it out of her hands. To be that careless with a book, especially a book that had belonged to her parents, the memory of what they’d written, with love, with exhaustion, with whatever they’d felt when they’d recorded those recipes. “A cookbook. Just a cookbook.”
“They appear to be spells.” Radane slapped her hand on an open page.
“Those are a list of ingredients for cakes and soups.”
“They could be in code.”
“If they are, I don’t know it,” Kiela snapped. “And my parents are dead. That’s my legacy you’re handling. Show some care.”
Radane slammed the cookbook shut. “I will be confiscating it.”
Kiela’s hands curled into fists, and she wanted to yell. No one took books without her permission, especially someone who did not know how to handle them properly. Outside, the wind blew a vine over the window, and a shadow momentarily crossed the kitchen. It reminded her of Caz, and she exhaled slowly.
The cookbook isn’t what I need to protect, she reminded herself.
“Confiscate it if you must, but I expect it to be returned in the same condition,” Kiela said. “It’s brittle, and it’s one of a kind. It must be treated with care.”
Radane tossed her fire-red hair. “I will do what I must to fulfill my duty.”
Larran asked gently, “What is it you’re afraid of?”
Recoiling, Radane glared at him. “How dare you. I am an imperial inspector. When I speak, when I act, when I do my duty, I am embodying the glory and power of the empire.”
“In my experience, when one of my merhorses is aggressive, tossing around his weight, acting like he’s the leader of the herd when he isn’t, it’s out of fear.” His voice was gentle, and Kiela thought this must be how he tamed his merhorses, with kindness and understanding. “I’ve seen young merhorses full of spitfire attack ocean waves. The water just breaks around them.”
“Are you saying I’m like an aggressive fish?”
“Merhorses, or more technically ‘hippocampi,’ are mammals,” Kiela supplied. When they both looked at her, she said, “Marine mammals. Not fish. It’s how they’re classified based primarily on how they breathe combined with how they bear young. Fish lay eggs.”
Larran looked pleased that she knew this.
“I did some reading,” she told him.
Radane pounced on that. “In this spellbook?”
“Cookbook,” Kiela corrected. “And no, back when I was a kid in school. I was born here, grew up here, and went to school in the village.” She left out the piece about how they’d left for Alyssium when she was nine. It wasn’t a lie to omit it, and the less Radane knew about Kiela’s background with spellbooks, the better. Let her think Kiela had lived here her whole life. “This cottage was my childhood home. My parents moved here when they first got married. They were born on Caltrey too. Met when they were kids on a fishing boat.” She remembered that story—her father had wanted to see the stars from out on the sea, but his parents worked in an orchard. They didn’t have their own boat, and they thought it silliness to borrow one for something as frivolous as stargazing, and so her mother had invited him on her parents’ boat. Her mother’s mother, whom Kiela remembered as a tiny, wrinkled woman with a terrible singing voice, had been a fisherman, and she’d been planning a night-fishing expedition—there was a particular kind of fish that was most active at night. Kiela’s mom and dad had both been eleven years old, and her dad had always claimed that that was when he’d fallen in love, under the stars while the fish jumped in the moonlight. Kiela couldn’t help but look at Larran as she remembered that story. She wondered if he ever rode his merhorse out under the night stars.
“Put another way,” Larran said, “go softer, and you’ll find that island folk want to help out. Order them about, and they’ll bristle. I’ve known these people my whole life, and they’re good people. But we’ve our pride. Treat us like criminals, and we’ll push back.”
“You don’t push back against the Crescent Islands Empire,” Radane said. She slid the cookbook into a pouch at her waist, with who-knew-what-else that could stain or damage the pages.
Kiela ordered her fists to unclench. Say nothing. Do nothing. Think of Caz and Meep.
“When the rogue sorcerer is found, your property will be returned,” Radane said. “Unless it is determined that you aided the sorcerer. If you are concealing him or her, all of your property”—she gestured to the cottage, the shop, the garden—“will belong to the empire.”
As Radane strode out of the cottage, Kiela felt Larran’s hand on her shoulder. It was warm, heavy, and comforting, and it kept her from screaming or, worse, hurling a jar of jam at Radane’s retreating figure. Neither of them spoke as the imperial inspector walked into the greenery, and Radane did not look back.
“Thank you,” Kiela said.
“I couldn’t save your cookbook,” Larran said. “Not without making it worse.”
She shook her head. “You did right. There was nothing either of us could do. Imperial investigators have virtually unlimited power.” She didn’t need to consult a law book to know that. Once, an entire wing of the sixth floor of the Great Library was sealed by investigator order. No one, not even the assigned librarian, was allowed in the stacks for thirteen months. When the wing was at last unsealed, it was discovered that the investigators had torn pages from one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable books and burned them in a cauldron they’d brought for that exact purpose. No one ever discovered why the books had been condemned, but librarians spoke of it in hushed whispers ever since.
Feeling as if her heart were clenched inside a fist, Kiela leaned against Larran. He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s my fault she’s here,” Larran said.
“It’s no one’s fault. It’s sheer bad luck.”
But her being here meant that Kiela couldn’t be. We can’t stay. Everyone would be safer if she took all evidence of spellcasting far away from Caltrey. But where could she go? And when should she leave? If she left immediately, it would just cause suspicion to rain down on everyone who’d befriended her.
Like Larran.
Unsure what to do, she just stood still, within Larran’s arms, looking out at the greenery, and tried not to wish that Radane’s ship hadn’t sunk so close to home.