The Spellshop

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Meep?” the cactus said.

“Exactly,” Caz said.

Larran snorted. “You . . . what?”

Kiela studied her. “Unlikely. The emperor’s heir is his firstborn son, Umele S’rov Vironin. Second in line is his daughter, the next eldest, Seviene Nicla Edin Lariviron, followed by his brother, his sister-in-law, their children.”

“I was sixteenth,” Radane said. “It wasn’t ever supposed to come to me, and I don’t want it. I lied about what happened in Alyssium—”

Caz muttered, “There’s a surprise.”

“The revolutionaries were victorious, and the generals in charge of the military, in their zeal to prove their loyalty to the cause, began executing anyone with any claim to the throne whatsoever. Whether the new government wants this or not is debatable and also immaterial, since the end result is the same. The politicians among the revolutionaries are still establishing control and cannot afford to alienate their military leaders. To put it more simply, it’s an unhealthy time to be related to the former regime. Lucky me, I’m a distant cousin on my grandmother’s side, and I was in training to be a wind-speaker. In fact, I had completed my third-year exams and was waiting for my first assignment on a ship—but that’s all over now, because someone traced a family tree and decided that a short-lived marriage was close enough. A faction of loyalists want to use me as a figurehead so they have an excuse to throw the islands into civil war, and the revolutionaries—who have not crowned an emperor but instead installed a parliament—don’t want the loyalists to have any kind of legitimacy whatsoever and are willing to turn a blind eye to any actions taken by their more bloodthirsty factions.” She spat all of this out with the bitterness of someone who has been holding words inside for much too long. “I think the empire will be far better off without an emperor or empress, but no one ever asked me my opinion. They just assumed because some relative I never met was briefly married to someone . . . I didn’t want to be an excuse for more bloodshed, so I fled.”

Kiela stared at her. “You have a ruby because you’re high-level nobility.”

She nodded.

“And you spelled your hair red so you’d look like low-level nobility.”

“No one glanced twice at me,” Radane said. “The guards did not know my face. Just my wealth. Even guards I have known since I was a child.”

“Your family owned the boat that sank?” Kiela guessed.

“One of my aunts was an imperial investigator,” Radane said. “She gifted me the boat when the revolutionaries disbanded the office of investigations and confiscated their badges. The new government plans to install their own people, after they finish overhauling the laws, but it’s a lot of change all at once. Everything is in chaos, but without an heir to the imperial throne, it’s bureaucratic chaos, not violence in the streets.”

Larran laid a wet hand on Kiela’s shoulder. “Then the empire won’t be after Kiela? No one will arrest her?” I can stay? she wondered. I can unpack the books, make my jam, share a dinner with Larran . . .

Radane shook her head. “Yes to the first, but the second . . . As far as I know, the laws have not been overwritten yet. What you have done here”—she gestured toward the boat with the books and the sentient succulent—“could still get you arrested, tried, and found guilty. But I am not the one who’d do it.”

Using his leaves, Caz was squeezing saltwater out of his root ball. “So I was right: you were trying to steal the spellbooks for yourself.”

“Only the useful ones,” Radane said.

“All books are useful,” Kiela and Caz said simultaneously.

“Uh-huh, definitely librarians,” Radane said. “I needed spells that would help me hide. I do not wish to ever go back to that life. I want what you have. An ordinary life without the constant fear of assassination.”

That . . . sounded like a very reasonable wish.

“How can we trust you?” Caz said. “You threatened to have us arrested and punished, even though the revolutionaries won—which, by the way, yay.”

Radane countered, “How can I trust you ? You threatened to murder me and hide my body.”

Larran looked startled.

Caz waved his leaves at him. “Not Kiela. She has more morals than common sense.” To Radane, he said, “Can you prove you are who you say you are this time?”

She spread her hands. “No. I have nothing but what I was wearing when the storm hit.”

“You say you’re a wind-speaker,” Caz said. “Why didn’t you spell the storm away?”

“A single wind-speaker cannot work such large magic,” Radane said. “It requires multiple spellcasters to affect a storm. Best I can do solo is summon a pleasant breeze.”

Kiela glanced at Caz. She wanted to trust Radane, but she had already lied once and taken it to an extreme—the cookbook was a particularly unforgivable line to cross. She’d caused a lot of distress in people and plants who Kiela cared about.

Bobbing in the cave, the mermaid cooed, “You are you.”

“What?” Caz asked.

“You are you.”

Kiela understood. Take the librarian out of the Great Library, she’s still a librarian. Take a noble out of her palace . . . She looked at Radane. “You’re still you. When a high noble bathes, how many people must be present?”

“Two,” Radane said. “One to watch inward: to regulate the water temperature, supply the towels, and dry the tile so he or she doesn’t slip, and one to watch outward: to ensure he or she isn’t disturbed or attacked while in a vulnerable state.”

“When did this tradition begin?” Kiela asked.

“After High Lord Irizinth slipped on a bar of soap, hit his head on the tile, and died of his injuries. His brother was blamed for murder and executed before the guilty soap was discovered.”

Caz jumped in. “How many spring festivals must a high noble attend?”

“In an even year or an odd one?” Radane countered.

“Even, but in a year with three rains before the first bloom,” Kiela said.

“Six, but everyone must be masked for the first three,” Radane said, “because the third empress met her wife after three spring festivals and ever since it has been considered good luck.”

“Which dessert is considered—”

Larran held up his hand. “If you and Caz know all this, how is this proof?”

“Ask me a question I would only know if I were a high noble who’d studied for her third-year exams in wind-speaking,” Radane said. Wind-speaking was a study of sorcery that focused on controlling the movement of air. It had numerous applications: on ships, obviously, for filling sails, but wind-speakers were also employed as spies, for their ability to carry distant voices to their ears.

“What section of the Great Library holds the treatises on Oppeindone’s experiments on wind manipulation from the third dynasty?” Kiela asked. It was a trickier question than it appeared, because the sorcerer Oppeindone had conducted a wide variety of cross-discipline experiments, and he hadn’t been as organized in his writings as a librarian might wish. His treatises tended to flit from topic to topic. If she’d been his mentor, she would have spoken to him sternly about the need to focus, at least enough for the paper to match the abstract. Scientific books were not supposed to be stream-of-consciousness. That said, his work was brilliant, and any sufficiently advanced wind-speaker should have been assigned to read his original texts.

Radane stared at her for a moment.

“If you were as advanced as you say, you’d know,” Caz said.

“I didn’t say I was going to pass my exams,” Radane complained. “We were assigned to read Oppeindone’s early experiments in wind . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I spoke to the librarian with the green-streaked beard. He had moss growing on his tunic and grumbled about being transferred from the west wing . . .” She opened her eyes. “He was on the second floor, north wing, by the stained-glass depiction of Empress Pergin and the building of the Alyssium canals.”

“And what did Oppeindone’s wind experiments prove?” Caz asked.

She glared at the plant. “I just admitted that I was not a good student. But I can tell you his notes were handwritten, near impossible to read, in a blue book that had tea stains on the cover. And I would have read it, if his handwriting hadn’t been so atrocious.”

Caz glanced at Kiela, who nodded. “He did have atrocious handwriting. No imperial investigator would know that.” She would’ve heard if an investigator had requested any books from the second floor, north wing. It was rare enough that gossip about such a request would have spread, but a mere student, no matter how noble, was exactly the sort of patron who the library was designed to accommodate. “She’s telling the truth, at least as far as I can tell.”

“All right then,” Larran said.

Caz nodded.

“Meep?”

Kiela understood that question without need of translation. “Now what?”

Together, they sailed back to Kiela’s cove.

Whatever they were going to do next, they could figure it out in the comfort of the cottage with some tea and jam—after the crates of books were safely back inside. Without an actual investigator on the island, there was no need to keep them so hidden. Kiela’s bedroom would do just fine.

Larran rode on the back of a brilliant teal merhorse, while the mermaid and her child dove through the waves. Meep stayed stuck to the top of the mast, while Kiela sat near the rudder. Caz stretched himself over the crates of books and watched Radane.

Radane was very carefully steering clear of any topic that made her sound like she was still a threat. “I always hated the spring festivals,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. “You dance too much, you eat too much, and a lot of nobles assume that since they’re ‘anonymous’—even though the costumes make it blatantly obvious who is who, since they’re typically designed around a play on the wearer’s name and status—that the rules do not apply to them. I like to be asked before I’m kissed. And the noise! I do not mind musicians, but one at a time.”

“I hid in the library for all festivals,” Kiela said.

“Lucky,” Radane said. “My mother would not let me. She claimed it was my duty to represent my family. One year, my younger sister, who was desperate to go to her first festival, paid me in all her birthday candy to let her masquerade as me. Later I sneaked into her room and put her candy back, because the truth was I would have paid her to go in my place. She came back saying she had a magnificent time.”

“Sounds smart.” Kiela wondered where Radane’s mother and sister were now and if they were considered heirs. Had Radane’s escape just delayed civil war? “Are you the last heir, or does it fall to another relative and then another?”

“My mother remarried after my father died, and the bloodline is on my father’s side. The remarriage voids my mother’s claim to the throne. So they are safe, if that is what you are asking.”

“Glad to hear it.” So that meant war wasn’t inevitable, which was excellent—a true civil war would undoubtedly spread to the outer islands. A coup had the chance of being contained to just Alyssium. A good reason for people to be hunting Radane.

“I did not have a chance to say goodbye to them,” Radane said. “That is the only piece of this I regret. Also, I regret taking your parents’ cookbook. It felt in character, and I needed you to believe I was who I claimed to be.”

“It was effective,” Kiela said. She hadn’t doubted that Radane was an imperial investigator when she took the precious cookbook.

“I will return it,” Radane said. “It is undamaged, I promise.”

“Thank you.” Perhaps she could forgive her for confiscating it, though Kiela couldn’t help but wonder how far Radane would have taken her act. She had frightened people, but short of taking the cookbook, she hadn’t caused any real harm. If her plan was simply to disappear . . . Kiela was glad that Caz hadn’t taken more extreme action.

But what were they to do with Radane now?

As they drifted into the cove, Kiela lowered the sail, and Radane poled them to the dock. Kiela tied the boat securely to the dock and then stepped out. Larran joined them, and together they carried all five crates back up to the cottage. Caz and Meep rode on one of the crates.

At Kiela’s direction, they positioned them in the back room around the bed. When they’d finished, Caz and Meep scampered into the garden to plunge their roots into the soil, while Kiela made mint tea and worried about Radane.

Larran slid the final crate into place and emerged from the bedroom. “If you’d like, I could make you bookshelves. Now that you aren’t leaving.”

I’m not leaving. The realization blossomed like a rose in the sunshine and completely distracted her from everything she was worrying about. She smiled at him. Bookshelves! That was the most perfect thing anyone had ever offered her. Better than jewels or a feast or a palace. He smiled back at her, and she felt as if the world were singing around her. “Yes, that would be nice.”

He smiled back. “All right then.”

Maybe this was something that could last. How often did you meet someone who offered to build you bookshelves? As Kiela watched, Larran headed outside, whistling, to fetch wood and tools.

Heaving a sigh, Radane plopped down on one of the chairs. Startled, Kiela half jumped. For almost a minute, she had forgotten that the ex–imperial investigator was here.

“While I appreciate that you did not let your talking spider plant drown me,” Radane said, “I still have my little problem.” She pulled out her ruby pendant and held it in the air so it caught the sunlight. “Can I buy your spellbook?”

“It belongs to the library!” Kiela said.

“It seems to belong to your bedroom.”

Kiela shook her head. “I can’t sell any of them. That’s not how it works.” She was their caretaker, not their owner. “How are you even planning to use that spell? You can’t stay invisible forever. A hidden life isn’t the same as an ordinary life.” Besides, Radane would need to keep the ruby to cast it, which made it an insincere offer. “What you need is a way to start over, and I think—”

She heard footsteps outside.

“Hello?” Bryn’s voice was bright and cheery. “Are you open? I don’t mean to be one of those demanding customers who’s always popping in after hours when you’re trying to get a decent amount of chores done, but I’d like to buy more raspberry jam.”

More jam already? Kiela came around the corner. “Hello. Yes, of course.”

Leaning on the window counter, Bryn beckoned her closer and whispered, “Are you in trouble? Say the word, and we can be out of here. I’ll hide you.”

“No, I . . . You would hide me?” Glancing over her shoulder, Kiela saw Radane’s elbow sticking out beyond the jam shelf. “I don’t need help, but . . . Come in. I’m making tea.” She opened the door and let Bryn inside. “Out of curiosity, why do you think I need help?”

Bryn waved her hand at the shelves, the garden, and the cottage. “Just concerned.”

Understandable. She wondered if Bryn had guessed the full story and knew what was in the crates. Just the existence of the Pine Cone Coven was enough to condemn Kiela and Caz, if Radane had been a true imperial investigator.

Coming around the corner of the shop into the kitchen, Bryn saw Radane, and she halted. “Oh.” She turned to Kiela. “Are you sure . . .” She let the question trail off, with her offer of help implied. “I can come back later. Or stay. Do you want me to stay? Of course you do. You offered tea. Yes, I’d love a cup of tea.” Bryn sat down in a chair opposite Radane as if she were making a point.

Kiela said to Radane, “I trust Bryn.”

“You’re saying I should too?” Radane asked.

“You either trust us, or you keep running. It’s your choice. I’ll give you a copy of the invisibility spell, of course, and you can keep your pendant, but where will you run to?”

Bryn looked from Kiela to Radane and back again.

As the kettle whistled, Kiela picked up a towel to hold the handle. She poured hot water into three teacups and then distributed them on slightly chipped saucers to her two guests, who were watching each other as warily as two winged cats who didn’t want to share a roof.

“I don’t know where to run,” Radane confessed, “or even how. My ship sank.”

“You could buy another,” Kiela said. “But we’re already on one of the outer islands. I don’t know if you’ll find a better place to hide than this. Plus, no one knows where your ship went, do they? They don’t know it sank, or that you survived.”

“Wait—do you want me to stay?” Radane said. “After—” She shook her head in obvious confusion. “Why would you want me to stay?”

Because Radane said she wanted a life like this. Because Caltrey had gifted Kiela with a future that she’d never even imagined she’d want. Because this was a good place with kind people who cared about one another. Because there was a unicorn in the woods, mermaids in the coves, and the best raspberries she’d ever tasted.

Also because if Radane stayed . . . then she couldn’t tell anyone outside Caltrey that Kiela, Caz, Meep, and the spellbooks were here. It was practical as well as kind.

“It’s safer for me if you stay,” Kiela said.

“Ahh.” That clearly made sense to Radane.

Not to Bryn, though. “Why would that be?”

Kiela glanced at Radane and wondered how she was going to explain who she was, why she was here, and why she wanted to stay and hide.

“I want to leave my job as an imperial investigator,” Radane said. “My employers, however, will not be happy about this. I need to disappear.”

That was close enough to the truth, though it downplayed how “unhappy” her employers would be or how many people from Alyssium would like to get their hands on Radane. “You said you had a way to hide me,” Kiela said to Bryn. “Would you have a way to hide her?”

Bryn sipped her tea and studied Radane. “You made a mess of my bakery.”

Hunching her shoulders, Radane stared into her tea. “I’m sorry. I . . . I was not myself. I was . . . I thought I had to be the imperial investigator.”

“Hmm,” Bryn said.

“How can we hide her?” Kiela asked.

Taking another sip of tea, Bryn contemplated it for a minute more. She then lowered her cup and said decisively, “In plain sight. She comes to work for me at my bakery, for free until she’s made up for the mess she made and then for pay after that, in plain view of everyone, until she’s as familiar a sight as Tobin. She becomes an islander, and we convince as many people as possible to swear she’s lived here for years.”

Radane gawked at her. “People would do that?”

Bryn shrugged. “They did it for me.”

Caz and Meep came inside from the garden, and the spider plant helped the cactus up onto the kitchen counter. They sat quietly listening, while Caz plucked stray leaves off Meep’s needles. Meep made a soft sound like a cat purring.

“My wife’s parents didn’t approve of me,” Bryn said. “I’m from a clan that lives . . . Well, better if I don’t say names, but I’m from a forested island far from here and suffice it to say that our clans hated each other for generations. So long that no one could remember how it started, but everyone could list out every single slight and insult and wrong since then to the point where our families were poisoning the trees and rivers on one another’s land. My wife . . . I met her while I was trying to stop one of my cousins from dumping waste into a lake that fed not only into my wife’s family’s land but also onto ours. He completely missed the metaphor about how our hatred was destroying us, but my future wife understood. We started to meet secretly of course, and in the egocentric innocence of youth, we thought if we showed our families how in love we were . . .” She sighed heavily, and then said to Kiela, “I think the rest of this requires jam to tell.”

“Of course.” Kiela got up and opened a fresh jar, and Bryn produced several freshly baked rolls from one of her many pockets.

Radane blinked at them. “Wait, this really is a jam shop?”

“Yes.” Kiela spread raspberry jam on half a roll and bit into it. The bread was as fluffy as a cloud and tasted a bit of pepper and honey, which complemented the jam perfectly. “I used a plant-growth-acceleration spell to grow the raspberry bushes.”

Her jaw dropped open. “You . . . Five crates of . . . And your priority was raspberries?”

“I was thinking of strawberries next, but I haven’t seen any in my garden.” Kiela turned to Bryn. “Does anyone in town have any strawberries? I could replant a few . . .”

“I’ll ask around,” Bryn said. “Strawberry jam would be excellent.”

“I could try mixed berry too, with blueberries and raspberries.”

Radane gaped at her.

Bryn piled a heap of jam on a plate with a roll and handed it to Radane. “Eat something sweet. It’ll make you sweeter.”

“Uh, thanks.”

Looking down at her own roll, Bryn didn’t eat. Instead she continued her story. “You can imagine how it went when our families found out. Both my wife and I were disowned. My uncle, a man who used to give me treats and play hide-and-seek in the woods with me . . . well, he made it abundantly clear how they all felt. My wife died from her injuries at his hand, and her family blamed me. If I hadn’t wooed her, they said, then my uncle wouldn’t have been driven to hurt her. And so I fled. Kept going and going until I came to Caltrey. Changed my name and started a new life here. But her family had hired a professional to exact their revenge. When he found me . . . the people of Caltrey rallied around me. They swore that I wasn’t the one he was looking for. I’d been born here, they said. And he believed them and left. I’ve lived in peace ever since.”

Kiela’s heart ached for her friend. “I’m so sorry.” She wished she could think of other, better words to say. Bryn shouldn’t have had to bear that kind of heartache and grief. She had such a giant heart.

Stretching out a tendril, Caz patted her arm. “We all are.”

“Meep,” the cactus said soulfully.

“Aw, thank you, but I didn’t tell you for pity,” Bryn said. “I tell you as proof it can be done. Islanders protect our own. They adopted me—Tobin’s mother, she’s my sister now, and he’s my nephew. The people of Caltrey are my new family.”

“I’m not one of you,” Radane said.

“You could be, if you want to be.” Bryn held up her hand. “Think about it before you answer. The question isn’t will you be safe here; it’s do you want to stay here? It’s not always easy to start over and become a new person with new dreams. Do you want to start a new life here?”

Radane frowned at the jam, but she picked up a knife and spread some on the roll. She took a bite and chewed. Politely, Kiela and Bryn sipped their tea and nibbled their rolls with jam. Kiela wondered if she should make apple jam next. Caz swung himself onto the table and then sent a tendril down and helped Meep up onto the table as well. The plants waited for Radane to think.

After a little while, Radane said, “I’d like to make a life here.”

Bryn nodded briskly. “Then you can start as I offered: by cleaning up the mess you made in my bakery. I’ll hire you as my assistant, at least temporarily. If you like working at the bakery, you can stay. If not, I’ll help you find another job in town. Regardless, I live above the bakery and have a spare room. It can be yours. If anyone comes to look for you, we’ll tell them you’ve lived here a decade and worked at the bakery for just as long.”

Radane swallowed her mouthful of jam and bread. “I was terrible to both of you. Why are you being so kind?”

Kiela thought of Larran, leaving cinnamon rolls and eggs in a basket on her step the first morning she was here, and went for the simplest and truest answer: “Because we can.”