Chapter Thirty
Kiela heard Larran whistling before he appeared, carrying his tools on a belt at his waist, as well as a stack of wood balanced on his shoulder. He deposited the wood just outside the cottage door, beside the rosebushes. “I’m picturing shelves all along the walls on either side of the bed. Every wall.”
Kiela smiled happily. So many shelves! “It is a lot of books.”
He laid his saw and the other tools from his belt on a nearby stump. “How did you manage . . . Never mind. Not my business.”
“We started preparing when we first heard about the unrest,” Kiela said, watching him organize his tools with the same care he did everything. “I only wish I could have saved more. I didn’t believe it would get as bad as it did. By the way, in case it’s not clear already, you really shouldn’t go to Alyssium right now.”
He nodded. “Got that. But the storms are—”
“Meep!” the cactus said from the cottage doorway.
“Okay, yes,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not going anywhere.” Kiela, Bryn, and Radane scooted the crates and the bed out of the way to clear room for the shelves, while Larran cut the wood. Radane had never held a hammer or saw before, but she was adept at measuring. Kiela and Bryn hammered the shelves in place, and Caz, with Meep, issued instructions: floor-to-ceiling shelves, twelve inches for the bottom three, eight inches for the top. Unlike the jam shelves, these would be built into the wall. As they worked, they talked about things close to their hearts—Kiela and Caz about the library, Bryn about the bakery, Radane about the university where she’d studied, and Larran about Caltrey and the merhorses.
It took them two very pleasant days to complete the shelves: beautiful shelves of multicolored wood on every wall of the bedroom, floor to ceiling, framing the windows. They filled the cottage with the scent of fresh-cut wood. At night, Radane slept in Bryn’s above-the-bakery apartment, while Larran returned to his house to care for the merhorses. And Kiela dreamed about being in the heart of the forest, with the cloud bears and the unicorn.
On the second day, Eadie and Ulina stopped by to visit. Eadie brought a basket of ruby-red cherries, and Ulina brought a spare harp for Caz to keep, a lap harp with two sets of strings that was nearly the same size as Caz. They all paused construction for a meeting of the Pine Cone Coven and to snack on the cherries that hadn’t been pitted for jam, while Caz played on his new harp and Meep swayed their needles to the music.
Kiela had never been happier.
On the third day, only Radane returned at dawn. Bryn couldn’t spend any more time away from the bakery, and Larran was needed with his herd out with the fishing boats.
“Bryn said I can start my bakery job tomorrow,” Radane explained when she arrived. She withdrew a tattered and familiar book from a pouch. “I wanted to come bring you this.”
It was her parents’ cookbook.
“I was going to bring it sooner, but I wanted to repair the page that ripped.”
Kiela took it and clutched it to her chest. She felt like a piece of her was slotted back into her heart. “All right.” She wasn’t going to say thank you since Radane had taken it against her will in the first place, but she could say it was all right, especially since she’d taken the extra step to try to repair it. “Caz and I were about to shelve. Would you like to join us?”
“You’ll let me handle the books?”
Only if she did it carefully. Certainly not unsupervised. But yes, she would let her help, if she wanted to. She’d earned that much trust. “You can take them out of the crates and pass them to us. We’ll organize them.”
“Fair enough.”
They set to work.
As they shelved, Kiela told Radane about her experiments with the tree and water spells, and Radane told her and Caz about which books she’d studied for her degree. There wasn’t much overlap between the two, but Kiela found the conversation fascinating. She was familiar with some but not all of the books Radane had read, and Radane was fascinated by Kiela’s experiments. At the university, they had not been permitted to alter any spells or even try any that hadn’t been thoroughly tested by their professors—the city was considered too crowded and the spells too volatile to take any risks.
“I’d like to find a spell to help the merhorses.” Kiela explained how they had difficulty with both conceiving and birthing without the aid of city sorcerers. “I haven’t run across any text that addresses it directly, but there are a few avenues that look like they have potential.”
Caz pulled out the books with relevant spells to show Radane. None were specific to merhorses, but they’d thought that with some study, perhaps they could be adapted? Sitting on the edge of Kiela’s bed, Radane began to study one of the books. “This one is for horses. If it were combined with spellwork on pure magical creatures, it could work. Do you have Stigard’s third, no wait fourth, volume on the physiology of spell-born constructs?”
Kiela consulted her notebook with the index. “Third crate.”
Abandoning the shelving project, they began to pore over the various books. Kiela knew of several in their collection that had been too advanced for her—they’d required a background in spell-work that she didn’t have—but Radane did have training.
By sundown, only a quarter of the books were shelved, but they were closer to a workable spell. “Can you ask Bryn for one more day?” Kiela asked.
Radane startled. “You want me to come back?”
“Why are you so surprised? We’re making progress.”
“But I . . .” She took a breath and then exhaled. “The reason that I wanted to go to the Crescent University in the first place was that I wanted to be more than my name. No one has ever needed me for what I know or what I could do before. It’s always been about who I am.”
“Who you were,” Kiela corrected. “You’re a Caltreyan now.”
Radane smiled.
And she came back the next day.
By the fourth day, the shelves were complete (thanks to Larran), the books were organized (thanks to Caz), and the spell was workable (thanks to Radane). Meep gathered the ingredients, and Kiela mixed them into a paste, which she sealed in a jam jar. When Larran came to visit—he came daily, though they hadn’t been alone since that day on the beach—Kiela shared the news that it was ready.
Wordless, he kissed her. She felt as if she’d been plunged into the ocean, but on a warm day. She submerged herself into the kiss, and it was as if the rest of the world had been subsumed, until Radane cleared her throat. They separated, and Kiela felt herself blush.
When they both could breathe again, Larran asked, “How can we be certain the spell won’t hurt my merhorses?”
Kiela had been thinking about that. “We’ll bring Ivor.”
“He’ll know it’s a spell,” Radane warned.
“I don’t think he’ll be shocked.” Kiela looked at Larran. She wasn’t going to do anything to a single mare of his herd without his approval. They were a piece of him, of his heart, and if he said no, that was it.
Larran nodded. “I trust Ivor, both with your secret and my herd.”
“Are you certain?” Radane asked. “The more people who know, the more risk there is.”
She wasn’t certain that was true. “The more friends I have, the safer I am. The same is true for you.” Isolating herself wasn’t the answer, not for her, not for Caz, and not for Radane. If they were going to be safe here, they needed the whole community around them.
And it was going to start with helping the merhorses.
“Everyone needs the herd to be healthy, don’t they?” Kiela said. “If the herd grows, it helps the fisherfolk. If they catch enough fish, then everyone thrives, right down to the winged cats. We look after the islanders, and the islanders will look after us.” As an added benefit, it would make Larran happy. She looked at him. “Your merhorses are important to all of Caltrey, as well as to you.”
As she’d hoped, he smiled. “True.”
“Then let’s do this,” Kiela said.
Caz stayed behind with Meep to mind the jam shop, and Radane returned to town to help Bryn at the bakery, since her job had officially begun. So it was Kiela, Larran, and Ivor who walked out onto the stone jetty with the spell and the ingredients.
Ivor knew quite a bit about merhorse biology. “The reason the sorcerers are able to help, or were able to, when they chose to, is because the mares carry fertilized eggs within them through the spring and summer months. It is merely with implantation that they need magical assistance. This is why it didn’t matter when the sorcerers would choose to come to Caltrey on their circuit; the mares would be ready whenever they arrived.”
Kiela interrupted his lecture. “So you think this will work?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Ivor confessed. “I’ve never been privy to the spells they used. But I can be on hand in case anything goes wrong. I will monitor the mother-to-be and assess if she’s in any physical distress.”
And if the mare turns into a bird? Or a tree? Kiela, Caz, and Radane had gone over the spell multiple times. They’d cross-referenced every word and every ingredient, but Kiela wouldn’t truly know until she cast it. She’d discovered there was a world of difference between studying a spell and making magic.
“I will also be able to assess if it was successful,” Ivor said.
“How?” Kiela asked. If she understood the spell correctly, it would merely facilitate implantation. The merhorse wouldn’t be noticeably pregnant for weeks, and she wouldn’t give birth for another four months.
Ivor wiggled his fingers. “Magic.”
Kiela raised her eyebrows.
“I may not know this spell,” Ivor said, “but you were correct that I have other secrets that I wouldn’t want an imperial investigator to know.”
“We’re all lucky that Radane decided to retire,” Kiela said.
“Indeed,” he agreed.
At the end of the jetty, Larran pulled off his shirt. He then jumped into the water and whistled—four short and one long—and one of the merhorses broke from the herd with a neigh. She was a pale blue mare whose scales looked like the midday sky.
“This is Marri,” Larran said. “She’s four years old, exactly when she should be having her first foal. She’s in ideal health but has showed no signs of quickening.” He cooed to the merhorse and patted her mane. She nuzzled against his neck. “There, girl. There, there.”
Kiela climbed down the rocks and into the water beside Larran to stand beside the merhorse. Curious, Marri whickered at Kiela’s hair.
“No treats right now,” Larran said. “Later. If you behave.” He clicked his tongue, and the horse-fish rolled in the waves. “I train them to do this so that Ivor can treat them for any injuries or illnesses.”
Opening the pouch, Kiela handed the spell to Ivor, who had stayed up out of the waves. “Can you hold this up for me?” She’d memorized it, of course, but it was better to be safe than cocky. She unsealed the paste and smeared it onto the merhorse’s stomach.
Marri shivered beneath her touch but stayed calm. She was floating on her back, with her equine forelegs in the air, and her fish tail swaying back and forth, resisting the pull of the tide and keeping her close to Kiela and Larran.
Taking a breath, Kiela chanted the words, syllable by syllable, her eyes on the paper that Ivor held out of reach of the ocean spray. She kept her hands on the merhorse, moving them in circles in the paste, covering every inch of her stomach scales. She pushed the paste into each crevice as she spoke.
Off shore, the merhorses bobbed in the waves, and Kiela felt as if they were watching her too. She tried to block it all out and speak each syllable carefully and confidently. Waves crashed against her, and she ignored them. Gulls called overhead, and she didn’t hear. For the space of those minutes, it was only her, the merhorse, and the words.
And then she finished.
She stepped back. “You can release her.”
Larran clucked his tongue, and Marri rolled over in the water. “Is it done?” he asked.
She looked up at Ivor. “Did it work?”
Ivor lowered his head, bowing his antlers forward, and murmured a few words—Kiela wouldn’t have known them for the First Language if she hadn’t been listening for the particular lilt. He was good at hiding what he did. She made a mental note to practice that kind of spellcasting with the Pine Cone Coven. As he finished, he flung a handful of what looked like sand at the merhorse.
Kiela held her breath.
The sand glowed gold.
“It worked,” Ivor said confidently.
Larran put his face in his hands. His shoulders began to shake. Kneeling, Ivor laid a hand on his shoulder as Larran cried, while Kiela climbed out of the waves onto the stone jetty.
After a gulp, Larran swallowed back his tears to smile at his merhorse. “Good girl,” he told her. He patted her neck. “Go on.”
With a neigh, Marri raced back to her herd, who clustered around her in the deeper water, and Larran pulled himself out of the water onto the jetty.
“Congratulations,” Ivor told him. He then turned to Kiela. “Call on me when you choose to repeat this. Tomorrow, I presume?”
Kiela nodded. Now that she knew it worked . . . It worked!
Her knees felt like jelly—or, more accurately, not-quite-set jam. She hadn’t realized how tense she was. She began to shake. “Yes, as soon as I’ve prepared more ingredients.”
With a nod to both of them, Ivor stretched his wings out and launched into the air. Kiela and Larran watched him fly back to the cliff and up toward the waterfall. Once the antlered healer was above the roses, Larran turned to Kiela. “You did the miraculous. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Kiela looked down at her wet patchwork dress. Once again, she hadn’t considered her clothes before she’d jumped in the water with the horse-fish, though she supposed if she’d considered the logistics beyond simply the syllables and the ingredients, she would have anticipated this. “You can start by loaning me more of your clothes.”
Larran wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her close. Spray flew around him as he kissed her, and she kissed him back. She felt as if she were melting. The sun warmed her sea-wet skin as he kissed her lips, her neck, her ear, her chin, and then her lips again.
He asked, breathless, “Would you like to . . .”
“Yes,” she said.
“You don’t know what I was going to say,” Larran said. “I could have suggested a swim. Or a merhorse ride.”
“Yes to whatever you want to do,” Kiela said.
He kissed her again. “Yes.”
She sank into his kisses. He tasted of the sea and of cinnamon.
Out in the waves, a mermaid shrieked—a siren-like scream, and Kiela and Larran broke apart. Beyond the merhorse herd, the mermaid was swimming dolphin-like toward them. She shrieked as she leaped out of the water.
“Ship!” the mermaid called.
That alone wasn’t unusual. A dozen fishing boats and a half-dozen sailboats dotted the water just beyond the harbor. A few were farther out, but the waters were calm . . .
Larran stiffened beside her. “Imperial.”
“What?” She didn’t see anything but Caltreyan boats . . .
He pointed just left of the sun, and she saw it: one of the empire’s warships, sailing straight for the harbor.