The volcano sprite took full advantage of Runa’s sudden change of mind. She woke up the next morning with a crick in her neck, as usual, before dawn, as usual, and discovered the jar of mother-of-bread less bubbly and overflowing than it had been previous mornings, and the recipe book open on the bench.

  A handful of unmilled seeds were scattered across the page. Runa looked closer. The seeds were singed. The page was, too, with tiny splay-clawed footprints.

  Each seed was placed at the start of one ingredient in the recipe.

  “So that’s what we’re shopping for today, is it?” she asked Nobody in Particular. “All right. Sounds good to me.”

  So, now she had a shopping list.

  And someone to go shopping with.

  Two someones, even if one of them didn’t know it.

  Severine seemed vaguely distracted that morning. She slung her heavy packroll over her shoulder with a wince as they headed out. It clinked softly.

  More magic swords, Runa assumed. Severine still hadn’t said anything about being a Cauldron scraps trader, and Runa wasn’t going to pressure her.

  The sight of Severine packing it up ready to go down the mountain made her chest pang, though. Was she really going to leave this soon?

  Why wouldn’t she? she asked herself. It isn’t as though she has anything keeping her here. Not like you.

  Except… Runa didn’t have anything keeping her here either. Did she?

  Nothing but her own choice to stay.

  That particular thought buzzed around the base of her horns like a fly all morning. She stopped at the tavern on the way out of the village, but Junilla wasn’t back yet. She must have stayed in Dawdledale. Would spending the night at another person’s inn be like a break for a tavernkeeper, or more like checking out the competition, Runa wondered. Not that much custom from Dawdledale managed to make it all the way up the mountain.

  The walk down took most of the morning. Runa offered to carry Severine’s pack, but Severine was adamant that the heavy load was her own problem and nobody else’s. Now that she was paying attention, she could taste the magic leaking from the canvas pack, but she didn’t let it bother her. There was so much to enjoy in the long, winding road down to Dawdledale with Severine by her side. Why invite trouble in?

  She tilted her face towards the morning sun. Tucked under her collar, wrapped in the sodden remnants of her holey sock, Nobody in Particular grumbled quietly against the crook of her neck.

  Runa had soaked the sock in the rain bucket out the back before they headed out. It should give them a bit more time before smoke started appearing from under her tunic, and the sprite got a steam bath in the meantime.

  “This was really all snow a few days ago?” Severine asked, looking around. Runa understood her disbelief. There was no sign of the sudden freeze that had crashed down from the Cauldron, just tilled brown soil in narrow gardens, plants growing between the volcanic rocks. “Tam told me about the ice wall on the Rim, but… and it really came down this far?”

  “Didn’t reach the town, but a lot of this farmland, yeah.”

  “Did it do any permanent damage?” Severine looked around, a line forming between her brows. Runa followed her gaze. The soil was rich volcanic brown, and there was plenty of green around—but plenty of grey and brown, too, the dead stalks of plants burned by unexpected cold.

  She took a deep breath, and beneath the rich scent of loam and herb bushes was the stink of rot.

  “Things from the Cauldron aren’t meant to affect the world around,” she muttered. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “I guess bad weather doesn’t count as a curse,” Severine said weakly. She swallowed. “There must be a blacksmith in town, right? I’d like to stop by, if we can.”

  “Might as well. Not sure how much shopping I’ll be able to do, with no money to shop with.” Her first stop would be wherever you went in Dawdledale to send a letter. Morrie would know. Chances were, Morrie’s waystation was exactly where you went to send a letter, and that would kill two nightwraiths with one torch.

  “You’ve got money.”

  “Not here.”

  “Did you forget? I’ve got money.” Severine threw the suggestion out onto the wind, and looked away, arms folded in a pretense at being casual that didn’t fool Runa and, by the raspberry of hot air on her neck, didn’t fool anyone else either. “You know, you did put me up last night—save my life…”

  “I don’t charge for that,” Runa said reflexively, then rethought. “Not without a contract, anyway.”

  “I thought we agreed I could loan you the money until your pay comes through.”

  Runa raised an eyebrow and glanced sideways at her. “You might have to wait a while. Don’t know how good the post is from this side of the Cauldron.”

  “True! It could take weeks.” Severine looked, and sounded, deliberately unbothered.

  Runa turned a bubble of unexpected laughter into a cough. “And that’s if there’s even a post cart going. Probably have to send it with a trade caravan.”

  “Dodgy.”

  “Or whoever happens to be passing through and thinks they’ll stop at Sollus’ Gate.”

  “Highly risky.”

  “If I’m lucky. Might get stuck with post by catbird.”

  “Do people still do that? You’d never see your money again!” Severine sounded appalled. “We—my par—I used to give things to the catbirds when I didn’t want them anymore. At Winterwarm. Because the catbirds always take things to where they’ll be most needed.”

  Runa nodded. She’d heard that catbirds took things to where they would be best used, which was not quite the same thing. Truth was probably somewhere in the middle. Or so far away you couldn’t see it. “I wouldn’t know. They don’t come into the Cauldron.”

  “Smart of them. Anyway, you’d never see your money again.”

  “No change, then, since I haven’t seen it in the first place,” Runa drawled.

  “But you don’t want your guildmaster to send it and then it ends up with some—with—”

  “Some penniless orphan, who needs it more than me?” Runa narrowed her eyes at the horizon, because it was that or let the smile threatening to tug her lips spread across her whole face. “You’re right. That would be terrible.”

  Severine made a noise like an affronted tea-kettle. A proper one, not the pot Runa’d been using. “I didn’t mean that! I mean, it wouldn’t be ideal. Good for the orphan, obviously. I’m not against helping orphans. Oh gods. Are you an orphan?”

  “No. Both parents still alive, so far as I know.”

  “Oh. Good. But bad for the catbirds plan.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Runa stretched her arms above her head, enjoying the feel of the morning sun on her skin and Severine’s gaze skittering over her triceps. “I can’t see the problem. You’re fronting the cash for the bakery stuff.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “But if your pay never comes, how will—oh. I’ll have to stick around until your money comes through, and if it doesn’t…?” Severine trailed off, looking speculative. Her eyebrows lifted, then shot down conspiratorially. “You’re trying to keep me around?”

  Runa swallowed. The sun felt cold on her arms.

  Well. It was good to know how far her newfound confidence went. Turned out, that little breakthrough about feeling more comfortable around Severine because she knew the human was lying to her about something? It chipped away at the pedestal Runa always dropped attractive women onto, sure.

  But it didn’t stand up to direct questioning.

  It was her own fault. She was the one who took a stick to the conversation and poked it in this direction. And now her chest was squeezing like she’d fallen down a chasm and was trapped with the earth pressing in on all sides.

  Not wandering along an easy path down a sun-lit mountains, with the smell of flowers and fresh herbs in the air and a beautiful woman looking at her.

  Oh, wait. That last bit was the whole problem.

  She swallowed, again, turned her attention away from Severine’s dark eyes peering out from behind her nymph-blessed hair, and said gruffly, “I know where there’s a blacksmith.”

  ***

  Severine didn’t act disappointed. Did that make it worse? She spun the conversation in another direction, and Runa gave short answers and made stupid grunting noises when she couldn’t think of anything to say, and eventually the tightness in her chest eased into the heavy cold of guilty shame, and they made it to Dawdledale.

  The blacksmith was where she remembered. She found it without too much trouble, and stood outside pretending that she was looking at the shopping list and not mentally beating herself over the head.

  Butter. Cheese. She’d seen a herd of cows that day she tried to head out with Rovnen and his crew—maybe their owner had a stall in the town, or supplied a shop? Sheep or goat would do, though it would give the scones a different flavour. And whatever else she made.

  Tiny, hot claws prickled her collarbone.

  “I know, I know,” she muttered to Nobody in Particular. “We’ll head to the shops soon. Severine just wanted to ask Smith Fennewic something first.”

  The claws pricked again, irritated this time. The little volcano sprite knew that. It had been here the whole time, remember?

  Prickle, prickle.

  “All right.” Runa had her chin tucked right down into her neck, her voice pure disgruntlement. “So I screwed that up. What do you care? You don’t even want her around.”

  If she could see the sprite, she guessed it would be rolling its eyes.

  “Oh. You weren’t talking about that.”

  A tiny, orange-red head wriggled out from its sock armor under her collar and pointed towards the blacksmith. “Glop,” it insisted.

  The smithy was an old, soot-stained building. The forge was to one side, burning hot into the already warm summer day, and tended by two of Fennewic’s older children. Fennewic herself had ushered Severine inside, away from the noise and presumably sheltered from the heat of the sun and forge both.

  The volcano sprite suggested that if Runa sidled up to the door, or maybe that window, they might be able to hear what was going on inside.

  “You want to eavesdrop on her?” she sighed.

  “Glop!”

  “You know that’s rude, right?”

  “Glop?”

  “I care,” Runa growled. “I—hey, Morrie.” She twitched her shirt back over the volcano sprite, then turned the movement into a wave.

  “Runa! What’s brought you down the mountain? Arm all better?” Morrie bustled forwards, a worried expression on their face. “I figured you’d be off through the stew pot, now the ice has gone. But if you’re still wanting to take the long way round…?”

  “I’m picking up supplies, actually.”

  Morrie nodded. “Let me know what you need, always happy to cut a deal for an old colleague.”

  “For the bakery.”

  Morrie kept nodding—then blinked. “The bakery?”

  “Up in Pothollow.” Runa tugged her guild medallion over her head and tossed it to the dwarf. “That came through a day or two back. Everyone made it back safe without me.”

  “And they marked the job done?” Somewhere in the tangle of scar tissue on Morrie’s face, an eyebrow rose. “Could be worse, could be much worse.”

  “So I need to send a message to the guild. Get Fisker to send my pay up to Pothollow.”

  “Oh aye?” There was a curious glint in Morrie’s eye.

  Runa scratched a horn. “Lost my purse in the Cauldron. I’m going to find it hard to pay for anything otherwise.”

  Morrie looked down at her medallion, with the two sky-blue beads strung next to it. “Sounds like you’re sticking around, then.”

  “Might be.”

  They snorted. “Might be? If you’re picking up supplies for the bakery, that sounds surer than a might be.” Metal clinked against glass as they joggled the medallion gently in one hand. “Safe and sound without you, huh?”

  Runa resisted the urge to kick something. “Yeah.”

  “That’s tough.”

  She looked at the dwarf, surprised, and they grinned back, tight-jawed. “Getting out of the business on your own terms, that’s one thing. Giving it up because you feel like there’s no point to it? That’s different.”

  “…Yeah,” Runa admitted. Her shoulders slumped. Of course Morrie understood. She didn’t know how they’d ended up leaving the guild.

  She could ask. That was a thing she could do.

  She cleared her throat. “Was that how it was for you?”

  “Me? Gods, no. I knew how much coin I wanted in my hands before I gave up my last contract, and I got it, and I left. And not before time.” They scratched idly at a scar that slid over the curve of their jaw. “But you—you would have stayed until there was nothing left of you?”

  Runa nodded silently.

  “Because they need you in there. Because, in there, you’re the only person standing between some poor sod and a terrible end.” They patted her gently on the arm. “Until they aren’t. But I can see you’re taking it hard. And you never know. The next lot might be the most useless pack of fucks you ever laid eyes on,” they said encouragingly.

  “They might be.” Runa held out her hand for the medallion, and slung it back over her horns and around her neck. “But I think I want to try this.”

  “I won’t argue with that.” Morrie grinned. “And I’ll be more than happy to help with whatever it is you’re in the market for, after I’ve finished my business with our fine smith here. Fen! Did you hear?”

  They were halfway across the road already, their voice pushing ahead of them like a snowplough even before they pushed through the smithy door. Inside, Fennewic and Severine were leaning over a heavy, scarred wooden table. Metal glinted in the sunlight flooding in through the open window.

  Metal, and something that glittered red.

  It wasn’t cold in the smithy, but Runa shivered.

  “—no telling what it would end up as,” Fennewic was saying, the end of her iron-grey braid held like a pipe between her teeth. “Smacking a curse hard enough’ll break it most times—ask that troll girl who fell out of the Cauldron about how that goes—but the forge changes things. Hear what, Morrie?”

  “Our Runa’s sticking around!” the dwarf declared proudly.

  Whose Runa? Runa thought, off-balance, and in the time it took her to glance from Morrie to Fennewic and back to the table, the glint of steel and rubies had disappeared. Severine lounged against the table, twirling a knife Runa hadn’t seen before.

  “Not worth the effort, then?” Severine asked idly. “All that work hammering a, a—” She seemed to take note of the knife in her hand for the first time. “—seeking knife into a spoon or a bowl or something, but the magic stays in it no matter what shape it is?”

  “A seeking knife?” Runa looked closer at the blade. It was shiny and well kept, with green and white enamel inlay on its hilt. “One that actually works?”

  Severine balanced it handle-down on her finger and the blade made small circles in the air. “That depends on what you mean by ‘works’. It’s like a compass, but for whatever you’re looking for.”

  “Worth more with the spell still on, then.” Runa frowned. Wouldn’t Severine know that, as a trader?

  “Ah, so long as you’re careful about what you’re looking for. It finds them sharp end first, see. It’s one thing to think ooh, where’s that thing I lost—” The knife lurched sideways, and she snatched it out of the air. “Like that. And another to, say, wonder where your spouse has got to if they’re late home, and have them skewered as they step through the door. Personally, I’m not looking for anything right now,” she said pointedly, and placed the knife on the table.

  It shone in the sunlight streaming through the window, somehow looking at once like a knife and like a very helpful but very stupid dog.

  Fennewic cleared her throat. “I hadn’t heard that, Morrie. Runa, that is good news,” she said slowly. “That bakery’s been empty too long, and it’s a balm to know the work my boys did fixing up the door will be useful. Severine, I could remake that blade into anything you please, but it wouldn’t change the magic on it. It could be a spoon for seeking. Or a bowl. Yes.”

  She hesitated briefly, as though counting under her breath. “Was that all? Yes,” she decided, and then nodded as though satisfied that she’d tallied up and responded to all the questions that had built up during the conversation. “Now. If it’s the seeking knife you want me to rework, or that other one—”

  “No, I think I’ve changed my mind,” Severine said quickly. “Thanks for talking me through it, though.”

  Hot suspicion prickled under Runa’s collar. “Stop that,” she muttered, and the volcano sprite slapped its tail against her neck. Morrie was the only one close enough to hear; they looked up at her with a frown and she scratched at her horns, pretending she hadn’t said anything.

  “Ready to go shopping, Runa?” Severine asked with a grin.

  Runa nodded. The table was empty—Severine had tucked the seeking knife away while Runa wasn’t looking.

  Why would a trader want to remove the magic from their wares? she wondered as Morrie showed them the way to the market.

  Maybe Severine had experience with customers so stupid they would use a sharpened length of steel to find something fragile, and would cause problems for her after the inevitable disaster.

  More likely, it wasn’t the seeking knife Severine had been asking about.

  Runa remembered the glint of rubies on the table. She remembered them glinting from the corner of the bakery, where she’d left the greatsword Severine had stolen from that undead skeleton that it wanted back so badly.

  She remembered what it had felt like, wielding that sword.

  All right. She could see why Severine might want to get the magic out of that one. And why forging it into a different shape wouldn’t help things. Turning a sword like that into a, a shovel or something wouldn’t make it feel any less… evil.

  She shivered.