Baking had been a way to pay back Pothollow for taking her in. Then a challenge.

  Now, it was… fun.

  The honey loaves were a near-immediate success, if you didn’t count the sticky disasters of her first few attempts. But there wasn’t much that could go permanently wrong when you used that much honey. Even when the dough itself turned out flat, or lopsided, or strangely liquid. (Bread stew, Runa called that one, to Severine’s horror and Nobody In Particular’s bubbling despair.)

  Fresh milk and eggs weren’t as easy to come by in Pothollow as they had been in Runa’s brief excursions in the much larger city of Sollus Gate. The chickens and cattle were closer, but you still had to wait for them to produce the stuff. Runa had a lot to learn about living in a small village at the edge of nowhere on one side, and the mother of all curses on the other. But with a little bartering, begging, and patience, she had enough to keep experimenting until the rolls were perfect.

  And that was only the beginning.

  Slowly, day by day, novelty turned into routine, and routine turned into life.

  She woke early each day, to the strange and not entirely unpleasant sensation of not being alone in the house. Her morning’s work waited for her: doughs ready to be punched down and shaped to rise again. Wood to chop for the fire.

  Severine upstairs.

  Bloodburster in the corner, murmuring thin whispers about death.

  The volcano sprite in the oven, murmuring crispy whispers about bread.

  Nobody In Particular lurked on the coals, and the first business of each day was to exchange a glance of wary respect with it. It scuttled out of the way as she built up the fire, and then squeezed itself into the heart.

  How had it managed, before it trusted her enough to show itself? Let alone when there was nobody living in the bakery. Volcano sprites lived in the hearts of volcanoes. Even the white-gold embers in the heart of her baking oven couldn’t compete with that sort of heat.

  But it wasn’t complaining. It looked so relaxed, stretching out in the flickering flames, that she had to resist the urge to pat it on the head.

  It would probably burn her, she decided. At least, it would try.

  The volcano sprite had very firm ideas about what the bakery should produce. That much should have been clear to Runa from the start. Just in case she hadn’t caught on, though, it took advantage of no longer needing to hide itself away to make its thoughts clearly known. Including rolling entire jars of flour away when it thought Runa was planning the ‘wrong’ bake.

  When Runa was lucky, the volcano sprite’s ‘right’ bake coincided with what her neighbors had ordered.

  When she wasn’t…

  “No.” She slammed the recipe book shut and left it on the chair. The loaves for the tavern were cooling in the racks along the wall. She checked them, and by the time she looked back around, the book was open again to the same page. “I said no. It isn’t happening.”

  Wyd had fixed her up with a cart for lugging deliveries around. The loaves were cool enough, so she began to load it up.

  By the time she got to the third armload, someone had burnt little splay-toed pawprints into the tops of the loaves.

  “You’ve already had your share,” Runa grumbled. “And I told you. Not happening.”

  The recipe book appeared on top of the carefully stacked cartload of loaves, smoking slightly, still open to the same page Nobody had caught her frowning over.

  Runa sighed. If the sprite had fixed on some recipe that she didn’t like the look of, that would be one thing. But it must have noticed she kept coming back to this page. And it wanted her to do more than read it.

  Dragon crescent moons.

  She rubbed her skull between her horns. “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to tell you. It won’t change anything.”

  “Blop!”

  “This is why the last guy left, huh?”

  The creak of floorboards overhead told her that Severine was up. For someone who’d apparently spent her adult life lurking in ponds waiting to chuck swords at people, she sure enjoyed her lie-ins.

  The two were probably connected.

  But she needed to get this one-sided conversation out of the way before her live-in… whatever they were… came down the ladder.

  Because there was a reason she had never tried the recipe for dragon crescent moons.

  She frowned and dug her knuckles into the space between her horns.

  The volcano sprite had trusted her with the secret of its existence. And it was clear that it wasn’t going to drop the dragon crescent thing.

  Maybe she could trust it, too.

  “Ugh,” she grumbled.

  People didn’t tend to look at her and expect her to be able to read. It was as though the general population had an inverse calculator in their heads, where the bigger someone was, the less they used their brains. Presumably the opposite was also true, and the shorter someone was, the more they were to be suspected of devious mental acrobatics. Babies, most of all.

  Runa always took a quiet pride—maybe more a quiet smugness—in proving that she could, in fact, read whatever extortionate alteration to her contracts people tried to slip past her.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Admitting she’d found something she couldn’t read made her want to grind her tusks to stubs.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to bake dragon moons,” she said, staring solidly at the corner and not even slightly in the direction of the faint smell of burning behind the counter. “I can’t. That’s all. I don’t know how.”

  It stared at her, eyes bulging with disappointment, then turned and scuttled away.

  The trapdoor swung open. “Morning!” Severine announced, as though it came as a surprise. “Ready for our daily stroll into the jaws of death?”

  “Say that where Junilla can hear you,” Runa dared her with a grin.

  “No thanks. She already poisoned me once.” Severine stretched, and one of her arms sneaked out apparently of its own accord and snagged a honey roll.

  “Those are for paying customers,” Runa told her.

  Severine finished stuffing it in her mouth before she answered. “What, our fiery friend is allowed to steal their share of each batch, but I’m not?”

  “Our fiery friend actually helps.”

  “The last time I tried to help, you both almost cried. Really, you should consider this my fee for not trying harder to help.”

  Clink.

  The sound came from the cellar steps. Severine frowned. “What’s that?”

  Clink.

  “No idea,” Runa admitted.

  Clink.

  Severine’s eyes flicked to the cellar trapdoor, which was lying open.

  “You know aurora glass?” Severine asked in a cheerful, brittle voice.

  “What?”

  Clink.

  “I’ve seen people use it for armor.”

  Clink.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Clink.

  “If a skeleton wore aurora glass boots, and was creeping up your stairs…” Her fingers edged towards her packroll.

  Clink.

  Runa watched the trapdoor. Her rolling pin was close enough to grab.

  So was Bloodburster. It always was.

  “You think the Blood Lord had a costume change, climbed up into the sky, and tore the portal back open with its bare hands?”

  Clink.

  “Maybe?”

  Clink.

  They both watched as a ceramic jar appeared on the top step. It rolled to the wall, where it stopped with another clink. Nobody In Particular poked its head up. “Blop!”

  “See?” Runa pointed. “It’s not a monster. It’s somebody helping.”

  “Weren’t you complaining yesterday about it always messing with the ingredients?”

  “Blop!”

  The fire sprite nudged the jar until it rolled against Runa’s foot. She bent to pick it up, and prized the lid off the small pot. It was full of creamy butter.

  “Butter isn’t the problem,” she told the sprite, and wedged the lid back on.

  “Problem?”

  She’d barely managed to tell the sprite about it. The idea of telling Severine made her come out in hives. “No problem. Everything’s fine. We going to deliver these loaves, or what?”

  “You know, I had the best idea while I was lazing in bed this morning, waiting for the perfect moment to come down and steal your food,” Severine said seriously. “What if, instead of you wearing out your feet… you got everyone who wants to buy bread off you to come to the shop? Not just the people who come by and steal stuff off the windowsill. I’m just saying. I’ve been to bakeries before. I know how they work.”

  “Mm.”

  “And I could sleep in longer without worrying about missing out on the best rolls.”

  “Missing out on stealing them, you mean.”

  “I help you clean,” Severine pointed out.

  “And you’re almost as bad at it as I am.” Runa grinned. “Anyone’d think neither of us had lived in a house with four walls before.”

  “Everyone knows all the best houses have round walls.” Severine tossed her hair over one shoulder, but something in the angle of her shoulders drew Runa’s attention. She frowned.

  “You were really worried that was the skeleton back again, weren’t you?”

  “Not worried. Never worried. Of course not.” Severine swallowed, and her shoulders slumped. “Just, you know. It would be bad if it was.”

  “It fell a hundred feet onto solid rock. I don’t care how much magic was holding it together, after a fall like that it’ll spend the next fifty years looking through the back of its skull. Or looking for its skull.”

  Severine didn’t look reassured.

  “You think it would track you all this way? Why?”

  “It wanted the sword,” she said in an undertone.

  “Enough to traverse the Cauldron? It must really want it.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” There was an ironic glint in Severine’s response, and Runa glanced at Bloodburster. The pitted blade. The worn grip.

  She remembered the pins and needles that had shot through her arm when she held it.

  The soft whispers she barely noticed anymore until she left the bakery and couldn’t hear them. Death. Bring death. Bring death.

  It was fine. The plan was still working. She didn’t pick the sword up, and Severine hadn’t gone all silver-eyed and weird. She could handle a few whispers.

  “You said the blades are all hunting for their fates, right? Does that go the other way, too?”

  Severine shot her a sidelong glance. “No. There’s a reason I have to lurk in ponds, ambushing people. Your average fated wielder is a lot less invested in the relationship than their sword is.”

  “No need to worry, then, right?”

  “Right.” Severine sounded as though she was trying to convince herself. “I’m jumping at shadows.”

  “Blop!”

  Someone rapped at the door, and Tam popped his head around. “Runa! You still in there? Morning, Severine.”

  Runa leaned her elbows on the counter. “You look like you’ve got good news. What is it? The Screaming Anguish snuck up this side of the Cauldron while we were asleep?”

  “Ha, ha. Better than that. A trade caravan from Billswater has arrived down in Dawdledale. Junilla can restock her cellars. You too, Runa. All those things you couldn’t buy from the local stores.”

  And she could actually pay for it herself this time.

  Half of Pothollow was heading down the volcano to the market. Including the pig.

  “Don’t worry,” Widow Tremblewood reassured Runa. “I’m not getting rid of him after only just getting him back. We’re going to go visit your lady friends, aren’t we?”

  “I’m not sure I needed to know that,” Severine murmured.

  Compared to the bustle of Sollus Gate, the market square in Dawdledale was almost homey. The traders had a dozen or so wagons between them, and all of them made much of the fact that they were only passing through Dawdledale on the way to bigger, busier towns that it just so happened they liked so much less than small homey towns like this, and they certainly couldn’t part with any of the goods they had on board meant for those bigger, busier towns, but if you’d like to take a look while you were here, perhaps they could come to an arrangement…

  Back in Sollus’ Gate, they’d all be saying they were holding this weapon or that enchanted porridge pot for some other customer, but if you pinned their hand to the counter with gold, well, they’d have to let you take it then, wouldn’t they? Here, the stallholders sold woven fabrics, not armor, and rich wines instead of healing potions, but the gleam in their eyes was the same.

  Tam bustled ahead, heading for what looked and smelled like a spice trader, but Runa lingered by a clothing stall. The owner was digging through her wagon, which helped. It gave her a moment to see what she had without being interrogated about it.

  “Thinking about a new wardrobe?” Severine asked at her elbow.

  Or maybe she would just be interrogated from another direction.

  “Any wardrobe at all would be an improvement.” The villagers had done their best, but none of their castoffs fit a half-troll’s broad shoulders. “Be nice to go a bit longer between washdays.”

  “You won’t hear me argue with that.”

  Runa’s stomach tightened. Did she stink that badly? It was one thing to go without bathing out in the Cauldron, where any given pond was probably home to half a dozen toe-eating eels. Living in town was different.

  Living with someone?

  She glanced sideways. Severine was staring at the rolls of fabric lined up behind the market stall with an excited light in her eyes. As Runa watched, she toyed with the frayed cuff of one sleeve.

  Or maybe Severine felt as self-conscious about her own travel-worn clothes as Runa felt about hers.

  Still entirely possible that she stank, of course. Pothollow was rich in many things, but troll-sized bathtubs weren’t among them. There was only so much you could do with a bowl of warm water and a soapy rag.

  “Be with you in a minute! Annek, put the silkweave back. That’s for Torpor Peak.”

  Runa froze.