He looked just as tall as he had the first time I had seen him, but a lot more tired. His shoulders were a little stooped, and he had lines around his eyes.
He winked at me.
The Duchess stood in the middle of the dais, on the highest step. “My people…” she began, waving to the crowd, and then I couldn’t hear her anymore, over the cheering.
“Cor,” muttered Spindle, at my right hand. “Lookit all those swells!”
The “swells” were the entire assembled court. There were a lot of nobles. I guess those were the council. Most of them looked old and richly dressed and somewhat disgruntled, but there was one plump woman who grinned at me. I think she was the representative of the various Guilds. Aunt Tabitha was a Guild baker, so technically I was one of her people. I wondered if having a baker save the city would have any political repercussions.
Uncle Albert was in the front row, off to one side, and Aunt Tabitha came out and joined him. Argonel was there too. I’d asked if Jenny could join them, and she was wedged in behind Aunt Tabitha. All of them were grinning hugely, except for Uncle Albert. He met my eyes and nodded just slightly, and I wondered what sort of ceremony they’d had when they gave him a medal for a siege that shouldn’t have happened.
Past all the brightly colored nobles were several ranks of guards in shiny armor and a huge crowd of plain ordinary citizens. My people. They were packed to the walls of the courtyard and out past the carriage drive, standing on each other’s shoulders to try and get a better view. I actually saw Widow Holloway on the shoulders of Brutus the chandler.
That was a lot of people. I wondered if I was going to faint or scream or wet myself or otherwise disgrace myself. It seemed likely.
Blueberry muffins. Think about blueberry muffins. What’s the recipe? Step one, get some fresh blueberries…
“Don’t usually get a crowd like this unless there’s a hanging.”
“Don’t help, Spindle.”
The Golden General chuckled.
“The first time is the worst,” he murmured to me. “The first time I won a great victory and had to get medals, I almost wished I’d lost instead. They get easier after this. You’ll see.”
“I don’t intend to do this again!” I whispered.
“No?” He arched an eyebrow at me. “I expect this won’t be your last set of medals, my dear. Heroism is an unfortunate habit.”
It would not have occurred to me two weeks ago to argue with the Golden General, but I opened my mouth to do just that and then I heard the Duchess say, “Mona, the Wizard of the Bakery, step forward!” and the crowd went completely wild and Lord Ethan put a hand on my shoulder and steered me forward.
I looked up at the Duchess. She smiled down at me, wearing the mask of royalty, and then she winked too, which was rather less royal of her.
She put something over my head. It was a round disk with sheaves of wheat stamped on it. That’s the Silver Sheaf, the highest honor our city gives out, “for exceptional valor.” Then there was another one, which she pinned to my chest, which had a golden lion on it, “for extraordinary service to the crown,” and then there was another one on a pin, which looked like an extremely ugly bronze cow folded into a little square, “for courage under fire.” The crowd roared for each one. I closed my eyes and thought very firmly about muffins.
“It pleases us to recognize the service and exceptional courage of one of our youngest citizens. Henceforth, let it be known that Mona, Wizard of the Bakery, is appointed a Royal Wizard, with all the rank and privileges thereof!”
A Royal Wizard? Like Master Giladaen, and Lord Ethan? I gulped.
“And for you, little friend—” said the Duchess.
For a second I didn’t know who she was talking to, and then, on a very small ribbon, she pulled out a medal that looked like the Silver Sheaf, only about the size of a penny. She placed it around the neck of my gingerbread man.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a cookie look smug.
“Turn around,” murmured the Duchess. “Count to five and then step to your left. We’ll get Spindle up here and then you can both leave. Lucky you!”
It occurred to me that the Duchess probably hated these ceremonies almost as much as I did. At least I only had to do it once, no matter what the Golden General said.
I turned around. The crowd cheered so loudly that it no longer sounded like voices.
And I’ll tell you, for just one minute there, I bought into it a little. My city. Right there. I almost forgot to count.
One…Two…Three…Four…Five…
Spindle came up. He got the lion and the folded-up cow, and a Bronze Sheaf for slightly less extraordinary service to the crown. (He didn’t seem to mind.) The crowd cheered for him, too, and Jenny blew kisses from behind Argonel.
And then the cheering faded and Harold, who was standing on the far side of the stage, beckoned, and we went walked down the dais and through the door and were finally allowed to go home for good.
Thirty-Seven
Things do go back to normal eventually. Joshua comes in sometimes for muffins. Once or twice I’ve been up to the palace to have tea with the Duchess. It’s awkward. Not so much because she’s the Duchess, but because after everything was over, I realized that I was still angry at her for not being braver or smarter or more…more something. When you’re in charge of the whole city, you’re responsible. It shouldn’t be up to a couple of kids and a madwoman on a bone horse to fix the mess you allowed to happen.
But then I go have tea and I look at her and I don’t know if she really could have fixed it. She’s only in charge because she inherited the city, the same way I’ll inherit the bakery. I think maybe she’s not as good at ruling as I am baking. And then I don’t know what to think or who to be mad at any more.
I did hear from Jenny that something’s gone a bit odd in the palace kitchens. Something keeps knocking over the pepper shakers and putting salt in the sugar bowl. One night it tied all the aprons in the place together and hung them on the roasting spit.
I think it might be one of the bad cookies. I thought I pulled all the magic out, but you know, it was a frantic time and maybe one squeaked by. One of these days I’ll go to the kitchens and get to the bottom of things…if the cook asks me nicely.
As for me, I work at the bakery, and I’m glad to do it. Sometimes people come in to see the medals and talk to one of the heroes of the Dead Horse War, but more often they come in for muffins and scones and gingerbread cookies. We still have the best sourdough in the city, even though Bob’s experience in battle has made him extra rambunctious, and we have to feed him on the end of a pole. Sometimes he dissolves the pole. Uncle Albert won’t even go in the cellar now.
My own special gingerbread cookie is with me still. He stands guard on a shelf over the bakery counter and keeps a careful eye on the customers. Oberon and the Spring Green Man may be gone, but still, you never know.
The Golden General took me aside, a few days after the battle. I told him what Master Gildaen had said about him, and he laughed.
“It’s all true,” he said. He didn’t look nearly as much like a young sun god in his office with his boots up on the desk. “I really couldn’t hold off an army by myself. You, though…” His eyes were fixed on my face. “You did, for quite a long time.”
“An hour or two!”
“An hour in a battle is an eternity,” said Lord Ethan. He took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “You need to be trained. Magic like that is too powerful to waste.”
“I don’t want to end up like Molly,” I said. A gov’mint wizard, she’d called Lord Ethan. No good for the likes of you and me.
And yet…and yet…the Golden General. Hero of the realm.
Ethan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Poor woman. Power like that…well. I wasn’t even a raw recruit when she went into battle, and I shudder to think how they mishandled her. We failed her. I want to make sure we don’t fail you.”
I s
tared down at my hands.
“I meant what I said at the ceremony, you know,” he said. When I looked up, he had a rueful smile—the smile you give to a friend or a colleague, not to a little kid. “Heroism is a bad habit. Once you’ve done it, other people start to expect it. If the city’s in danger again, everybody will remember that you saved them last time, and they’ll forget all the nasty exhausting bits where you nearly died and had to sleep for a week and your headache didn’t go away for three days.”
“It was only two days,” I mumbled. The headache in question had hit me like a ton of bricks on the walk off the battlefield. Joshua actually carried me to bed. Apparently that’s normal with magic when you really, really overdo it.
“Well, you’re young. If I tried magic like that now, I’d have to hope it killed me, because recuperating from it would be worse.”
I snorted.
“Come up to the palace when you can,” he said kindly. “We’ll give you some training. You might find it useful. We’re not going to drag you off. If we tried, your Aunt would have something to say, and lord, I’d much rather face the Carex!” He shuddered theatrically, and I had to laugh, but it didn’t last for long.
“The Duchess…” I began, without knowing how I even wanted to finish the sentence.
“Yes?”
“If she’d just stopped Oberon,” I cried. I felt like something had building in my chest since Knackering Molly died. I wanted to scream or weep or rage or…something. Something to make sense of it all. “Why didn’t she stop it? Why didn’t anyone stop it?”
His eyes flicked to the door. I think he was making sure that it was closed and no one was listening. It occurred to me that what I had just said might be treason and of course I had said it to the man in charge of the army. Maybe his next words were going to be to tell me to shut up or be thrown in the dungeon.
Instead he said, “I know.”
I put my head in my hands and stared at the floor. The carpet had a pattern of interlocking lightning bolts.
The Golden General sighed. “I’ve been exactly where you are,” he said. “But what can we do? You can’t put the military in charge of the city. We’re useful servants but terrible masters. And if I took it in my head to declare myself a wizard-emperor, like Elgar dreamed of doing…well, I hope like hell someone would stop me.”
We met each other’s eyes, and then we both looked away.
After a minute, I said, “I never wanted to be a hero.”
His face was solemn. “Nobody ever does.”
* * *
Probably I will go up to the palace to learn, a least a few things. There’s a lot of concepts in Spiraling Shadows I still don’t understand. And the General was right about one thing. Nobody was going to forget who saved them. You never know when somebody’s going to need you to defend the city. But learning is far as I’m willing to go. Molly was right too. People in power can crush you like a bug. I don’t want to be crushed and I also don’t want to be in the position to crush anyone else.
At the moment, though, all I want to do is make muffins and bread and learn to be the best baker in the city. Magic is exhausting.
So if you ever happen to be passing down Market Street, before you get into the Rat’s Elbow, take the turn onto Wallfish Street, and go down about half a block. You’ll find yourself at the very best bakery in the city.
And if I’m in a good mood, and you ask nicely, I might even make the gingerbread men get up and dance.
Acknowledgments
Mona’s story took longer to get into book form than almost any other project I’ve ever worked on. I began it at the tail-end of 2007. I didn’t know how to bake (and still don’t) but I bought a Kitchenaid mixer and began grimly following recipes, not so much because I wanted to become a baker as because I needed to understand how dough felt and what it did when you shoved your fingers into it.
The route “that bread wizard book” took to publication went from pillar to post and back again. It was bought, edited, re-edited, dropped, abandoned, handed off to other editors, sold back to me, pitched again by my unfailingly optimistic agent, and editor after editor could not figure it out. Many of them liked it, but what would they do with it? It needed to be darker. No, darker. No, wait, too dark! Mona was too old. Mona was too young. Mona was the correct age, but now sounded too old, and need to be made sweeter. Did I really need to start with the dead body? Could we maybe ease into the dead body situation?
Ultimately the problem was that it was a fairly dark children’s book and I, under the name Ursula Vernon, was a writer of whimsical upbeat books. If a publisher bought it, they would need me to write about four other books first before they could slip it into the line-up, or else my brand would be in limbo. (Mind you, I have always felt that kids like much darker books than adults are comfortable handing them, but I also understand that parents and librarians are the ones who control the book buying, and a weird little anti-establishment book with carnivorous sourdough and armies of dead horses was too hard a sell.)
Eventually it just became easier to publish it myself, as T. Kingfisher, whose brand is mostly “things I felt like writing.” Minor Mage, my first kid’s book that was also too dark to really be a kid’s book, found an enthusiastic audience. I hope that A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking does as well.
Ironically I am publishing this in the midst of COVID-19, when we all started making sourdough at home and then started protesting police brutality. Suddenly a twelve year old book was actually relevant. Go figure.
Thanks go as always to the lovely guys at Argyll for putting out the print volume, to my awesome proofreaders Jes and Cassie, and my long suffering editor, KB. To Shepherd for insisting that it was “good, really” even if they did try to change “monarch” into “parasite on the working class” in the edits. And, as always, to my beloved Kevin, who reads things when I am panicking and convinced everything is awful. You are all wonderful and I love you like gingerbread loves spice.
* * *
T. Kingfisher,
North Carolina
June 2020
About the Author
T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon, an author from North Carolina. In another life, she writes children's books and weird comics. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy and the Eisner, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, Nebula, Alfie, WSFA, Coyotl and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections.
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This is the name she uses when writing things for grown-ups. Her work includes horror, epic fantasy, fairy-tale retellings and odd little stories about elves and goblins.
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When she is not writing, she is probably out in the garden, trying to make eye contact with butterflies.
Also by T. Kingfisher
As T. Kingfisher
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Paladin’s Grace
Swordheart
Clockwork Boys
The Wonder Engine
Minor Mage
Nine Goblins
Toad Words & Other Stories
The Seventh Bride
The Raven & The Reindeer
Bryony & Roses
Jackalope Wives & Other Stories
Summer in Orcus
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From Saga:
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The Twisted Ones
The Hollow Places
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As Ursula Vernon
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From Sofawolf Press:
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Black Dogs Duology
House of Diamond
Mountain of Iron
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Digger
It Made Sense At The Time
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For kids:
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Dragonbreath Series
Hamster Princess Series
Castle Hangnail
ensive Baking
A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking Page 25