by Claire Luana
“What in the heavens?” Guildmistress Greer said from across the room, swooping towards them. “Wren, what happened?” She surveyed the broken dishes on the floor. She lifted the hem of her damask skirt away from the mess, her lip curling in distaste.
Marina closed her mouth and donned an innocent expression as the Guildmistress turned the full weight of her withering glare on the girl. Lennon looked away, guilt playing across his features like sunlight on a lake.
“Marina, you wretched girl, this has your handwriting all over it,” the Guildmistress thundered, gesturing across the room to a serving girl in a “get-over-here-and-clean-this-up” motion.
“But, Guildmistress—” Marina said, her green eyes wide and wounded behind her thick frames.
“Don’t you ‘but, Guildmistress’ me,” Greer said. “I see you. This isn’t the schoolyard anymore. This is your Guild, your place of business, and Wren is your business partner. Act like it, or your father will hear of it. And I suspect, he won’t be as forgiving as I.”
A grim smile grew on Wren’s face as Marina blanched at the dressing down. Guildmistress Greer was not whom Wren had expected based on their previous frosty interaction.
“Come with me, Wren.” The Guildmistress motioned with a curt nod of her head. “We’ll see what we can do about getting those stains out before they set.”
Greer led Wren down a back hallway.
“Marigold, follow us, please,” Greer said to a mousy brunette hurrying past.
“Me?” The girl squeaked and turned as Greer continued down the hallway.
“Is there another Marigold I could be talking to?” Greer said over her shoulder, and Wren suppressed a smile. She suddenly understood why the guild members snapped to attention when Greer was nearby.
After a few more twists and turns, Greer led Wren and Marigold into a bright sundrenched sitting room. The room was furnished in white and gray, accented with gold. A pair of cushy armchairs flanked the marble fireplace, and the white rug on the floor before them looked plush enough to bury her toes into. Blooming bouquets of huge-headed dahlias burst in vibrant explosions of color on every flat surface.
“Are these your chambers?” Wren asked, her eyes wide. She had never seen something quite so beautiful, so tastefully manicured. They made her own wide chambers look downright shabby.
“Yes, I’ve been here for almost twenty years,” Greer said, retrieving a basket from the washroom. “Since before Kasper became a grandmaster.” When she said his name, she paused for a moment before shaking her head, as if clearing a memory. “Come on, off with it.”
“What?”
“Your dress! Take it off. Marigold can’t very well clean it with you still in it.”
Wren exchanged a look with Marigold, who hovered awkwardly by the door. Marigold’s look seemed to say, there’s no resisting, so you better get on with it.
The last thing Wren wanted was to undress in front of these two strangers, but she pushed aside her anxiety and unzipped her dress, stepping out of it so she stood only in her thin slip.
“Don’t drop it on the rug,” Greer said, holding the basket out.
Wren deposited the garment into the basket. Marigold darted forward and grabbed it, practically fleeing the room.
Goosebumps pebbled Wren’s skin as the door swung shut, leaving the two of them alone. She couldn’t decide where to put her hands, and so they twitched aimlessly about her, clasping and unclasping. She itched for pockets to thrust them into.
Greer seemed to be studying her, her stately form still and poised.
“I’m so sorry about your brother,” Wren said when the silence stretched too thin. “I… didn’t kill him.” Best to just get it out there.
“I know, dear. I know,” Greer said, her sudden kindness reminding Wren of Kasper. A small smile appeared on her creaseless face. “I’m sorry about the other day. My rudeness. I was in shock.”
“I understand,” Wren said. “It’s awful what happened.”
“Yes, it is. Kasper was a good man, and a good head of this Guild. He was so excited to have found another Gifted, you know. Excited about you.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “You… know… about that?” Her throat didn’t burn, so clearly Greer was on the approved list.
“Come with me,” Greer said, motioning with an outstretched hand, her nails carefully painted a red as bright as her dahlias. “Let’s find you something to wear while I tell you the tale.”
Greer led Wren through a bedroom filled with a mountain of a snowy comforter surrounded by another field of dahlias into a closet the size of the cabin Wren had grown up in as a child.
“Any of my things will be swimming on you, you’re so thin,” Greer said, tiptoeing her fingers across one of the wall-length racks of dresses, “but a belt can work wonders. Let me see…”
Greer pawed through her domain while Wren turned in a circle, gaping at what she saw. Racks of dresses; shelves of shoes; hooks full of glittering necklaces, scarves, and hats. A gold-trimmed vanity table sat against the far wall, its surface practically buried beneath a rainbow of bottles, perfumes, and powders.
“I’ve always loved fine things,” Greer said, only a hint of contrition in her voice. “Ever since Carter started courting me in my teens. He spoiled me,” she said, her eyes faraway for a moment. “But we weren’t speaking of me. We were speaking of you, and the Gifted. Kasper and I were twins, you know. Born three minutes apart. He was the older, and he never let me forget it. That was the only formative moment of his life that I missed.”
“His birth?” Wren asked. “You can’t hardly be blamed for that.”
“I think I was supposed to be born first. I always told Kasper as much. Ah!” Greer said, triumphantly pulling a teal dress with tiny red and white dots from the rack. “This one was a gift and is much too small for me. Try it on.”
Wren stepped into the dress as Greer continued.
“Kasper and I did everything together as children. We were much closer than we were with our younger sister, Olivia’s grandmother. She was ten years younger than us, a surprise addition. I was there when Kasper first discovered his Gift. I ate most of his early work, which caught up with me.” She patted her bottom with a grimace.
The dress was loose on Wren, but Greer cinched it with a wide leather belt, and the look wasn’t half-bad.
Greer continued her tale. “We explored his Gift together, discovered what it meant. After Kasper became guildmaster, we uncovered that other guilds had similar Gifted, but with different talents. We still don’t know who all the Gifted are, or what they can do. The guilds guard their secrets jealously.”
“Did you and Kasper discover why the Gifting occurs?” Why me? she thought. Why am I different?
“No. We’ve never discovered why a particular person is Gifted while another is not,” she said sharply. “It frustrated Kasper to no end. He was even talking about trying to work together with other guilds, pool knowledge and resources.” She shook her head.
“You don’t think that was a good idea?”
“Kasper was always too trusting,” Greer said. “If there are two constants in this life, it’s men and their power. If they don’t have it, they want it; if they have it, they want more of it. Like roosters in the henyard. I didn’t think it was safe to trust anyone. And though it gives me no comfort to say it, perhaps I was right. Because now he’s dead.”
Wren had to agree with the Guildmistress. But it was an interesting piece of information, if Kasper was indeed trying to cooperate with another guild. Perhaps his efforts to band together had gotten him killed. “What guild was Kasper cooperating with?”
Guildmistress Greer looked at her shrewdly, and Wren realized she had gone too far.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Greer said, suddenly shepherding her towards the door. “The king’s inspectors will uncover who was to blame for this horrible crime. No need to worry about things you don’t fully understand.”
Wren chaffe
d at the dismissal but knew not to push the Guildmistress’s affability. “Thank you for your assistance with my dress. And Marina,” she added.
“It was my pleasure. The girl’s only here because Grandmaster Beckett is her father. She misses no chance to make Olivia’s life miserable, so I don’t miss an opportunity to return the favor.” Greer grinned a wolfish smile, and Wren found herself smiling back.
Chapter 11
Wren tugged at the borrowed dress as she made her way to the teaching kitchen. Her stomach growled. She hadn’t been able to eat any of her breakfast, thanks to Marina’s cruelty.
She found Hale already waiting when she entered the kitchen.
“There’s my little hummingbird!” Hale exclaimed when she entered, clapping his hands. “I hear you, Marina, and your breakfast had a disagreement this morning.”
Wren’s face reddened. “She did most of the disagreeing.”
“Don’t let her bother you,” Hale said. “She’s jealous.”
“Jealous? Of a suspected murderer?”
“She wanted Sable to sponsor her, get her away from dear old daddy. He’s strict—and a bit of a self-righteous ass,” Hale said.
“But… he’s her father,” Wren said. To have a father who cared… even if he was strict… Marina was luckier than many.
“Right. Sable didn’t want any part of that family drama.”
Wren shook her head. “I won’t let her pull me in. I don’t know what you saw in her.” Wren tossed this last bit out like a fishing line, hoping Hale would take the bait. Was there anything still between him and Marina? Her interest was purely academic, of course.
“It was a fleeting madness,” he said. “There was a lot of eyelash-batting and hair-flipping. In the end, she wasn’t really my type.”
“Your type?” Wren scoffed. “You mean female?”
“Ouch, this bird has talons,” he said, pressing a hand to his broad chest in mock affront. He drew closer to her with a mischievous grin, threatening to overwhelm her with his size, his bright smile, his sculpture-fine features. “It’s all right, Wren. I like it when they bite.” He feinted towards her shoulders with fingers crooked like claws, quickly, playfully.
Her heart skittered in her chest, and she drew in a breath, shying away from him. Steady, Wren. The man was incorrigible. He was flirting with her just because he could. Because he enjoyed the effect he had on women. “Are we going to cook today, or are you going to waste the whole morning with sad attempts to stroke your male ego?”
“Oh, that’s not the part I’m attempting to get stroked—”
“Hale!” she shrieked, punching him in the shoulder with all her might. “Enough!”
He rocked back on his stool and guffawed with great booming laughs.
Wren tried to hold the disapproving mask on her features, but it slipped with a twitch of her lips. She started laughing too, surprised at how good it felt.
After a minute, Hale settled down, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “You’re too easy to mess with.”
“And do you mess with Sable like that?”
“Sable…” He rubbed his jaw, seeming to be momentarily lost for words. He shook his head. “All right, Wren. You win. We cook.”
And with that flipped switch, Hale began teaching her how to use her Gift.
“Lesson number one. It’s a matter of intuition,” he said. “Which you know, because you already used your Gift without meaning to. But it’s important to learn what it feels like when you infuse a batch with magic. As far as we can tell, our Gifts are innate, and we can’t change them. Meaning, if your Gift is producing good luck, that’s pretty much it. You can learn to control the dose, the strength, how long the luck lasts, but you can’t create a confection that heals wounds or helps a man lift a cart with his bare hands.”
“Makes sense,” Wren said, though she wasn’t sure if it did.
“That brings us to lesson number two. Magic comes with a price. When you infuse a confection with luck, that luck has to come from somewhere. It comes from you. Your natural store of magic is depleted, transmuted into the food.”
Wren’s mouth dropped open as her mind reeled. “So… if I’ve been infusing things without knowing it, I’ve been wasting my luck?”
“Wasting it, gifting it, it’s a matter of interpretation. Who’s to say if it’s a waste?”
“I am! Trust me, whoever ate those confections, I needed that luck more than they did.” The tenor of her life came into sudden focus. Escaping one cruel captor only to find another. Her father’s drunken rages. Losing Hugo. Brother Brax at the Sower’s orphanage. Life on the street—finding Ansel and his unruly gang of orphans, only to feel the sting of his betrayal. Mistreatment, misfortune, misery. Every skinned knuckle, every rent seam, every cup of coffee spilled onto herself. They shone in stark relief. “Son of a spicer,” she cursed. “Everything makes so much sense.”
Hale tried to hide the smile creeping onto his face.
“You think this is funny?” Wren said. “My whole life has been a nightmare because I’ve been giving away my luck to gods-know-who!”
Hale shook his head. “Best we can tell, the Gifting starts in puberty. Whatever woes you suffered before then, you can blame on the gods. Or your parents. Or whomever.”
Wren calmed down slightly. That’s true. She hadn’t been Infusing things before she joined Master Oldrick, had she. So, she wouldn’t have been wasting magic back then. Another thought struck her with horror. “Will I run out? Have I wasted it all?”
“No,” Hale said. “As far as we figure it, the depletion is temporary. But if you make an especially strong batch, it will take a bit longer for it to build back up.”
The breath left her in a woosh, and she slumped back. So as long as she started hoarding her luck, things would look up. That was promising.
“What’s Sable’s Gift?” she asked, watching Hale for a reaction to her mention of their sponsor. She couldn’t quite get the measure of Hale’s relationship with Sable, and it was bothering her.
“Bad luck,” Hale said, his expression neutral. “She cooks a lot. Likes to get rid of it.”
“That could be helpful. Can we give some to Willings? Or Callidus?” Wren said, only half joking.
“Guildmembers are forbidden from imbibing infused food or drink without the king’s permission. It’s part of the Accord the guilds and the crown reached long ago. But that doesn’t stop us from sneaking a bite now and then.” He winked.
“So we’re supposed to hand all this power over to the king? Trust he’ll use it wisely, for the good of Alesia?”
“Yes.” Hale shrugged. “Isn’t that what being governed is? Giving power and trusting that it will be used for the good of the people?”
Wren crossed her arms. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Hale mirrored her posture. “Enlighten me, my wise owl.”
Wren rolled her eyes, but memories flared to life and refused to be silent. “I grew up in a logging town in the Cascadian foothills. The forest belonged to the king. The town stores belonged to the king. The blooming shack we lived in belonged to the king. He paid a copper crown for a week of work, and our rent was more than that. We were supposed to pay for wood to heat our hearth. Wood! It was all around us, more wood than a thousand kings could ever need. We had to pay for everything on credit and every month we sank deeper into debt. My father. My brother… It was slavery. It was worse than slavery. At least as a slave, you don’t pay to work. So tell me, Hale, how that served the good of the people?”
His features were kind, his eyes soft like warm honey. He reached out to take her hand in his own and she yanked hers back, standing and spinning away from him, fighting the sudden sting of tears. Stupid, stupid, Wren. Why had she shared that? Why had she felt compelled? The past was best kept in the past, that girl kept locked away. Her father had deserved everything he had gotten, and more beyond. Visions of blood and violence swam up to meet her, and she shoved them b
ack down, tamped down earth and night and iron over those memories.
“Wren.” Her name was soft on Hale’s lips, and she gave herself one final shake before stilling her face and turning.
“Sorry. I don’t usually don’t dwell on the past.”
“I’m sorry your family went through that. I know the system’s not perfect…”
“Forget it,” she said. “Let’s just talk confections. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Hale said, with more than a little hesitation. “I thought we could make caramels today.”
“Caramels?” Wren asked.
“You’re familiar with them, I presume?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s been a while, but I know how to make them.”
“They’re simple. I thought they would be a good confection to start with.”
Wren and Hale gathered the ingredients from the icebox and the cupboards. They laid out the tools they would need—a heavy-bottomed steel pot, a large square baking tray, the confection thermometer, measuring cups, parchment paper, and the guitar cutter that would slice the caramel into perfectly even squares.
Hale rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and tossed Wren a thick linen apron, donning one himself.
Hale worked as the master confectioner with Wren as his assistant, directing her to measure the ingredients they needed: sugar, water, heavy cream, butter. So simple.
“The magic, as best we figure it, is a combination of mind and body. It comes from your movements—the stirring, the pouring, the cutting or drizzling. But the movements themselves aren’t enough. It’s almost like meditation. You’ve felt it before, I’m sure, when you get in the zone of work. Your mind and body are humming together, your hands working as if they need no direction from your mind. It’s a place of feeling, of instinct and intuition, of transcendence.”