Two matters weighed upon my mind as I cut my sidelong path around the square, picking my way so as to avoid the stretching shadows of the church. Visits to Shakerton seemed to entail revelation for me.

  I wasn’t sure how Aunt and Uncle were going to react to the news of Eletria’s baby—Eletria hadn’t told them, but she also hadn’t asked me not to. Though we were close in age and had been close growing up, she was not Mirdal nor was she Iredella. She knew my loyalty would only extend so far, and keeping so important a development from Aunt and Uncle was further than I would be willing to go.

  Such a development could wait until the morrow though, until they had time to come to terms with it. I would ask Mirdal to create a similar tea sachet that I could deliver to her. Now that I’d made my way through the forest to Shakerton, I was determined to not let another two years pass before I did so again.

  Something strange had happened the last time I was here. Aveela and I had traveled with a group of riders when we learned the Order would be paying their annual visit. It was too risky for both spirit-speakers to go too near to the Hume—they took particular offense to our speaking to the dead, even more so than other forms of “Lifkin witchcraft” as they called it, by which they meant any inherent magic that could not be explained away by the blessing of their goddess Ilona.

  I knew they would be particularly distressed by the shadowy forms my magic often took, even when it was helping people. I’d frightened enough members of my clan by then, but our people’s understanding of our magic had shifted after the Night of One Thousand Fires. The whispers still followed me.

  Aveela and I had hovered by the line of trees, our figures obscured by the shadows that hung near the pines. I shivered as I watched the herald pace through the farmland, waving their lantern before them as one would cleanse a home by lighting a bundle of dried herbs. The lantern worked like a smoke censer and, according to the Order, it would call forth Ilona’s blessing upon the earth.

  The herald bore the sign of the order, a golden lantern upon his chest. A knight in chain mail with a few shining plates stood off to the side, a white tabard hanging across his chest. An adjudicator. My hands clenched. There had been two of them, that day the soldiers took Iredella. I had followed them through the woods as far as I could, screaming at them to come back.

  The baron’s knights, with a red hammer emblazoned across their chests, had handed her, screaming and struggling, over to a pair of adjudicators, the Order’s elite warriors, protectors of the heralds and, more importantly, the penance.

  Something crossed my vision, that day two years prior. A shimmer. One I hadn’t placed at first. “She lives,” the spirit sighed, and only then did I realize what it was.

  Aveela’s gaze was fixed upon the spirit, but she glanced at me when I gasped.

  “What did you say?” I replied.

  The spirit repeated itself, answering a question that had plagued me for twelve years. My sister lived.

  That moment returned to me, standing in the street in the middle of Shakerton, the church casting its shadow across the square a few blocks behind me, throwing all into darkness. I didn’t know how I would manage it, but one day, I would find her again. Wherever they had taken her.

  But before then, I would satisfy my curiosity and, for the first time, visit a Hume tavern.

  Taverns figured prominently in the fictional accounts and in many of the true histories as well. I preferred the fictions, especially the tales of adventure. They were such a contrast to my daily life, save mine and Gwinny’s trek through the forest earlier and my stand-off against those men attacking Eletria. I hoped, wherever the Hume held Iredella, that she didn’t have to deal with cretins like that.

  I’d learned from Alfonse that the woman I was looking for had a booth off the town square that traveled with her from place to place. She’d been yelled at by the priests one time too many for the proximity of her “tinctures and elixirs” to witchcraft, by which they meant, in this case, the apothecary arts.

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  “Why hellooooo there,” a woman in a bright purple jacket with a tall, starched collar called to me as I approached the booth. She’d painted the exterior a deep blue, a few shades darker than the darkest portions of my hair though a bit less teal, and the interior nearly matched her coat—lavender where her purple ensemble almost glowed.

  I returned her greeting with a shy smile. Here was someone who traveled across the kingdom with her goods, who must have friends all over Breoland. I didn’t want to embarrass myself or, through me, Mirdal, but I also had so many questions.

  I fumbled in my bag as I approached, laying my hand on the healing poultices he’d sent with me for trade but not yet drawing them out. “I’d like to purchase a bottle of lavender oil if you have one.” Mirdal had given me instructions as to the appropriate size and relative cost, though he was not often in Shakerton either.

  “Oooh, but what would someone like yo-ou have need of a love potion for?” The woman snickered to herself.

  Of course Mirdal was making a love potion. He’d been ogling the chief’s son for weeks now, but the wooing of his interest was taking longer than he’d hoped for. Usually he expected the object of his affection to return his attentions within a matter of days, but if they yielded too quickly, he became bored and moved on to pining after someone else. I wondered if the chief’s son had noticed this and was trying a different strategy to try to make the mutual affection stick but, just in case that was his plan, I hadn’t said as much to Mirdal yet.

  “It’s not for me, it’s, umm, for a friend.”

  My denial only served to make her laugh harder. “Hoo, well, I’ve three sizes for you to choose from. Very popular ingredient this one though”—she fanned herself with her hand—“I’ve never found the need for it.”

  For the most part, Lifkin were slighter than Hume, though the woman before me was curvaceous even for Hume standards. Her every movement was aware of this, and her aura extended even further beyond her generous figure. I was more certain than ever of her multiplicity of friends and—I blushed—likely lovers all over the kingdom. She was even more like the figures in my tales of love and adventure than I’d imagined she would be.

  While I fumbled for a response to her assertion, she rummaged in the lower part of her cart. Glass clinked against straw padding and thumped against cork, and she drew three dark brown bottles with an intricate purple design painted across their top and bottom onto the shelf between us. “Which’ll it be?” She placed her plump finger atop the first, smallest bottle, one that would easily fit inside the palm of my hand. “A simmering attraction, a growing infatuation”—she moved her hand to the second of the two which was closer in size to what Mirdal had indicated he needed—“or a deep and abiding passion?” The largest of the bottles was nearly as tall as my forearm was long. Mirdal could make a love potion for everyone in the clan and still have some left over.

  “The middle one, please. Umm, a growing infatuation,” I corrected myself.

  “Ex-cellent,” she announced. “It’s lucky you came when you did,” she added as she began packing the bottle into a small cloth bag to protect it. “I’m heading to Dust on the morrow and am not planning on returning this way in, well, heh, I am not sure when I will be returning this was. These hard times everyone has fallen upon at once are not conducive to my business, and the worse so as they’ve heightened the religious fervor I already found overly prevalent around here.”

  She gestured me closer and pretended to lower her voice, though her whisper was as loud as her speech had been. “If you ask me, it’s almost as though the Order planned such a difficulty so they might increase their influence in the dark places like this but, heh, you won’t hear me say as much within their hearing, especially not those frighteningly powerful heralds or their dashing adjudicators.”

  I glanced nervously over my shoulder as she said this last in case one such member of the Order had suddenly appeared and I would need to run in a different direction.

  The corners of her eyes tightened at my discomfort. “You’re not in some sort of fates-crossed romance are you? A dangerous proposition, that.”

  “Umm, no. No, I’m not.” I produced one of the poultices and placed it upon the counter. Beads of cold sweat had begun to pool down my back. It was fine for her to make these assertions against the Order, but it was immediately apparent to me that she had no sense of the danger such proclamations would have for someone like me.

  Her eyes widened as my hand lifted off the poultice. She reached forward but paused at the last moment, wincing. “You wouldn’t perhaps have two of those, would you? I cannot part with the growing-infatuation-sized bottle for less than two.”

  “Oh, yes, I do actually.” I bit the inside of my lower lip to stop my self-congratulatory smile at retaining one of Mirdal’s poultices. Had I known I would only need two, I might have used one earlier, though Henrietta’s treatment had served me well. The Hume’s coins might still extend beyond my expertise, but equal, valuable trade was something I knew well.

  I placed the second poultice on the counter and she entrusted the carefully tied lavender oil bag to me. “Best of luck with your secret infatuation,” she said by way of farewell, patting my hand and giving me an exaggerated wink.

  “Thank you for your help,” I murmured, hurrying back toward the square. The light was fading as the afternoon passed on. I’d need to hurry to the tavern if I wanted to stop before Alfonse and I headed back to the Second Circle so we could make it there before truenight.