A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

  “Word of advice,” she hissed, leaning close in. I tried not to flinch, expecting her breath to stink as bad as the rest of her, but it was unexpectedly sweet, like mint. “Walk careful, bread girl. Little people like us, we’re not safe these days. Watch your back.”

  “Wh-what?”

  Her eyes stabbed into mine. “Look out for the Spring Green Man.”

  I blinked.

  The who?

  Molly leaned back and put her heels into Nag, and he turned as neatly as a parade mount and clattered back into Rat’s Elbow. It didn’t occur to me until after she’d gone that I should run after her, maybe ask her what she’d heard, or who the Spring Green Man was supposed to be, or even what that meant.

  But I was only a block from the bakery, and it had been a long, long, long day. Chasing a madwoman on a dead horse into the bad part of town just didn’t seem worth the effort right now, particularly since her Spring Green Man was probably just another figment of her imagination, like the truth-sucking fleas.

  Still, the name made me uneasy somehow, in a way that the fleas never did.

  “Stupid,” I muttered to myself, folding my arms tight and hurrying toward the bakery. “Stupid name. Stupid Inquisitor. Stupid long day.”

  Eight

  When I walked in the door, Aunt Tabitha made all the proper noises and sat me down with a mug of hot tea and made me tell the story three times, and then snapped at Uncle Albert to stop pestering me about it, couldn’t he see I was exhausted (the only thing he’d said all afternoon was “Good heavens!”) and sent me home.

  The girl was gone out of the bakery, anyway. Presumably the body wagon had come and taken her. I didn’t ask.

  I did ask if Aunt Tabitha wanted me to set the bread out to rise overnight, but she said that she’d been running the bakery for twenty years and she could manage just this once, and that I should get some sleep.

  So I went back to my room. The rain had come back in spurts and spatters, and the cobblestones gleamed wetly. They were lighting the streetlights already, but the lamplighter hadn’t gotten this far yet, so the street was dark and gloomy. That didn’t matter. It was only six doors down, barely a block. I could have walked it blindfolded.

  You’d think after a day like that I would have been jumpy and paranoid, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just watching my feet go one in front of the other.

  And then somebody grabbed me from out of the dark.

  * * *

  “Where is she?” a voice snarled in my ear, and I was wrenched off the street and into the shadows of the alleyway.

  Sweet lady of angels, is this day never going to end?

  I should probably have been scared. No, I should definitely have been scared.

  Mostly, though, I was just too tired. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to my warm little room over the glassblower’s shop, and lie down in the bed and pull the quilt over my head and go to sleep and wake up stupidly early and go make cinnamon rolls and apple pull-aparts and gingerbread men.

  “Where’s who?”

  “Tibbie!” said the voice in my ear, sounding frustrated and also surprisingly high-pitched. “What did you do with her?”

  “Who’s Tibbie?” I tried wiggling. There was an arm around my neck, and it was making it hard to breathe, but my attacker seemed to be shorter than I was and wasn’t getting a very good angle. “Let me go!”

  “Not until you tell me where Tibbie is!”

  “I don’t know who that is!” I grabbed for the arm around my neck.

  “Stop it! I’m warning you!” The voice was definitely shrill, and I was slapped against the side of the building. Bricks scraped at my hands.

  “Let me go!”

  I got my fingers around the arm, bent forward as far as I could, and pulled. It wouldn’t have worked in most cases, but I had two things going for me.

  One, I was a baker, and you don’t punch dough every day for two years without developing some pretty hefty forearms. I may not be very big, but I’ll bet you a tray of cinnamon buns that I can out-arm wrestle any girl my age.

  Two, my attacker was a ten-year-old boy.

  I wrenched away, turned and faced him. He wasn’t big. My neck was probably about the highest he could reach. He was wiry, but he looked skinny and underfed, like a stray dog. His eyes were way too big for his face, and the grime on his face was marred by tear tracks.

  “Where is she?” he demanded again, sounding furious and miserable. He bounced on the balls of his feet, apparently not sure if he should launch himself at me again or run away.

  “Where’s who?”

  “Tibbie!” he said, practically yelling. “My sister!”

  “Why do you think I know?”

  “She was in your bakery!”

  I closed my mouth with a snap.

  Uh-oh.

  I leaned against the wall next to him. The mad was gone. I was just…so…tired.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said finally, pinching the bridge of my nose. “When did she go into the bakery?”

  “Last night,” said the boy, snuffling and wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “She went in last night, but she didn’t come out again. What did you do with her?”

  That was a question I wasn’t willing to answer just yet. “Why did she go into the bakery?”

  “It was cold. We were hungry. There’s good food in there, sometimes.” He glared at me, daring me to say anything. “We go in back sometimes, take a few buns. Not stuff. We don’t nick stuff.”

  “Um. Thank you.” The parish priest would probably argue that stealing was stealing, whether it was day-old buns or Aunt Tabitha’s good knives, but the priest wasn’t here. I could understand the difference just fine. Food was one thing. Good knives were hard to replace. I wondered how long they’d been breaking into the bakery, and how none of us had noticed.

  “We didn’t touch nothin’,” he said, as if reading my mind. “We’re careful. If we nick stuff, you’d put up locks ’n guards ’n whatever, and then we couldn’t get buns whenever we want ’em.”

  There was a certain logic to this. I decided to let it go. “So Tibbie went in? About when was this?”

  “I dunno. After midnight. I was gonna go in too, but she said no, she’d do it quick. She was sneaking, you know?”

  “Then what happened?”

  The boy shrugged. “Then the other man showed up.”

  “Wait—what other man?”

  “You know. Your uncle or whoever. The one in the yellow-greeny outfit.”

  The notion of Uncle Alfred wandering around after midnight, going into the bakery by the back door was odd. The notion of him wearing anything but baker’s whites or threadbare black was ridiculous. Uncle Alfred had strictly monochromatic tastes, probably because of Aunt Tabitha and her housedresses.

  Look out for the Spring Green Man, Molly had said.

  “That couldn’t have been my uncle. Who was it?”

  “How should I know? It’s your bakery!”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “So this man went into the bakery?”

  “Yeah.” The boy snuffled again and stared up into the gloomy eaves above us.

  “And then what happened?”

  “And then he came out. And then you went in a while later. And then there was a whole ruckus and I couldn’t get close enough to see what was happening and then they came and took you away.”

  I remembered that bit. I sighed.

  “Um—I—look. They took a dead body out of the bakery. It must have been your sister. I’m sorry.”

  There was probably a better way to tell him the news, but I was just so horribly tired.

  He stared at me for a moment, then snorted, which was not the response I was expecting. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Be patient, I told myself. Be kind. He just lost his sister. He’s in shock.

  “She’s not dead. You’re stupid.”

  I am not as good a person as I should be. I kind o
f wanted to slap him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said instead.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. He turned away, and I expected him to stomp off, but he turned back suddenly. “Show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “The bakery. Show me. She must still be in there, or maybe she slipped out again. Maybe she left me a sign.”

  “Okay.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. I wanted to go to bed. I really, really wanted to go to bed. “Now?”

  “No. When it’s real dark. I don’t want to be explaining to a lot of grown-ups. They’ll be stupid about it, too.”

  “Okay.” I pointed up the stairs. “I live up there. Come get me when it’s late enough for you, and I’ll show you.”

  He nodded once, sharply, and then pelted out of the alley as if there were zombie crawfish after him.

  Nine

  I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and approximately five seconds later, someone was shaking me awake.

  “Hzzzhhh?” I opened my eyes.

  It was the boy again. When he saw I was awake, he stepped back and folded his arms. “Come on. It’s nearly midnight.”

  “It is? Really?” I sat up and squinted at the window. Sure enough, it was deep dark outside. I’d slept for hours. It didn’t feel like it at all. My head was pounding. I was also starving, although I had a distinct memory of having wolfed down a couple of cold cinnamon rolls before I fell into bed.

  I also had a distinct memory of locking the door.

  “How did you get in here?”

  He looked at me, and then at the door and then back at me, with the sort of pure disdain that only someone under the age of twelve can manage. “I knocked first,” he said. “You didn’t answer.”

  Any doubts I’d had about him breaking into the bakery were gone. Aunt Tabitha had bought a very sturdy lock for my door, since I was living alone. I wondered how long it had taken him to jimmy it.

  “Fine.” I swung my feet onto the floor. “You hungry?”

  He shrugged, which I took as a yes. “There’s some buns on the table.” I got up and dug through my clothes chest, looking for a sweater.

  By the time I’d found one and pulled it over my head, there was one bun left. The kid, whatever his name was, had gone through them, apparently without chewing. Or breathing.

  He’d also left me one, even though he was obviously starving.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, tearing into the last roll.

  He eyed me suspiciously. Suspicion and disdain appeared to be his only two expressions. No, wait. I’d seen anger when he first attacked me. Three expressions.

  “Look, you don’t have to tell me your real name if you don’t want to, I just want something to call you other than ‘Hey, you.’ I’m Mona.”

  “Spindle,” he said finally.

  I doubted that his mother had named him that. Still, he was as thin as a spindle, and nearly as sharp. I decided to go with it. “Okay, Spindle.” I brushed crumbs off my front. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Opening the bakery at midnight felt like we were breaking into it, even though I worked there and would normally be doing the exact same thing in about four hours. I shut the door nervously and leaned against the big oven. The banked warmth was a relief from the chill outside.

  “She was on the floor, here,” I said, pointing to a spot in the middle of the floor. “I think Aunt Tabitha probably cleaned it, though.” (I was trying to be tactful. Aunt Tabitha had definitely mopped up, because there wasn’t a giant bloodstain on the floor anymore.)

  Spindle examined the kitchen with an almost professional detachment. He examined the counters and the floor and even the ceiling. I was almost sorry that we’d cleaned up, because he was doing a much more thorough job than the constables had.

  Finally, he went down on his knees on the floor, peering under the tables. My stomach quivered. He was kneeling right where his sister’s blood had pooled all over the floor. I wanted to tell him to move, but…

  “Um,” I said, with no real idea how to continue.

  “There’s something under here,” he interrupted.

  “There is?” I crouched down next to him. I had to put a hand down to steady myself, right where the girl’s head had been.

  Look, you have to stop this. You’re going to be working here for years, maybe the rest of your life if you inherit the bakery, and if you do this every time you walk across the floor…

  I forcibly shoved away the memory and leaned down.

  Sure enough, there was something under there, some bit of metal winking in the lantern light.

  “It might be some silverware,” I said.

  “It’s not,” Spindle said. “It’s something else. I don’t know if I can reach it.” He wedged his arm under the table, up to the shoulder. “Almost…should be…no.” He pulled back, frowning and dusting flour off his clothes. “Can we move the table?”

  “I’ve got a better idea.” I cracked open the door to the front and slipped through. There should still be a gingerbread man left from the last batch…yup.

  It was starting to get stale, which made it harder to animate, and my headache came roaring back full force, but I gritted my teeth and stared down and thought, Live.

  The gingerbread man stood up on my palm, stretching. I set him down on the floor. “There’s something under the table,” I told it. “Will you get it out for me?”

  The gingerbread man saluted, ducked his head—it was a tight fit, even for a cookie—and walked under the table.

  Spindle’s eyebrows had vanished under his hair. “You’re a wizard,” he said.

  His tone wasn’t accusing, merely surprised. It was my turn to shrug. “Only with dough,” I said. “It’s not very useful.”

  He nodded. “Tibbie’s a wizard.”

  “Really?”

  “She sneaks,” he said, making a wiggling hand gesture that could have meant anything. “You know.”

  I didn’t know, but presumably she had some kind of magical talent for hiding. “Do you mean that she turns invisible or something?”

  “Just about,” said Spindle proudly. “Me, I got no magic. I gotta just stay low and quiet, but she can hide in a cat’s shadow, almost.”

  Hmm. That was interesting. Not a huge wizarding talent, maybe, but a pretty good one compared to bread.

  Knackering Molly’s words came back to me. Little people like us, we’re not safe.

  Had she meant little wizards? Minor magical talents? She warned me about the Spring Green Man, too, and here Spindle had seen somebody in yellow-green trap his sister in my bakery, and then there was a dead wizard girl.

  A rash of wizard murders, the Inquisitor had said. I’d assumed he meant murders by wizards, but maybe that’s just what he was hoping people would think.

  “There’s something going on,” I said, hugging myself. “Somebody’s killing wizards. The Inquisitor said it, and Knackering Molly. They must have gotten your sister.”

  Spindle scowled. “Somebody’s killing wizard-folks all right—word’s all over the street—but they didn’t get Tibbie, because Tibbie’s not dead.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that.

  The gingerbread man emerged from under the table, pushing the metal object. It was some kind of bracelet, a half-moon of silver joined by a chain. The chain was broken and clinked as Spindle picked it up.

  In the pale light of the lantern, his face turned the color of old cheese.

  “Tibbie’s bracelet,” he said. “It was our mum’s.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He turned and ran out of the bakery.

  I called his name, but he wasn’t a dog, and he didn’t come back. I stood there in the doorway for a while, the gingerbread man on my shoulder, staring out into the dark streets, and the splash of yellow radiance the street-light left across the stones.

  I’d known it was Tibbie. It was better Spindle knew it, too. It was better to know than not to know. Not k
nowing was terrible.

  Something patted my cheek. I looked down and saw the gingerbread man on my shoulder. He was steadying himself with a hank of hair in one hand, and with the other he reached up and caught the tears I hadn’t known I was crying.

  Ten

  I didn’t see Spindle for a couple of days after that. I was busy in the bakery. Not that Aunt Tabitha wouldn’t have let me take the time off, but I didn’t want to. Baking was normal. If I was baking, then everything else was normal, too, and even if somebody was killing wizards, it was happening somewhere else, on the other side of the counter.

  This was maybe not as rational as it could have been, but it felt right. I was safe at the bakery. When I walked home at night, the block to the glassblower, with the water gurgling from the gutters into the canal, then I wasn’t safe. I hunched myself into my jacket and felt like things were following me in the shadows.

  I didn’t run home. Running would have let whatever was in the shadows chase me.

  This wasn’t rational either—this was a slightly more grown-up version of monsters hiding under the bed—but I couldn’t shake the feeling. So I stayed in the bakery as much as possible, and I hurried home at a fast walk that didn’t quite break into a run. And I got up very very early and came into the bakery again, so that when Aunt Tabitha came downstairs, I was already wrist deep in dough.

  I worried about Spindle though, in the moments when I wasn’t too busy to think. Not that there was any shortage of things to worry about. The news that spring was all bad. Lord Ethan and the army marched out not two days after I’d seen him. Carex mercenaries raiding again, I think. The customers had different ideas. Miss McGrammar just called them “the enemy.” Brutus the chandler said it was Mannequa, the next province over, hiring the Carex to attack us. The priest waited until the chandler had left with his scones and told me that was nonsense, nobody hired the Carex for anything anymore, unless you were paying them to go away.

  Carex mercenaries are sort of like the boogeyman in our city, and in most of the city-states in the kingdom, probably. Your mom tells you that if you misbehave, the Carex will get you. The problem is that they’re actually real, and once you grow up and hear all the stories, they’re a lot worse than the boogeyman.