A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

  “We have reason to suspect that Elgar is a traitor,” said the Duchess, sweeping into the sitting room.

  Elgar. So the Spring Green Man had a name.

  I followed her, with Spindle close behind me. Joshua took up a post by the door. The Duchess settled into a chair and looked up at Master Gildaen, who was looking old, old, far older than he had a few moments ago when we opened the door.

  And yet, when he spoke, there was no trace of querulousness in his voice, and it sounded stronger than I would have expected, coming from such an old man.

  “I see. So it has come to this, then.” He met the Duchess’s eyes. “I do not know how much magic is left in me, Your Grace, but I served your father and your father’s father, and whatever I have left is yours to command.”

  Twenty-Two

  Less than an hour later, I was jammed into a closet with Master Gildaen and a large bowl of water.

  “You can’t all fit in here,” said the wizard, when Joshua seemed inclined to argue. “It’s my working room. I go in there to talk to the waters, not entertain guests. My young colleague here can come with me, if you’re worried I’m going to summon up water demons to wash your bones clean, but the rest of you might as well stay in the sitting room.”

  “I can’t watch the entrance to the working room and the Duchess at the same time,” said Joshua. “Not unless we all want to stand out in the hallway, and I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  The Duchess told him that he could watch the door and she’d be fine by herself and Joshua pretended that she hadn’t said anything. That surprised me. I guess it was proof of what she had said, that the ruler of a city didn’t have absolute power. As far as Joshua was concerned, when it came to keeping the Duchess safe, he was in charge. And the Duchess seemed to accept this.

  She turned to me instead. “Mona?”

  I knew that wasn’t an order. She was asking me if I was willing to do it, in case Master Gildaen was also a traitor. I could have said no, and we would have worked something out.

  “I’ll go,” I said. I didn’t believe that Gildaen was a traitor. He’d listened to the entire story, and if he had been, he would have acted surprised when we told him about Elgar, to divert suspicion.

  Instead, when we told him about the Spring Green Man, he only nodded. “Sounds like Elgar, all right. Nasty young fellow, the sort that pulls wings off flies when he’s bored. Always wearing those ridiculous bright green robes, too. You’d think he’d stick out like a sore thumb, but he’s got that weird talent with air, wraps it around himself so your eyes just slide off him half the time.”

  “Can you go arrest him?” asked Spindle. He was eyeing Joshua’s weapons with intense interest. “Go chop him up for being a traitor?”

  “We can try,” said Joshua. He looked at Master Gildaen for confirmation.

  “Try is the right word, young man. Elgar’s not enough wizard to stop the breath in your lungs, but he’ll get smoke in your eyes and tangle your brain, and after that he only needs a knife. And the days when I could summon a rainstorm and wash the air clean for you are long behind me.” Gildaen glanced at the Duchess and sighed. “But I’ll do what I can, Your Grace, if you ask. Though I strongly suggest that we send a message to the Golden General first, so that if we fail, you aren’t short a wizard.”

  “Then by all means, send your message, Master Gildaen.” The Duchess gave Joshua a quelling look. He looked as disappointed as Spindle, although he hid it better.

  Gildaen himself was a master of water. (This is one of the major differences between really good wizards and me. They’ve got access to big stuff, like water or air or lightning. Being able to command any kind of water is a lot more useful than being able to command any kind of bread.) He insisted on bringing out a teapot and teacups, although there hadn’t been a fire in the fireplace in a very long time, judging by the state of the hearth. I busied myself wiping out the teacups with the edge of my tunic while the wizard hunted for tea.

  When I started to say something about heating the water, however, he touched the teapot and steam poured from the spout.

  “Hot water for tea I can still manage, for all the good it does me. I can send a message—probably—but I wasn’t lying, Your Grace. You’d be better off with nearly any wizard in the kingdom other than me. The magic isn’t what it used to be.”

  “There are no other wizards,” said the Duchess. “Oberon has seen to that. You and Mona are the only ones I can trust. The others are dead or fled or deeply in hiding. Or rode away with the army weeks ago.” She sighed and ran a hand through her graying hair. “I have been a fool for too long, Master Gildaen, and now we are all paying the price.”

  “Ah,” said Master Gildaen. “But it is safer to be a fool, is it not? Do you think I have not known that, these last few months? No one bothers an old fool.” He dropped his hands. “Come, Mona. If we are the last wizards in the kingdom, let us see what we can do.”

  When he put it like that, I had to go with him. Maybe we were the last wizards in the kingdom. You probably couldn’t count Knackering Molly. The odds that getting rid of Oberon would hinge on dead horses walking seemed pretty slim.

  Master Gildaen wasn’t lying—there really wasn’t room for everyone in the working room. Joshua and the Duchess and Spindle stayed in Gildaen’s suite just down the hall. Magical workrooms weren’t connected directly to living quarters, in case the spells got loose. It made sense to me. If I lose control of my magic, the worst you get is bad bread. If Gildaen lost control, you could have a sheet of angry, intelligent boiling water rampaging through the castle.

  Unlike the rest of his chambers, Gildaen’s workroom was completely bare except for a padded stool and a large bowl of water sitting on top of an old wooden milk crate. The whole room was perhaps five paces long and three paces wide. I think it might have been a hall closet at one point, which would explain why it was right down the hall from his rooms.

  He sat on the stool with his back to the door. I squeezed myself around the other side of the bowl of water and sat on the floor.

  “Have you ever done any message work?” asked Gildaen, stirring the water with a finger.

  “Uh…” The question surprised me. “I work with bread, sir. Just bread.”

  He snorted, eyeing the gingerbread man sitting on my shoulder. “And I work with water—just water. I admit bread’s a little more specialized, but I suspect you could work something out. Convince your message to appear on a scone or something.” He frowned down into the water and stirred it again. “Come on, you…wake up...”

  I thought about it. I could probably convince a scone to burn in a specific pattern, like a word, but not at any great distance. Certainly not as far away as the army. “I don’t think I’m strong enough,” I said. “I’m…err…not a very good wizard. There’s no way I could reach the army’s ovens. I wouldn’t even know how.”

  “Ha!” Master Gildaen shook a finger at me. “Neither could I, youngster. Doubt very many of us could. This bowl is the mate of a bowl the army’s carrying with them, made by the same hand in the same hour, and the water in it was drawn up from the same well in the same bucket. I couldn’t reach across the city cold. The only reason I can send a message at all is because the bowl and the water remember each other.” He poked the water a third time, and leaned back, apparently satisfied. “All the message wizards have something like this. There’s a man in a tent wherever the army’s camped who has the bowl out, and a stick of Elgar’s incense, and a tray of sand for poor Dalthyl…” He sighed. “Although I suppose they’ve taken Dalthyl’s tray down, now.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Elgar would have sent them the message that he was dead, right? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe they don’t know.” Somehow that seemed likely to me. If things were coming to a head, would Oberon want the Golden General to know that the city was short a wizard?

  Gildaen grunted. “You may be right. Anyway. We could probably arrange a mated pair of ovens, and dough from
the same batch, and you could send messages that way. It’d be a little more awkward, but there’s never enough wizards available, so people are always willing to find a workaround.”

  I’m pretty sure I blushed. The army was probably the only place in the city that wanted more wizards, particularly now. “Err…honestly, sir, I’m really not that much of a wizard. I mean, I bake stuff. It’s nothing special.”

  He made a rude noise. “You’ve got your head stuffed full of stories about wizards smashing mountains and hurling fireballs. You’re not that weak, youngster. Wizards have done more with less.”

  “It’s bread,” I said.

  “Kilsandra the Assassin grew roses,” he said, bending over the bowl. “That was all she could work with. She convinced them to grow deadly poisons and sleeping powders in their pollen, and to carry messages along their stems so that she could eavesdrop on her enemies. She nailed up a few people in rose thickets with thorns as long as your arm. There are a couple of kingdoms where they still won’t grow roses within a hundred yards of the palace or the army barracks, just because of her, and she died eighty years ago.” He tapped the side of the bowl with a fingernail. “Mind you, I don’t suggest that you’d want to follow in her footsteps, but with a little imagination…ah, here we go.”

  The water rippled and sloshed, and a tinny voice said, “Gildaen? Is that you?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Hagar. I’m not dead yet. Not like poor Dalthyl.”

  I peered over the edge of the bowl of water. It showed two sets of reflections, like two panes of glass laying on top of each other. One was of Master Gildaen, and the other was of a woman with frizzy blonde hair. Apparently this was Hagar. Due to the angle, I could see directly up her nose.

  She frowned, which changed the view somewhat. “Dalthyl? What are you talking about?”

  Gildaen and I shared a long look over the top of the bowl of water.

  “Listen to me,” said Gildaen. “Dalthyl’s dead. Elgar’s a traitor. Oberon’s planning something. You have to get the army back here as soon as possible.”

  Hagar’s nostrils flared. I think she probably furrowed her brow, too, but mostly what I saw was the flare. “What? Elgar? Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure, nitwit!” Gildaen pounded on the milkcrate with his fist, which sent ripples across the water and temporarily broke up Hagar’s reflection. “The Duchess told me herself! You’ve got to do somethi—”

  It was the ripples. The ripples distorted everything. The flicker of pale green that appeared behind him was too broken up for either of us to notice it until the Spring Green Man put a knife into Master Gildaen’s back.

  Gildaen gasped. It was a wet, unhappy sound. Through the water, faintly, I heard Hagar shriek. I jerked my head up and saw the Spring Green Man—Elgar—pull the blade out of the old wizard’s back.

  Time shuddered and juddered to a halt. We might have been a trio of statues, me and Gildaen and the Spring Green Man standing over us. All I could think for a moment was that the blade was clean, there was no blood on it, surely that meant that this was all a mistake, Gildaen hadn’t really been stabbed, when people got stabbed, the knife was all bloody, wasn’t it?

  Then Master Gildaen slumped forward over the milk crate, and his breath rattled in his chest like Nag’s bones, and time started up again.

  “You again,” Elgar said, looking down at me. “Stupid child. I lost your scent and I thought you’d fled weeks ago. Coming here to the palace, right under my nose? Thought I’d puke from the smell of you.” He shook his head. “I suppose the game is up now that I had to kill Gildaen, but at least it lets me wrap up one more loose end.”

  Oh god, I thought. Oh god, we’re in the magic wing of the palace. Of course Elgar could smell us. He probably lives right down the hall, and everybody’s so used to being in a palace they didn’t even think about it. Oh god, we actually thought that if we didn’t knock on the door, he wouldn’t know we were here.

  The room was too narrow. Elgar had come in through the only door, but now he had to come around one side of the milk crate or the other, but I couldn’t get any farther away. If I tried to bolt down the other side, he could just reach across the crate or knock it over and grab me.

  I was trapped.

  “I owe you, anyway,” snarled Elgar. “Throwing your damned acid-beast on me.”

  It was then that I noticed the shiny pink scars across the side of his face. Apparently Bob had done some damage. A small, bitter satisfaction bloomed in my chest, inside the terror.

  Elgar took another step forward and pushed Master Gildaen aside with his knee. I could smell that thick, spicy scent that I remembered from the first time he tried to kill me. My stomach churned.

  His feet didn’t make any sound on the floor. It must have been more of his magic. If you can control air, maybe you can control the sounds that move through it. No wonder he’d been so good at sneaking up on people.

  I pressed myself flat against the back wall. The gingerbread man crouched on my shoulder, icing eyes narrowed.

  Two more steps and he’d be on me.

  I’d have to try to bolt. There wasn’t any other option. It wasn’t going to work, and I knew it wasn’t going to work, but the alternative was to stand there and be stabbed. Maybe if I could get to the door, I could yell a warning to the Duchess—

  Dear Lady of Sorrowful Angels, the Duchess!

  They were all in the sitting room. Still. The Spring Green Man must have snuck past the front door and gone for the working room, and meanwhile the Duchess and Spindle were just sitting in the other room a few feet down the hallway, drinking tea and waiting, with only a thin wooden door and a single guard to protect them.

  I took a deep breath and screamed as loud as I could.

  It didn’t seem very loud. It seemed like a thin little wail. Elgar snorted and lifted his knife. From the bowl of water, I heard Hagar crying, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  Master Gildaen, with what had to be his very last strength, got a hand under the bowl of water and flipped it onto Elgar’s legs.

  Elgar screamed, much louder than I had.

  Whatever Master Gildaen had said about his fading skills, I’ll swear that water was boiling when it hit the Spring Green Man.

  He scrabbled at his robes, hissing in pain, and I lunged for the door. I wanted to grab Master Gildaen but I wasn’t strong enough to haul him out. As it was, I just tried not to step on him, and then the Spring Green Man, half-weeping from his burns, clubbed me in the back of the head with his elbow and knocked me down.

  I landed in a sprawl across Master Gildaen. My head rang and I knew that at pretty much any second there was going to be a knife stuck in me. The gingerbread man was thrown free and rolled, shedding bits of icing.

  “I’ll kill you,” said Elgar, almost sobbing, stumbling as he turned toward me. I tried to crawl forward, away from him, but it was so slow and the stupid page’s pants were too small and seemed to have my hips in a vise and my left hand hurt where I’d landed on it and Master Gildaen was under me and he wasn’t breathing any more…

  I squeezed my eyes shut—it was going to be a cold bright pain, I just knew it, and then I was going to die, and that would be the end of a bread wizard named Mona who just wanted to make really good sourdough and muffins and not get messed up with assassins and politics and—

  There was a thud of impact. Something heavy hit me. It didn’t feel like I had imagined that the knife would feel, but it was definitely heavy and knocked the wind out of me. Maybe this is what being stabbed feels like, I thought, maybe you don’t even feel it, it’s just like something really heavy hitting you—

  “Mona,” said Spindle, sounding frantic, “Mona! Get up! C’mon, get up!”

  Spindle?

  I opened my eyes.

  Joshua dragged the Spring Green Man off me. He had clubbed him over the head with a chair. I gulped air, trying to get that spicy, head-clogging smell out of my lungs.

>   Except for a skinned palm where I’d tried to catch myself when I fell, I was unhurt.

  Master Gildaen was dead.

  And that meant that I was the last loyal wizard left in the palace.

  Twenty-Three

  “We must move quickly,” said the Duchess. “The army is at least ten days away, and Oberon knows it as well as we do. We move against him now, tonight, before he is expecting it.”

  She made this announcement while we all stood in a circle around the Spring Green Man, who had a massive bruise across his forehead and was trussed up like a turkey. Joshua had tied him up with several belts and one of Master Gildaen’s dressing gowns, torn into strips. It was a haphazard binding, but it didn’t look haphazard.

  Actually, it looked like he’d strangle himself if he so much as sneezed.

  Spindle had wanted to kill him outright, right then and there, for what he did to Tibbie. The Duchess talked him out of it. “There will be a trial,” she said. “We will not compound murder with murder. We will see justice done so that everyone in the city knows that magic folk cannot be killed with impunity.” I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing that convinced Spindle. That, and the fact that Joshua had a much bigger sword.

  “Tonight,” said Joshua, nodding. “We do not have time to delay.”

  “How we gonna do that?” asked Spindle.

  “And what about Master Gildaen?” I wiped my nose. I was trying not to cry for the old wizard. We had set him in the other room with his arms over his chest and the sheet off his bed thrown over him for a shroud.

  I’d known him for less than an hour, but I wanted to bawl my eyes out. He’d been kind to me, and he hadn’t acted like I was just a little two-bit magicker, and he’d sent the message that might save us, and if I’d just been looking up instead of into the water—