Instead of pointing Ratta up the stairs, Lily brushed past her to thrust apart the pocket doors of the parlor. The formal room had been dusted, and the floor mopped. The furniture gleamed with lemon oil. Chairs were positioned around three of the four walls, among urns filled with cut lilies and fern fronds. The front of the room held a long, narrow table covered with a freshly ironed cream-colored cloth edged with lace. Nothing sat on the tablecloth except for unlit tapers in bronze candlesticks at either end.
“No,” Ratta quavered. Her arms, holding Mamie’s body, began to shake.
Lily took her elbow. “You must.”
“I can’t bear it.” Ratta blinked back tears.
“Come, I will help you.” Lily guided Ratta to the front of the room, where they stood before the viewing table.
“I do not want to be alone,” Ratta cried hoarsely.
“You are not alone.” Lily gently lifted the bottom of the shawl, which held Mamie’s feet. “You have us. Now lay her down.”
“I can’t,” Ratta protested, although she took Mamie’s shoulders and did as Lily told her. Carefully, they positioned Mamie’s body on the table with her head facing north, toward the glacier, and her feet pointing south toward the Lowlands.
“You can keep her body wrapped in the shawl for now, if you like.”
Ratta nodded mutely as tears streaked her face. Lily rearranged the knitted opening to reveal Mamie’s face and lit the candles at her head and feet.
“Aubergine has planned a simmer as soon as everyone arrives,” Lily said. “Then we must free Mamie from this shawl so that she may pass into the land of dreams.”
“Mamie is not going to the land of dreams,” Ratta murmured.
Lily looked at her sharply. “No?”
“Not according to the Lost Tale of the Guardian.” Ratta met Lily’s gaze. “I have seen it in my mind’s eye countless times, but I never believed. I even took a funeral scarf from Esmeralde’s cottage, thinking that might change things.” Ratta shook her head and laughed with chagrin. “Mamie is the next Guardian of the Crystal Caves. She was due to commence her watch years ago—and she would have, but for this shawl. Who knows what will happen now?”
“When the time comes, you must ask the question,” Lily urged Ratta. “Promise me. I think I may have the answer.”
“If Sierra shows, then I will.”
Lily smiled. “Take the room next to Wheat. Unpack your belongings and settle in. I’ll call you when it’s time for dinner.”
A few hours later, Lily passed swiftly through the butler’s pantry, nodding to the dark-haired kitchen girl who waited with the serving cart. She strode into the dining room and approached her mistress. Aubergine sat in the armchair at the head of the table. The high chair next to her place stood empty. The only other two people at the table were Wheat and Ratta.
“We can’t wait dinner any longer, I’m afraid,” she apologized.
Aubergine nodded. “Very well. But I wonder what has happened to Smokey Jo. It isn’t like her to miss dinner, especially when there is pie.”
Lily gestured to the kitchen girl and settled herself into the armchair at the far end of the table, opposite Aubergine. The serving girl, a young thing with dark hair and a delicate complexion, pushed in a cart laden with a large pot of tea and pitchers of cream and sugar. She poured first for Aubergine, and then for the others.
“I let Smokey play with my staff,” Wheat said. “Has anyone checked the alley?
“Jo will come in when she’s ready.” Ratta added sugar to her cup. “Finish telling us about the dervish.”
“As I said, I believe it was not dead,” Wheat said. “I thought it might have been frozen while still alive.”
“That is entirely possible. The age of ice took everyone unaware,” Aubergine said. “Even the First Folk.”
“While the Lowlanders slept, I melted the dervish from the ice with my staff,” Wheat continued. “Once freed, it circled the camp a few times and then winged north. I assume it was flying back to the glacier. In ancient times, weren’t the dervish Watchers sworn to protect their First Folk families?”
The kitchen girl began to serve cups of onion soup. As she set the steaming broth in front of Wheat, the shepherd felt a strange tingling that she attributed to how long it had been since she’d sat to a nourishing meal.
“At all costs,” Aubergine said, taking up her spoon. “And only the ruling class was permitted the dervish as a familiar. If you really saw a Watcher outside the glacier walls that means that the tombs of the ancients have been desecrated.”
“Well, I did,” Wheat said. “I have no doubt.”
Lily frowned and pinched pepper into her soup. “According to Mamie’s tales, the only way into the First Folk graveyard was through the Crystal Caves.”
Aubergine nodded grimly. “So now it must be that both the Caves and the tombs of the ancients have been discovered. But how? Supposedly a Guardian protects the graves.”
“Surely this Guardian would not let anyone pass into the mausoleum, let alone rob it,” Wheat said.
Ratta sopped up her soup with fresh sourdough bread and took a big bite. She felt Lily’s eyes on her and avoided meeting them.
“I wish Sierra was here.” Lily pushed her unfinished soup away as the servant wheeled out a cart bearing platters of stuffed turkey and boiled sweet potatoes.
Wheat reached for a plate and helped herself to the gravy boat. “Sierra would know which tale holds the answer.”
“I think not,” Ratta said, exchanging her empty soup bowl for a serving of turkey as the cart passed by her chair.
“What do you mean?” Wheat said.
Refusing to answer, Ratta cut her sweet potato in half and slathered both sides with butter. Wheat turned to Lily, who was steadfastly cutting her meat into bites.
Lily looked up. “Are you asking me?”
Since her mouth was full, Wheat could only nod and gesture with her fork.
Lily glanced at Aubergine, who paused with a forkful of stuffing to give her a slight nod. Lily took a deep breath.
“There is another yarn untold,” she explained. “It is called the Lost Tale of the Guardian. Sierra does not know the story, for Mamie never voiced it before she ceased to speak aloud.”
“I assume you alone can recite the tale,” Wheat said, pointing her butter knife at Ratta.
“That’s the only reason I’m here.” Ratta reached for the gravy. “I swore to Mamie I would reveal the Lost Tale to Sierra. But because she has not heeded the call, there is no need to say anything.” She gave Lily a fierce look. “Is there, Lily?”
“I thought you summoned us all that we might save the Middle-lands,” Wheat complained to Aubergine. “I did not come all this way just to hear an old yarn told by a kitchen wench.”
“Watch your mouth,” Ratta said.
“Watch yours.” Wheat reached for her staff, only to find it missing. Ratta laughed.
Lily smacked the flat of her hand on the table so hard that her water glass jumped. “Ladies!”
Aubergine laid down her utensils. She wiped her lips on a cloth napkin and set it aside. “I called you all here for several reasons,” she said, after the others quieted. “Reasons that hinge on the revelation of the Lost Tale.”
The kitchen girl cleared their dinner plates, then set a browned apple pie before Lily and handed her the silver server. Lily felt a shock of familiarity as their fingers touched. With a wary glance at the serving maid, she cut into the piecrust. The servant gave her an innocent smile, and Lily averted her eyes. She sensed a migraine coming on. The pie was still warm, and the aroma of cinnamon apples filled the room.
Lily nodded, satisfied with the pie. “Serve it with cream,” she directed the maid whose eyes danced in a peculiar way. Lily had the sense they had met before. Yet she had just hired the young woman in the marketplace yesterday.
“
The impossible has come to pass, it seems,” Aubergine continued. “The secret passage to the Crystal Caves has been found, and the tombs of the ancients have been plundered. Our own Mamie lies in the parlor, suspended between this world and the next, unable to pass into the land of dreams. Who knows what has happened to the Guardian of the Crystal Caves, or the Secrets of Old?”
“Are such secrets safe from the Dark Queen?” Lily asked, waving away the plate that the serving girl offered her, with its wedge of pie and dollop of cream. “If Lowlanders have ransacked the tombs, they could have discovered its secrets.”
Aubergine pursed her lips. “Tasman may have found some secrets, but she can’t unlock them without my amethyst necklace.”
“I thought she had your necklace,” Ratta said, licking cream from her lips.
“She stole a broken string of eleven stones twenty years ago.” Aubergine stabbed a fork into her piece of the steaming pie. She shook her head. “The circle is far from complete.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever found the lost gem?” Wheat looked from Aubergine to Lily. “Are you sure?”
“No one,” Lily confirmed. She felt uneasy. The maid seemed to be lingering unnecessarily over the dessert plates.
Aubergine gave Lily a strange look. “That may not be entirely true. For a while, I believed that Lavender Mae had come across the crystal and hidden it among lesser stones in the pouch she wears. Then I thought that perhaps Esmeralde had discovered it in one of her fossickers’ spoils, among shards foraged from the Trickle. Now I think someone else has it.”
“I assumed it disappeared with Teal.” Ratta shrugged.
Wheat eyed Aubergine curiously. “I thought for certain Aubergine had it.” She turned to Lily, who sat strangely silent and had turned away the pie.
The serving girl scraped their plates noisily.
“Let’s leave this for another time,” Lily said through gritted teeth as her head began to pound.
“You mean you know where the lost stone is?” Ratta asked her in disbelief. “Who has it? Aubergine?”
Lily pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. “No,” she grimaced.
Ratta took another wild guess. “The Dark Queen?”
“If the Dark Queen harbored the lost stone, we would all be enduring her wrath right now,” Aubergine intoned.
“That’s right,” Lily agreed. “Now ask a proper question.”
“I see what she means.” Wheat smiled. “She wants a more general question.” She eyed Lily. “Where is the stone?”
“Finally!” Lily sighed. “You must learn how to ask questions, all of you.” She looked at each of them in turn. The serving girl hid a smile. “The lost stone is not lost. It is hiding in plain sight. We will see it sooner, rather than later.”
Aubergine nodded with satisfaction and turned to Ratta. “We will hear your lost tale when we have our simmer over the great pot tomorrow night,” she decided. “Then will we see what to do.”
From the dye shed came the muffled sounds of scuffling. A door banged open. Wheat and Ratta looked toward the hall in alarm. Recognizing familiar crows of delight, Aubergine tried not to laugh. Lily suppressed a smile and held up her forefinger. They all heard a clatter of booted feet coming up the hall toward the main house.
“Shhh!” Someone kept whispering, while other voices giggled. “Shhh!”
The dining room door burst open and Smokey Jo skipped in, flanked by Esmeralde and Indigo Rose and followed by several young strangers.
Smokey’s eyes lit up. “Pie!” she shouted.
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Lily felt a shock of familiarity as their fingers touched.
CHAPTER 19
LILY ROSE FROM HER CHAIR IN GREETING. “Welcome. Who have we here?”
Ratta turned from her pie plate “Esmeralde, you look so old,” she said to the herbalist. “And Indigo Rose, is that you? Your braids have gone gray.”
“You’re full of compliments as usual, Ratta.” Esmeralde limped through the doorway with her heavy Possibles Bag smacking against her hip. “Aubergine, we apologize for interrupting your dinner.”
“Sorry we’re so late.” Indigo glared at Trader. “We had unforeseen trouble getting into the city.”
“Nonsense. You’re just in time to eat.” Aubergine waved them in. “Everyone, come sit.”
Lily beckoned to the serving girl, who was wheeling the cart back to the pantry. “Bring more plates and silver,” she said, rounding the table to hug Esmeralde and Indigo Rose.
“You must be Sierra’s daughter,” Lily said to Skye, holding her at arm’s length. “You are the spitting image of your mother.”
“I am Skye Blue,” the tall blond girl said, blushing. “And this is my brother, Garth.”
“Hello,” Garth grinned. “Are you all knitting witches?”
“We are,” Lily smiled. “I am Lilac Lily, and this is Winter Wheat, and Ratta. I see you have met Smokey Jo, and you know Esmeralde and Indigo Rose. At the head of the table is our dye mistress, Aubergine.”
“The Potluck Queen?” Skye’s eyes shone as she took in the violet eyes and long gray hair. She turned to her companions and lowered her voice. “In truth?”
“None other,” Esmeralde said.
“Boys,” Ratta complained to Aubergine as the travelers settled themselves noisily into the empty chairs. “I thought we allowed no boys at the table of the Twelve.” She watched sullenly as the serving girl set out steaming plates of food before the new arrivals. She narrowed her eyes at Trader. “Who might you be?”
Trader shrugged and gave Aubergine an impish grin.
Aubergine’s eyes glinted with a spark of recognition. “Do I know you?”
“Mayhap.”
“Little Teal?” Nodding, Trader rose to stand with a broad smile before the Potluck Queen. Aubergine took the fossicker’s hands. “I set these weary eyes on you again at last,” she whispered. “Does anyone else know you have returned here safe?”
Trader shrugged. “No one but you, I hope—and now a few others in this room.”
“She looks just like a boy—a ruffian, even!” Smokey cried from her tall chair, clapping her hands. “What a clever disguise!”
“You are mistaken. His name is Trader,” Garth insisted, popping a chunk of potato into his mouth. He chewed busily. “Only some folk call him Traitor. He is a fossick boy, and you’re right that he’s a ruffian, too.”
Skye burst out laughing. “It is you who are mistaken,” she told her brother.
“Well, he got us into a lot of trouble this morning,” Garth said. “We passed through the Southern Gate all right, but then a gang of youths dicing at the River Walk moorings recognized him. He had to split and run. It took forever for us to find him.”
“We should have left him in that alley in Winter Watch,” Indigo muttered.
“We had to rescue him,” Esmeralde reminded her. She pulled out her flask of Crystal Cordial. “We were hopelessly lost.”
“Trader?” Aubergine asked. “Is that your moniker now?”
“Yes,” The scrappy-looking girl returned to her seat. “To tell you the truth, after all these years, I prefer it. In my eyes, there was only one Tracery Teal.”
“Teal was one of our own,” Ratta huffed. “And a woman.”
“As am I,” Trader said. “Well, a girl, anyway.”
Indigo Rose threw down her napkin. “A girl? You little imposter!”
“I swear I did not know it, Indy,” Esmeralde said. She quickly dumped two glasses of water into a pitcher containing fresh flowers, and refilled the cups with measures of cordial. “Here, have a drink.”
Garth gaped at Trader. “It is not possible that you are a maid,” he protested, looking h
er up and down. “You lead a band of fossick boys. We’re comrades. We’ve shared meals and a tent.” He grimaced. “I don’t camp with girls.”
“Why would you pose as a boy, anyway?” Ratta eyed Trader suspiciously. The fine red frizz that had escaped her bun haloed around her head. “The Northland Guard collects youths.”
“For me, being mistaken for a boy is less dangerous than being seen as a girl,” Trader replied, helping herself to bread and butter. “I’m trying to avoid notice by blending in with the scenery. I’m trying to recall how you say it.” She took a bite of her roll. “Oh, I remember. You call it hiding in plain sight.”
“I know what we call it,” Ratta retorted.
“You seem to know an awful lot about our ways.” Indigo pointed her meat knife at Trader. “Who are you, really? What are you hiding from? I would like to know. You almost got us killed this afternoon.”
“Those boys just wanted money I owed them from dicing.” Trader finished the roll and began to slice turkey. “It was nothing.”
“It was ten pieces of Northland silver,” Esmeralde reminded her. “I’ll pay you back in kind,” Trader said.
“Would anyone like another cup of tea?” Lily asked brightly. “Who is ready for pie?”
Smokey raised her hand. “Me!”
Lily watched the kitchen maid bring dessert for the second round of diners. The girl seemed humorless. Well, an inability to be cheerful wasn’t a character flaw, and she was efficient and quiet in her work.
As the others chatted over dessert, Aubergine put her arm around the little gnome. “Smokey Jo, where were you? You had me worried.”
“Locked in the dye shed storeroom,” the gnome said, in a small voice.
“Locked in the storeroom?” Aubergine frowned. “It was locked to begin with. How did you get in?”
“Through the keyhole,” Smokey answered, licking her lips. “Can I have more clotted cream on my pie?”
“Never mind that.” Finished with all but her crust, Wheat noticed the quiet conversation near the head of the table. “Smokey, where is my crook?”
The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches Page 27
