The Enchanted Greenhouse(63)
Yarrow shrugged. “Finished with the emergencies. Now it’s up to the plants themselves to root. There’s nothing I can do to help them do that.” Removing the tea towel, he revealed the loaf: golden-brown, with a beautiful split through the length of the top crust. He sliced the loaf with a knife he’d brought and passed her a wedge on a napkin.
“Thank you.” Inside, the bread was flecked with herbs, as well as curls of carrot and zucchini. It was as moist as a cake and smelled of cinnamon, nutmeg, and hints of sweet spiciness. She wondered whether it would be rude or flattering if she shoved the entire slice in her mouth.
“Wait.” He withdrew a small pot from one of his pockets, as well as a spoon. “It tastes better with honey butter.”
She smeared on a pat of honey butter and took a bite. It tasted light, sweet, and full of herbs that she couldn’t name but knew she’d want to eat again and again. Closing her eyes, she savored the next bite. When she opened them again, she saw Yarrow was watching her. He looked away quickly and cut another slice. “If you ever want a second career,” Terlu said, “you’d make an incredible chef.”
He shrugged. “It’s just bread. Glad you like it.”
It wasn’t just bread. It was the fact that he’d thought of her while he baked it, had carried it through the snow with a pot of honey butter in his pocket, and worried about whether she’d like it. If she hadn’t, she was certain he’d have disappeared and returned with another even more delicious concoction that he’d describe as “just bread” or “just a snack” or “just breakfast” when it was a perfectly laminated almond croissant served inside a squash carved to look like a swan, or something equally exquisite—she wondered if a squash could be carved to look like a swan. Maybe a duck?
She spent a bit of time imagining what kind of animals could be created out of a squash before she turned back to her notes. “I think I found a few spells that could work.”
He quit chewing. “Why didn’t you say that when I first came in?”
“You brought bread.”
“This is more important than bread.”
“How could anything be more important than bread, especially with honey butter?”
“Terlu.”
“Sorry. It’s just that the key phrase is ‘could work.’ You see, Laiken liked to experiment, and while he kept meticulous notes about the ingredients he used in each experiment, he was less meticulous about recording the results. Most of the time I’ve been drawing conclusions based on what he tweaked for his next iteration. Anyway, I think I found the final version of his spell for the greenhouses—it’s a complex, multistage spell with interwoven effects that simultaneously fortifies the glass and insulates it to allow for the stabilization of the temperature and humidity within the structure, though”—she spread out the papers—“I question his use of rwyr-ent in line three … Anyway, the point is: to proceed any further, I need to experiment.”
He picked up the nearest spell and looked at it.
She did not tell him he was holding it upside down.
“You want to experiment?”
“Yes, preferably in a dead greenhouse. If you can pick one that’s far away from any other living greenhouse…” Just in case she was wrong about the effects of the spell.
Yarrow nodded and put down the spell. “Do you know what ingredients you need?”
She presented him with a list.
“Are the spells dangerous?”
Every spell could be dangerous, if you made a mistake. There was a reason that the emperor had outlawed unauthorized magic. He may have taken his edict too far, but the initial caution was rational, which was why there hadn’t been more than a handful of protests from scholars and other like-minded people when the laws were passed. Well, that and the fact that the imperial guard had cracked down on all protests with overwhelming force. Terlu shuddered as she remembered the fate of some early protesters: turned to ice in the summer. They’d melted into the canals in the heat of the afternoon. “Yes. Possibly.”
Yarrow grunted. “I’ll ask Lotti to keep the other plants away.” He pulled on his coat. “Meet me by the roses. I’ll have the ingredients with me.”
She put on her coat too. “Can I keep the leftover honey butter?”
“Sure.”
“Do you care if you don’t get the pot back?”
Yarrow shrugged. “Do whatever you want with it.”
“Thanks.” She covered it and stuffed it in her pocket.
He stared for a moment, and she had the sense that he was struggling between his curiosity and his desire not to make extra conversation. “Is it a spell ingredient?”
That would be a lovely coincidence. “No. I just thought the dragons would like it.”
“You don’t need to feed them,” Yarrow said. “They have everything they need in the sunflower maze. Laiken ensured they were self-sufficient.”
“I know, but it might make them happy.”
He smiled. “Okay.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She tried to read what he was thinking, but she couldn’t guess.
“Let me know whenever you want more honey butter,” he said.
* * *