She woke up early and alone the next morning. Or as alone as it was possible to be, with a volcano sprite who’d decided if no one else was going to annoy her, then it was happy to take the job.

  “Blop?”

  She grunted at it.

  “Blop…”

  The dough had risen beautifully overnight. As though the bakery itself was trying to make up for her bad mood. She sighed, then wished she hadn’t, and ground her tusks instead.

  It wasn’t as though she’d expected news overnight. Let alone for Severine to return.

  Except for the part of her that had.

  She’d disappeared quickly. Couldn’t she have returned quickly, too? How long did it take to chuck a destiny-laden sword at someone?

  If that was what she was doing.

  If she hadn’t just gotten bored, and moved on.

  If she hadn’t decided Runa wasn’t worth the wait. Or the risk.

  As she worked the dough, Runa thought about the stories Severine told about her work as a priestess of cursed blades.

  Okay, sure, some of those must have taken time. All that waiting around near ponds. Shivering in the mists.

  But she had the map, and the map knife. That would cut down on time, wouldn’t it? And the dagger that could cut doorways through the world—all she needed to do would be slice her way to the destined hero, chuck a sword at them, and hop back through the portal.

  If she wanted to come back.

  I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, Severine’s note had said, but that sounded like the sort of thing she could know, if she wanted to.

  Runa punched the dough down again.

  Unless she didn’t want to come back.

  Or…

  Unless something had gone wrong.

  She shaped loaves, and slapped them into rising pans.

  Severine was one of those people who lived with her heart on her sleeve. She acted happy when she was happy, and didn’t let anyone miss the fact when she was unhappy.

  Except.

  Except…

  Her stories were so well-trodden. Runa had noticed it at the time, when Severine used the same intonations and conspiratorial expressions each time she told different people about her adventures, but hadn’t put much thought into it past that. All storytellers had their own ways of performing.

  And it was a performance. The rest of the time, she wore her every thought on her face like a sign written in large block letters, but when she was telling stories, she performed. The same way Agetta laid it on thick talking about her wares.

  All her stories about her duties as a priestess were performances, and the only way she ever talked about her duties was through story.

  Runa swore as she scored lines along the tops of loaves. How had she not noticed before? Had she lost her mind? Put all her knowledge of the world and its dangers aside when she picked up a rolling pin?

  Maybe Severine was right not to tell her. She was clearly just some dumb, na?ve small-town baker.

  Of course handing out magical swords to strangers could be dangerous.

  But Severine knew her past. She knew Runa could hold her own. Why hadn’t she asked her to come with her? As a—a guide. Or a guard, or a friend, or… whatever they weren’t calling whatever it was they’d fallen into.

  “Blop?”

  Runa sighed. “I would have gone with her,” she said in an undertone. It was the first time she’d spoken since she told Tam and Corvin to mind their own business the day before. It was the first time she’d spoken in anything but a growl in almost two days.

  Her throat hurt. Her chest did, too, but there was another reason for that.

  “She knew that, right?” she asked the little sprite, as though it would know the answer. “She just needed to ask. She couldn’t even trust me to do that? I trusted her to—”

  To what? She scoffed at herself. She trusted Severine enough to admit she didn’t know what lamination meant, so Severine should trust her enough to ask her to risk her own skin on a job that Severine had never trusted her enough to tell her anything but stories about?

  Runa’s biggest moment of vulnerability with Severine had been about bread. Of course Severine hadn’t trusted her to tell her about anything actually important.

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  That made sense.

  It was fine.

  It was fine.

  She waited for the bread to bake, and cool, and she cleaned, and she prepped for the next lot of work. The familiar rhythm soothed her.

  She loaded up the cart, took a deep breath, and headed out.

  “Morning, Junilla,” she said as she pushed open the tavern door.

  Junilla blinked at her from behind the counter. “Lost gods,” she said mildly. “Was that a greeting? In words?”

  The urge to grunt and storm off was strong, but Runa shouldered it aside. “That hard to believe?”

  “I’ve had half the village banging on my door, telling me to do something about you.”

  “They’re that worried about losing another baker?”

  “They’re that worried about you.” Junilla narrowed her eyes at Runa, who hadn’t managed to shoulder away a snort of derision before it got out. “Oh, forgive me. I thought you were in a better mood.”

  “This is my better mood.”

  “Thanks be I’ve got experience dealing with Corvin, or I might take that personally.” She grabbed an armful of loaves and gestured for Runa to follow her with the rest of them, through to the kitchen. “Tam filled me in, though I’m given to understand from other sources that most of what he filled me in on was guesswork and wild tales translated from you growling at him from the cellar.”

  “That’s… close, actually.” Runa helped her stack the loaves on a shelf, ready to be served with dinner that night.

  “Our priestess up and left in the middle of the night. No word to you, and no idea when she’ll be back?”

  Runa sighed and fished the note out from her pocket, where she’d been worrying over it. The edges were worn to tatters, but it was still legible.

  Junilla read it over, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “Not a lot of detail.”

  “I’m worried.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “But why didn’t she tell me before she left? I could have gone with her. I’m useful here, but I’m not vital. You all got on without a baker before I arrived, and I could—I could help.”

  Junilla was wearing a strange expression. “I don’t think she wanted you to.”

  “What? Why not?”

  She sighed. “She’s not here to tell you, so I will. How much do you know about Severine’s priestly duties?”

  “Uh, she looks after the swords, and gives them to the people they’re meant for? It can be dangerous.” She was sure about that. “And she can’t give it up.”

  “She was tricked into it.” Junilla pulled a bottle from a cupboard and poured them both a cup of something cool and red.

  “What?!”

  “Have you eaten yet, or did you just get up before the dawn and work selflessly and tirelessly without a thought for your own body’s health? I thought so. Wait while I find some eggs and cheese.”

  “You can’t just—what do you mean, she was tricked into it?”

  “I mean she was offered a way to escape everything else her life had forced onto her—marriage to a prince who’d already given up on keeping her alive, a mother-in-law commanded by her king to kill the new bride on her wedding night…” Junilla waved an absent hand. “And she took it without asking any useful questions first, like What does the job entail? and Exactly how is this meant to help me, again? She’s lucky it did help. She escaped me and my husband and my useless step-son. And she’s been paying the bill ever since.”

  “She became a priestess to escape you?”

  “I did a lot of chasing over rooftops in those days. And I suppose that’s part of why she didn’t ask many questions. She must have been afraid I would catch up.” Junilla folded her arms and leaned back against the counter, her lips pursed. “Not that I knew what she’d taken on then, any more than she did. I looked into it after she left. Before I made my own escape.” She stretched her neck, making it crack, and the cleaver she always wore at her belt gleamed in the firelight. “My husband’s ancestors kept excellent libraries, back from the time when everyone was still wondering what the gods were up to, and where they might have gone. All the new cults that cropped up, before the Skeleton War put an end to most people’s piety. The priesthood of enchanted blades was one of them.”

  “She said there wasn’t a god involved.”

  “Only the swords, and whatever ancient magic ties them to their fates, and their priest to them.” Junilla stirred the porridge pot. “Maybe that’s all it takes to make a god. Enough swords. The important thing is that she’s tied to them. She can’t not be the priestess of the blades, not unless she does what the last guy did to her, and tricks someone else into taking the job.”

  Runa frowned at her. “I thought it was only passed on when the last priest died.”

  “Oh? She told you that, did she?”

  Runa’s frown deepened. Had Severine told her that? Or had Runa assumed, and Severine had taken the story and run with it?

  “But if she could rid herself of the priesthood like that, then—”

  “You would have taken it, to spare her?” Junilla’s eyes sharpened.

  “Yes!”

  “And I bet she knew that, too.” Junilla sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Listen to yourself, Runa. You think Severine would have let you give up everything you actually wanted out of life? Severine is a priestess who tears people away from the lives they know. She gave me this.” Junilla tossed the cleaver. “I’d known her a handful of hours, and she changed my world.”

  “With that?”

  She waved the cleaver again. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking, something like this would help with the murdering, but actually, it let me see things in a different light. It brought me out here, where I could build a life we're both happy with.”

  “Both of you?” Runa asked uneasily. Had she abandoned the theory that Junilla had done away with the old baker too easily, after all?

  “Sure. Me, because I get to do what I like and import a new lover each season. And—” Junilla shrugged. “It's a cleaver. It likes to chop. Doesn't much care what it's chopping, and it has a lot to do around here. I don't suppose whichever of Severine's little blades liked the look of you could be fobbed off with something like that, though.”

  Runa thought of Bloodburster, its muttering lust for death. “No.”

  “Shame.” Junilla's eyes softened. “I'm sure she wants to be here. But sometimes fate takes you other places.”

  Or bending other people’s fates takes you there, Runa thought to herself.

  “And sometimes it brings you to a sad sack of a woman who’d put her own neck under the knife if it saved your pretty one, and you feel guilty enough about it to run away,” Junilla murmured with scorching dryness. Runa was still processing that when she added, You don’t have any idea where she might have gone?”

  Runa shook her head.

  Junilla sucked at her lips. “I might be able to help. I’m expecting someone before the harvest festival—he’s good with spells. He might be able to sort you out with a tracking charm. But Runa—”

  “I know.” Runa tried not to let her shoulders visibly slump. “She might not want to be found.”

  ***

  Talking to Junilla hadn’t helped. Knowing more made Runa feel worse.

  She couldn’t help.

  Severine hadn’t let her help.

  She lay on the stone floor that night, letting the cold soak up the knots in her back before she got started adding new ones in.

  She had no way of knowing where Severine was. No way of knowing if she was safe, or hurt, or—

  Or whether she wanted to come home when she was finished distracting her chorus of nagging swords from pressing a murderous fate into Runa’s hands.

  Home. No escaping the fact that was what Pothollow was, now. Not the closest thing to home since she left the place she grew up, but the thing itself. Her own home.

  Her place. The place Severine had seen her in, so happily settled, and had chosen for her not to pry her out of it.

  Damn it.