The one thing to make things worse than knowing why Severine had left, was everyone else knowing, too.

  She wasn’t sure what cued her in. Was it the sudden, aggravating kindness? The painfully sympathetic looks? The way Widow Tremblewood kept patting her sadly on the arm when they passed in the street?

  Maybe she should jump right back into the Cauldron.

  She went up to the Rim when she wasn’t working, anyway. And not just to avoid how nice everyone was being.

  The Sweetmeadow was slowly retreating, peeling away from the Rim as a patch of bog oozed in next door. Tam wouldn’t be pleased, though Corvin might be. It was years back, but she was sure she’d run some collection jobs for an apothecary who used plants from the bog for something or other.

  And that was as much detail as her brain was willing to dredge up, because most of it was focused on Severine.

  And Bloodburster.

  The gods left long ago, and seven mortals followed in their footsteps, to find their thrones and take them for their own. Dwarves and humans, dragons and nymphs…

  ...and one troll, forsaking his song for a silence without end.

  Severine had hidden truth after truth from her, and every time she uncovered a new lie, Runa hadn’t bothered to search for more. That had been stupid of her. But even now, she couldn’t blame Severine for any of it.

  Why? Because of a pretty face? Because she felt sorry for the exhaustion Severine hid behind her laughter and shining smiles?

  No.

  Because Runa had lied too, every step of the way.

  She put her hands over her face and groaned.

  Everyone knew the Blood Lord, the cruellest of the Deathless. A troll from the frozen north, with a frozen heart. He was the first of the Seven to look out upon the world with undying eyes and decide to just up and murder everyone alive.

  The others had got there too, in the end, but he was the first.

  And everyone knew his sword, too. Bloodburster. The hideous blade that screamed death as it cut through the air, and left the earth burned and shattered behind it.

  A sword with rubies set into its hilt, the colour of the blood it hungered for.

  Runa sat on the edge of the Cauldron as the sun went down, staring into the enchanted volcano that hid the last resting place of the worst of the Deathless.

  The lich whose tomb had broken through the Cauldron beneath her feet.

  The lich who’d brought Severine into her life.

  Bloodburster sought its master, and when the priestess of the blades had finally given in to the bloodthirsty greatsword, and tried to leave it next to its long-undead wielder, fate had served her up an alternative.

  Runa.

  Runa, who had run away from all the glory and responsibility her parents’ worlds offered her, only to have fate offer her up on a bloody platter for something far, far worse.

  She stared at the shifting landscape.

  What was she going to do about that?

  Run away again?

  But it wouldn’t just be running away. It would be leaving the problem to someone else. No one died because she couldn’t raise her own island. The world didn’t fear a return of the Skeleton Wars because she hopped on a vagrant curse rather than sit on a snowy peak and sing to the stars.

  This wasn’t the sort of fate she could run away from if she cared about other people getting hurt. And she didn’t want to run away. Because Bloodburster wanted her, and that meant Severine would chase her, eyes glossy silver and nothing that was her behind them, trapped by her holy duty.

  She needed to fix this. For Severine. For herself. A permanent fix, not the delaying tactics they’d pretended to each other would keep working.

  And she knew why Severine had left, now. Because she couldn’t see any way through it.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Severine had been searching for treasure on a map, that last day. And the seeking knife hadn’t given her anywhere to find it except Pothollow.

  Bloodburster wanted death. It was kind of its whole thing. You didn’t get a sword with a name like that because it would accept chopping vegetables, like Junilla’s cleaver.

  She baked until there was nothing left in her order list. Everything turned out perfectly. The rolls that were meant to be light and fluffy were light and fluffy. The loaves that were meant to be dense and rich were dense and rich.

  The dragon moons were perfect.

  The bakery smelled like heaven, and Runa struggled to see the point of it.

  Severine hadn’t asked for her help, because she thought Runa was a baker. Runa had thought she was a baker, too, only it turned out she was just a convenient pair of hands for the fire sprite to work its magic through.

  So what was the point? The bakery didn’t need her. The town didn’t need her. Nobody needed her.

  And if she wasn’t needed, if she didn’t have a reason to tie herself down, where might she float off to?

  She worried over the future until the sun went down. Then she picked her way back down into town, through the gate that hadn’t kept her out and wouldn’t keep anything else out, either. She went into the bakery and closed the door behind her.

  And then she checked the fire and made the next day’s dough, because whatever else tomorrow might bring, people would still need to eat.

  She jammed herself into the window seat and closed her eyes, because she needed to rest if she was going to heat the oven early in the morning.

  “Blop.”

  Runa woke to two sizzling eyes glaring into her own. Nobody in Particular had climbed up on her face as she slept.

  She checked the window. It was still dark, and the outside sounded like it was still night. Those things didn’t necessarily mean the same thing in the Cauldron but she wasn’t in the Cauldron. She was in Pothollow.

  Nobody never woke her at night.

  Suddenly alert, she sat up. “Something wrong?”

  Nobody in Particular clung to her nose, spitting with indignation. “Blop!”

  Oh. Okay. Nothing was wrong. Fine. “What’s got your tail in a twist then?” she grumbled.

  “Blop!”

  “Trying to smother me in my sleep isn’t going to make my mood any better.”

  Nobody rolled its eyes. It wasn’t trying to smother her in her sleep. It was trying to get her attention before she started stomping around ignoring everyone again.

  It had something important it had been hiding from her. And it had decided it was time it came clean.

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” she told it. Did everyone in this village have some sort of deep, dark secret? Even Nobody?

  The volcano sprite wriggled up onto her head and curled up between her horns. “Blop,” it declared, and pointed through the door of the pantry to where the mother-of-bread jar stood on a low shelf.

  “What about it?”

  “Blop.”

  Runa heaved herself upright and stomped over. She’d had to move the mother-of-bread from the small jar to a much bigger one a few weeks back. The stuff had grown too much to fit in the old one. And she was using more of it, so that was a good thing.

  Except it wasn’t half-full or more with the strange and bubbling concoction she used to make the village’s daily bread. It was exactly as she’d left it when she finished her work that evening: almost empty, just a handful or maybe a finger-scraping more of the bubbly stuff.

  She swore. “What’s happened to it?”

  Nobody shuffled its paws on her scalp. Nothing had happened to it. That was the point.

  “Well, why isn’t it growing back?”

  The volcano sprite waddled down her forehead far enough to stare into her eyes.

  It stared for a long, long time.

  Long enough for her to realise that one of the noises she associated with nighttime at the bakery was missing. A noise from inside the house, not outside. How had she not—oh, no, actually, she knew why she hadn’t noticed. Because most of the house-noises had been Severine-noises, and she hadn’t wanted to notice how much she missed them. But these particular noises had been part of daily or nightly life in the bakery before Severine even arrived: the gentle clinking of ceramic jars, the scrape-scuttle of small claws, the glug of water. The noises the sprite made when it wasn’t bothering her, so she’d never bothered it.

  She thought about how even when the bakery had seemed deserted, the volcano sprite had been here. Keeping house. Watching and waiting. The sole living thing in the cold stone building.

  Well. Other than the mother-of-bread. That was a living thing as well, she supposed. Two living things. One alive, and one… kept alive.

  The volcano sprite usually communicated by pushing suggestions at her mind. This time, it held back, and let—or forced—her to trudge her way to her own conclusions.

  Glossy black eyes blinked at her. “Blop.”

  “The mother-of-bread doesn’t grow itself back,” she replied slowly. “Not by itself. You fix it up each night.”

  “Blop.”

  “No wonder you looked like me like I was an idiot when I talked about it growing like mushrooms.”

  The little creature shrugged. That wasn’t important. What was important, was that it was time she learned how to look after it herself.

  The volcano sprite pushed her forwards, using her own horns as a tiller. It showed her how to measure out a mixture of flour and warmed water, and add that to the scraping of mother-of-bread left in the bottom of the jar.

  And mix it up a bit in there. That was important too, apparently.

  They both stared at the jar.

  “That’s it?” Runa said at last. “That’s the big secret?”

  Nobody in Particular puffed itself up. “Blop!”

  “And now I know,” she repeated.

  The volcano sprite waited. She got the feeling it expected something more from her. “Thanks?”

  It nodded uncertainly, then scuttled down her shoulder and onto a shelf to get a better look at her.

  She turned away so it couldn’t, and stomped back to bed.

  So her reaction wasn’t the reaction the volcano sprite expected. It wasn’t what she expected, either, even though she only had a dim, numb idea of what that reaction should be. She should have been excited to learn something new about baking. Exasperated or grumpy that the volcano sprite had hidden it for so long—though she could understand why it had. It couldn’t hand over the key to the whole process before it trusted her completely, which must mean it trusted her now or at least felt bad enough for her that it wanted to do something nice.

  And she just felt… tired.

  Not the sort of tired that sleeping would help.

  Just as she was folding herself back into her not-a-bed, someone knocked on the door.