Page 67 of Homegrown Magic

I’m sorry. For it all.

—M

She wants to say more. She really does, but what else could she say? That she loves them? That she’ll always keep a place in the cottage for them, for as long as she can keep the cottage? That more than anything else, she wishes the two of them had never come to Ashaway? That their parents are scheming spiders and both of them got caught up in the web? That maybe, if she figures out the Natural Caster Potion and settles her parents’ debts, things can change?

No.

Although she gave the Claunecks their heir back, she’s not sure if Menorath will keep her word, or how, and whether she’ll ever truly be free of their clutches.

All she knows now is she must live with the hard truths of her own life, and without Yael at her side.

27

Yael

Yael’s first day with the company passes thusly:

They rise with the estate—or rather, with its masters—meeting their parents in the informal dining hall for a quick and silent breakfast of smoked fish, heavy dark bread, and watered wine. Dozens of servants have been busy since before dawn, cleaning and preparing meals and lighting fires in the grates of the many rooms that remain cool even in summertime, thanks to the slick gray stonework of the manor house. They always complete their chores early, then scatter until Baremon leaves for the office, as Yael’s father prefers that the staff remain largely unseen. When Yael lived here as a child, some days the sun would rise and set without them passing a single soul within the labyrinthine halls.

After breakfast, the family’s gold-crowned ebony carriage ferries them from the estate, up the Queens’ Road, and to the Copper Court to begin their workday. The center of industry in Harrow shines as though built from the very coins within the capital’s mint. Each office, shopfront, and merchant’s club is built of blush-colored stones topped with copper-tiled roofs. One has to shield one’s eyes to look up at them. The Clauneck Company is the tallest of them all, like a lighthouse presiding over an ocean of molten copper.

Yael is put on the fifth of ten levels (ten levels aboveground, that is) in the Hall of Exchange. It is a long, goldenwood-paneled chamber with Uncle Mikhil’s office stationed at the far end. His office has tall, narrow shelves of leather-bound tomes—purely for ornament—and tall, narrow windows with scarlet and gold glass panes. Yael occupies a desk in the outer chamber, acting as a sort of river lock in the channel between their uncle and the dozen number crunchers and errand runners pooled together at the front of the hall.

Hour after hour, Yael is brought records documenting the exchange of unminted silver ore and gold dust for the copper, silver, and gold denaris minted within Harrow, as well as the exchange of Harrow’s coinage for Perpignan’s knygar, or Yang’s guarani, and so on. Each record must be cross-checked with the Clauneck Company’s statements of account, allowing for fluctuations in the values of the coinage, to ensure that the totals match, that no spellwork has escaped detection, that no fraudulent pieces have slipped through. Compiling these reports is the job of the underlings down the hall, but it’s Yael’s job to cross-check them. When necessary, they pause long enough to run to the Records Library to grab some relevant file or ledger; only Claunecks and a select few highly ranked employees are trusted to enter, and Yael almost welcomes the task for an excuse to stretch their legs and rest their eyes before it’s back to the reports.

When work is done for the day, Yael rides to a nearby merchant’s club in the Golden Court with Baremon and Mikhil for a business dinner. Yael is seldom called upon to contribute, but as Baremon explained it in the carriage, their presence paints the picture of a family business—a boon for customers and for potential customers who consider themselves moral, family-loving folk. When Baremon does signal for them to speak, it’s to leave their dinner guests charmed and laughing over some recounted escapade from Yael’s time abroad in Perpignan or Locronan, or to do some pretty bit of magic for entertainment’s sake. They’re never asked to offer an opinion on anything important, which makes it easy for Yael not to have any opinions.

At the end of the day, lying in their old bedchambers, Yael can’t say that they’re happy on this estate, or in this city, or in this life. But they know it’s where they ought to be, and that this is the life they should be living. When they wonder why, and where that knowledge comes from, a deep pain flares up inside of them—as though the truth is lodged beneath their bones or buried in the meat of their heart, unreachable without sharper knives and stronger magic than they can wield, even having visited Clauneck’s altar this very morning.

So the next morning, they do it all again, and the morning after that.

Time passes. Bloomfield begins to feel like a memory from childhood—pleasant but faint, and ultimately lost to them forever now that they’ve finally grown up.

28

Margot

Everything about the cottage is the same as Margot left it. Except, of course, that Yael is gone. Margot stands in the doorway, early-morning light streaming in, and considers the small room in front of her.

While they lived in Bloomfield, Yael had slept at the inn up until the last few nights, but they were frequently in Margot’s cottage before that for a cup of tea, which Margot always made, or to bring a treat from the bakery, or to borrow one of Margot’s books. Their scarf—a green one Margot had knitted in preparation for fall, even as the weather warmed by the day—is still draped over the back of a chair, awaiting cooler nights. The small strawberry plant they’d proudly grown from a runner sat on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. The last teacup they’d drunk from that morning before leaving for Ashaway was still on the kitchen table beside Margot’s.

Her eyes linger on the butter-gold teacup painted with bumblebee designs. Yael had loved that particular cup for some reason. They would sit at Margot’s table, hands wrapped around it, eyes sparkling as they told Margot a story or teased her gently about the lumpy pancakes she could never quite get right, though they claimed they preferred her pancakes to Clementine’s.

Margot swallows thickly.

“You are not going to get sentimental over a teacup,” Margot commands herself as she marches into the cottage, closing the door behind her. “Or Yael gods-be-warned Clauneck.”

She grabs the cup, fighting the urge to throw it against the wall. Or to rest her lips against the edge where Yael’s lips had been not that many days ago.

Making a disgusted noise at both herself and the ring of mold growing inside the cup, she sets it into the sink and drops down in the closest chair. A poof of dust rises up. Really? Dust? After just a week of being gone? Ridiculous. Margot’s bones ache from the all-night coach ride from Ashaway, and though she managed not to weep as she climbed into the nearly full carriage headed for Olde Post, she never did get to sleep, and had to walk the last two miles from the Queens’ Road through the outpost walls and to the doorstep of the cottage. Now a deep weariness sets upon her.

Did Yael sleep last night? she wonders. What are they doing now? Have they effortlessly slipped back into life with the Claunecks? Do they think of her as much as she thinks of them?

Will she ever see them again?

Margot plucks the everlasting daisy from her pocket, resting it on the table and swallowing against the lump in her throat.

It doesn’t matter. Margot simply can’t afford to let her thoughts linger on Yael Clauneck when she has so much work to do.