“Exactly,” George said. “A holly dragon is indispensable. People will pay any price to get one. And around that time, all of the servants and clerks and apprentices have gotten their Midwinter bonus, so they have more cash to spare and might be willing to spend a little extra on the last holly dragon in town. That’s one of the things that happened when you canceled the taxes, Your Majesty. Everyone had a bit more cash in their pockets than they usually did, so they rushed out to buy things that they usually wouldn’t. Then there weren’t enough of the things that they wanted—like holly dragons—to go around, so the merchants raised their prices. When it happens across a whole country, they call it inflation, and it can cause problems when it happens very quickly. Then there was the drought at the same time, of course, which meant there was less grain to make into bread, which made everything worse.”
“Oh,” Bradley said, and grabbed one of the books he’d been looking at to hunt down the chapter that had talked about inflation. He stared down at the page. It was almost as incomprehensible as before, but now, at least, there was a word in it that he could understand. “It makes sense whenyouexplain it.”
“You explained it to yourself,” George said. “I just helped. You needed something you could picture in your head, that’s all, instead of a bunch of dry academic abstractions.”
“The holly dragon,” Bradley said. “I understood the holly dragon.” His face was getting warm again. “Thank you, George.”
George inclined his head. It wasn’t quite a bow. “You’re welcome, Your Majesty.”
Bradley licked his lip. “Please call me Bradley.”
“Bradley,” George repeated, and looked him in the eye. Bradley’s face grew hotter.
In the rafters above them, a small gray mouse gave a nod of approval.
A Digression on the Subject of Fairness, and the Lack Thereof
Once upon a time, about fifty years ago, Gretsella—the witch of Brigandale, who was just starting out in the witchcraft industry and hadn’t yet settled on reasonable prices as her unique selling proposition—moved into a cottage not very far away from her mother’s. This, it turned out, was a mistake.
She’d tried her luck in the capital, but it hadn’t worked out. The rents were wildly unreasonable, and there were too many other established witches around for a young aspiring witch to really get a toehold in the industry. So she’d moved back home to Brigandale, a decision she quickly started to regret.
Her mother was the problem. She refused to take Gretsella seriously, even if she kept insisting that shedid,of course I take you seriously, Greta. She kept calling GretsellaGreta, despite Gretsella reminding her over and over again thatit’s Gretsellanow, Mother. Greta was the name that her mother had given her, after her grandmother.She was such a wonderful woman, Gretsella’s mother would say.When you were a baby, I used to cry, sometimes, thinking about how unfair it was that she never got to meet you.The first Greta had been a wonderful woman, Gretsella was told, because she was gentle, and kind, and made the best pies in the world, and was adored by children and animals. These were not the ways in which Gretsella wanted to be wonderful. She didn’t want to be another nice little Greta having a nice little life in the cottage down the way. She’d told her mother that ahundredtimes, but her mother kept calling her Greta half the time anyway, and claiming that it had been an accident. Gretsella’s mother also kept doing things like asking her when she thought she might get married, and whenever Gretsella would remind her mother that she had a career as a witch, her mother would say something likeI don’t see why a witch can’t find a nice man to settle down with, and Gretsella would snap at her mother, who would leave Gretsella’s cottage in tears, as if she hadn’t started the whole argument in the first place.
It was all so infuriating that Gretsella would sometimes refuse to speak to her mother for months on end, until eventually she’d give in and drop by her mother’s house with the excuse that she needed to borrow a few eggs or wanted her apple cake recipe so she’d have something to bring to the next meeting of her coven. It was on one of these occasions that Gretsella walked into her mother’s kitchen, got a good look at her mother’s face, and knew immediately that something was very, very wrong.
Once upon a time, in the Great Forest of Brigandale in the magical Kingdom of Evermore, a young witch found out that her mother was dying of cancer, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. In every time and every place, there are some things that even magic can’t do much to change.
Gretsella’s mother died only a few weeks after that. No one ever called her Greta again.
About thirty years after the day of her mother’s funeral, Gretsella held a wriggling baby boy in her arms, pressed her nose into his soft black hair, and said,It isn’t fair, Bradley. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair.Her shoulders shook, and her voice cracked, but there was no one there to say if her eyes were red and puffy later that day, or if her voice was raspy, or if she struggled to get through her evening’s chores. By that time, she had spent thirty years without anyone who would notice or care about hertears.
Chapter 7.5
In Which Gretsella Enlists the Help of a Villain
After they’d shaken hands to establish the beginning of Lady Cordelia’s new career, Gretsella asked another question. “Since you’re so sensible,” she said, “you might be able to help me with another little problem. Do you know anyone who might be able to get the Treasury into order? I suspect that the last person to chew through the palace accounts was a rat.”
“The last man employed to chew through them was a rat as well,” Lady Cordelia said. “Mr. Kedge. He was the master of the Treasury before your son took over. A very clever fellow. Good at his job.”
“And where is he now?” Gretsella asked. “He hasn’t left town, I hope?”
“That would be very unlikely,” Lady Cordelia said. “The last I heard, he was in the palace dungeon.”
Gretsella blinked. “Why? What did he do?”
“Ask your son,” Lady Cordelia said. “He’s the one who put him there.”
“I think I’ll do that,” Gretsella said, and then said her goodbyes, though not before extracting a promise from Lady Cordelia that she would attend a meeting at the palace the following afternoon.
Gretsella headed straight back to the palace and from there set out to locate her son. He wasn’t in the great hall, nor was he in his kingly bedchamber. Gretsella cast a Spell of Location and followed the loud, irritating clanging sounds to the stableyard, where she found two fully armored men mounted on horses and galloping at each other at top speed. Gretsella couldn’t help but feel a grudging sense of respect for the sheer level of almost witchly dedication to noise, chaos, and the heady potential of technically-accidental-yet-surely-inevitable maiming that was being exhibited before her. “Stop that right now!” she called out after she’d spent a few minutes watching them with the sort of mingled disgust and fascination that she normally reserved for the sight of an owl hacking up a pellet.
The armored knights didn’t stop, possibly because they couldn’t hear her through the soup tureens they were wearing on their heads. Gretsella directed her attention to the horses. “Stop running back and forth like thatthis instant,” she said. “You look completely ridiculous.”
The horses stopped running, looking frankly relieved that someone had finally pointed out the obvious and allowed themto give up on this whole pointless endeavor. One of them started snuffling at a small patch of grass that had somehow survived all of the galloping.
The two mounted personages did a bit of light spurring and gee-upping, trying to encourage their horses back into motion. The horses placidly ignored these attempts. Eventually, the closest knight spotted Gretsella. “Oh, Mother,” he said, and opened up his visor, revealing the familiar handsome face and baffled expression of her only son. “Why couldn’t you have just asked us to stop?”
“I tried,” she said. “You couldn’t hear me. And I have to speak to you about something.”
