“Meep,” the cactus added, poking themself out from beneath Caz’s leaves.
Now it’s over.
Captain Varrik gaped at them.
Running down the dock, Tobin skidded to a stop in front of them. “Caz! You’re in town!” He boasted to the captain, “This is my friend, Caz. He’s aChlorophytum comosum—see, I learned how to say it.”
Bryn called from the foot of the dock, “Tobin, come help with the nets!”
Tobin groaned and then trotted back. Over his shoulder, he said, “Caz, come to Aunt Bryn’s bakery sometime. I’ll sneak you pastries.”
All of them watched the boy scamper away down the dock to rejoin Bryn and the rest of the Pine Cone Coven. Side by side, her friends stood at the end of the dock, watching, waiting, ready—and Kiela realized they’d sent Tobin intentionally, to show Captain Varrik that she, Larran, and the plants weren’t alone.Or to remind me.
She had no idea what they intended to do if she needed to be rescued, but she wasn’t going to let it come to that.I won’t let Captain Varrik take any of them.
In the moments it had taken Tobin to cross the dock, Captain Varrik had composed himself again. She couldn’t read his face to gauge his reaction to the presence of a sentient plant who was clearly not native to Caltrey when Radane was supposedly the only recent arrival.He must know we lied, even if he doesn’t know about what or why.Now if she could just think of what to say to explain everything in a way that would make the imperials leave . . .
Before either Kiela or Captain Varrik could speak, Caz informed him, “I was created illegally by a librarian in the Great Library of Alyssium. I was granted citizenship, but she was arrested and executed.”
“Transformed into wood,” Kiela clarified.
“Executed,” Caz said firmly. “She couldn’t speak or move, and when the library burned, she couldn’t call for help or run to safety. If she hadn’t burned in the fire, she would have rotted where she was placed, as her body of lifeless wood decomposed—and through it all, she was aware of her fate, helpless and trapped and forgotten.”
Kiela stared at him. Heneverspoke about his creator. She’d never asked, not wanting to upset him with talk of what neither of them could change or fix. She hadn’t realized he’d understood her fate when the North Reading Room burned.
“Her name was Terlu Perna, and she was kind and soft and had a fuzzy voice. She wouldn’t squash bugs because she didn’t want their families to be sad and lonely. But she was tortured and killed for giving me life, and she told me before they took her that she didn’t regret what she’d done for a second. She regretted that she wasn’t sneakier about it, obviously, but she told me that I was the best thing she ever did, and that if the emperor and his sorcerers didn’t see that, they were small, selfish people who didn’t care about anyone but themselves.”
Kneeling next to Caz, Kiela said softly, “I didn’t know she made you on purpose.”
“She did,” Caz said. He wrapped a tendril around Meep, as if for comfort. Meep pressed closer to him. “She was lonely, and she wanted someone to love. She made me out of love, and the empire destroyed her for it.”
“I’m so sorry, Caz.”
“The law against unofficial sorcery doesn’t exist to help people,” Caz said to Varrik. “The revolutionaries were right—yes, I read their pamphlets, and I agree with them. The laws were created to consolidate power among the already powerful, and the people in charge didn’t care who else they hurt. They didn’t care about a lonely librarian who was doing no harm to anyone, just as they didn’t care about thousands of islanders left in the lurch, who are bombarded by storms that their misuse of magic caused.”
Captain Varrik said, “As of now, that law still stands. Please know that I didn’t write the laws, and I have no power to change them.”
Kiela looked from the spider plant to the captain and didn’t know what to say. This felt much bigger than a single spell to stop a storm, or even a bedroom full of illicit books.
Larran jumped in. “But you do have power to choose what you do next, whether to follow orders or your heart,” he said. “You could choose to sail away. You have no direct proof that any illegal spellcasting happened here.”
Standing up, she gawked at him for a moment. He was so nice to everyone that she hadn’t expected him to argue with an imperial captain, even on her behalf. The fact that he did heartened her.We can convince Captain Varrik to do the right thing, if we only can find the right words.As the fake poison berries proved, hewantedto do the right thing—that had to matter, didn’t it?
Mildly, apologetically, Captain Varrik said, “There are flowers in my hair and on my ship. It would require a complete lack of attention to not realize magic was at work, and there are no approved sorcerers on either my ship or on Caltrey.”
Caz pointed out, “You have no proof of who worked this magic.”
“We could, with an investigation,” Captain Varrik said.
“Is that part of your mandate?” Kiela asked. “Your mission is to find the emperor’s heir. Surely your superior officers would deem that more important and wouldn’t like that you delayed your mission to act as an imperial investigator on a minor island.”
“Such a spell could only have been conducted by someone with the knowledge of wind-speaking, which the heir possessed.” Again, he sounded apologetic. “One could argue that investigating this lead is directly related to my mission.”
“Or one could choosenotto argue that,” Kiela pressed. “Yes, you have your mission, but it’s up to you how you fulfill it.” She pitched her voice even softer. “It’s your choice whether there are poison berries or not.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple—”
“Meep,” the cactus said.
