About to launch into threats or arguments or whatever she’d planned to say, Radane halted. “I am sorry? ‘Okay,’ with no further objection?” She glared at Larran. “Why have you been blocking me for the past half hour if she has no objection?”
He shrugged. “If it were your house, I’d do the same. It’s what good neighbors do. You didn’t have permission to enter her house, and now you do.”
He must have never told Radane how we met.He hadn’t been so scrupulous about private property then. Kiela resisted a smirk. “Can I get you a glass of water?” she offered Radane. “Or jam on toast, though I do have to charge for that. Business, you know.”
Glaring at her, Radane marched past Larran. He quickly moved out of her way to allow her inside. Larran met Kiela’s eyes, and she mouthed,Thank you.
Kiela slipped inside, and she and Larran stood by the sink while Radane searched the cottage, beginning with every shelf in the jam shop. Finishing those shelves, she spotted the closed door to the bedroom and strode across the cottage. Kiela silently prayed to the memory of her parents that they’d taken every book, every scrap of paper, and every note with the crates.Of course we did.She wouldn’t have been given responsibility for the entire Natural Sciences section of the Great Library if she had ever proven negligent with details. She’d never once misplaced a book or manuscript—why would she think she’d start now?
Radane rooted through the bedroom while Kiela and Larran stood in the doorway, watching as she flung Kiela’s parents’ quilts, looked under the mattress, and probed at each board in the floor to see if any were loose.
“What are you looking for?” Larran asked mildly.
“Hiding places,” Radane said shortly.
“I have nothing to hide,” Kiela said.
“Someone on this island does,” Radane said, “and I will not rest until I find it.”
That . . . wasn’t good. “I can assure you—”
Radane stomped out of the bedroom, pushing between Kiela and Larran. She began opening every cabinet in the kitchen. She pulled out Kiela’s parents’ cookbook. “Aha! What is this?” She slammed it down on the table.
Kiela started forward. “Careful. That’s—”
Radane flipped through the pages so fast that one ripped.
“It’s my parents’!” Kiela ached to grab it out of her hands. To be that careless with a book, especially a book that had belonged to her parents, the memory of what they’d written, with love, with exhaustion, with whatever they’d felt when they’d recorded those recipes. “A cookbook. Just a cookbook.”
“They appear to be spells.” Radane slapped her hand on an open page.
“Those are a list of ingredients for cakes and soups.”
“They could be in code.”
“If they are, I don’t know it,” Kiela snapped. “And my parents are dead. That’s my legacy you’re handling. Show some care.”
Radane slammed the cookbook shut. “I will be confiscating it.”
Kiela’s hands curled into fists, and she wanted to yell. No one took books without her permission, especially someone who did not know how to handle them properly. Outside, the wind blew a vine over the window, and a shadow momentarily crossed the kitchen. It reminded her of Caz, and she exhaled slowly.
The cookbook isn’t what I need to protect,she reminded herself.
“Confiscate it if you must, but I expect it to be returned in the same condition,” Kiela said. “It’s brittle, and it’s one of a kind. It must be treated with care.”
Radane tossed her fire-red hair. “I will do what I must to fulfill my duty.”
Larran asked gently, “What is it you’re afraid of?”
Recoiling, Radane glared at him. “How dare you. I am an imperial inspector. When I speak, when I act, when I do my duty, I am embodying the glory and power of the empire.”
“In my experience, when one of my merhorses is aggressive, tossing around his weight, acting like he’s the leader of the herd when he isn’t, it’s out of fear.” His voice was gentle, and Kiela thought this must be how he tamed his merhorses, with kindness and understanding. “I’ve seen young merhorses full of spitfire attack ocean waves. The water just breaks around them.”
“Are you saying I’m like an aggressive fish?”
“Merhorses, or more technically ‘hippocampi,’ are mammals,” Kiela supplied. When they both looked at her, she said, “Marine mammals. Not fish. It’s how they’re classified based primarily on how they breathe combined with how they bear young. Fish lay eggs.”
Larran looked pleased that she knew this.
