She didnottell him he was holding it upside down.
“You want to experiment?”
“Yes, preferably in a dead greenhouse. If you can pick one that’s far away from any other living greenhouse…” Just in case she was wrong about the effects of the spell.
Yarrow nodded and put down the spell. “Do you know what ingredients you need?”
She presented him with a list.
“Are the spells dangerous?”
Every spell could be dangerous, if you made a mistake. There was a reason that the emperor had outlawed unauthorized magic. He may have taken his edict too far, but the initial caution was rational, which was why there hadn’t been more than a handful of protestsfrom scholars and other like-minded people when the laws were passed. Well, that and the fact that the imperial guard had cracked down on all protests with overwhelming force. Terlu shuddered as she remembered the fate of some early protesters: turned to ice in the summer. They’d melted into the canals in the heat of the afternoon. “Yes. Possibly.”
Yarrow grunted. “I’ll ask Lotti to keep the other plants away.” He pulled on his coat. “Meet me by the roses. I’ll have the ingredients with me.”
She put on her coat too. “Can I keep the leftover honey butter?”
“Sure.”
“Do you care if you don’t get the pot back?”
Yarrow shrugged. “Do whatever you want with it.”
“Thanks.” She covered it and stuffed it in her pocket.
He stared for a moment, and she had the sense that he was struggling between his curiosity and his desire not to make extra conversation. “Is it a spell ingredient?”
That would be a lovely coincidence. “No. I just thought the dragons would like it.”
“You don’t need to feed them,” Yarrow said. “They have everything they need in the sunflower maze. Laiken ensured they were self-sufficient.”
“I know, but it might make them happy.”
He smiled. “Okay.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She tried to read what he was thinking, but she couldn’t guess.
“Let me know whenever you want more honey butter,” he said.
A few minutes later, Terlu solved the chrysanthemum puzzle on the door and let herself into the sunflower maze. “Hello?” she called. The pine trees at the start of the maze were already parted. As soon as she stepped forward, the sunflowers flopped their heads toward her.
Approaching the first intersection of the maze, she opened the pot of honey butter. “Hello, dragons? I thought you might like this, since you liked the honeycomb.”
She held it up on the palm of her hand.
A silver-scaled little dragon soared in a spiral above her. It cried in a caw, and it was joined by three others.
She didn’t move, keeping her hand upraised.
The silver dragon landed hawklike on her forearm, its talons digging into her coat, and she was grateful for the thick wool of the sleeve. A falconer’s glove would be a good investment, she thought. She wondered if she could request one the next time the supply runner returned to Belde. The dragon dipped its snout into the pot of butter and licked with a silver tongue.
It let out a metallic catlike purr.
Lifting off, it flew into the air, and a second dragon, with green-and-blue scales, landed on her arm and licked the butter. “You can take it all,” Terlu offered. With her free hand, she scooted the pot closer to the dragon.
