Five: Salt

Master Rahad was bandaged quickly and taken inside the palace before we had a chance to speak further. There wasn’t anything to say, anyway, until I found Mother and she released me from the woodcutters, which sounded so unlikely as to be ridiculous. I would convince her though. I had to. I wasn’t going back to that house, but I would go to the grandmaster’s guildhall, one final time, to find her.

The guildhalls—both the large ones held by Sorpsi and the smaller outpost ones held for the guilds housed in Puget and Eastgate—were only a few roads from the palace, separated by the plaza. I wound around the king’s statue, turned left onto the brick, and again had to weave around people. They were primarily apprentices. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t spot a master, which was weird, because the Queendom of Sorpsi held four guilds, and all of those grandmaster halls were here in this plaza. I didn’t have time to debate the whys of that just now though. Instead, I pushed forward to the woodcutting hall where the grandmaster lived. The building was set back behind the main row, nestled between the master halls for the guild of glass and the carpenter’s guild. The smell of sweetbread floated in the air from the dinner meals, and it was a nice relief from my own odor.

When I made the sharp turn between the two halls, the small woodcutting guild house came into view, dwarfed by the others in both size and stature. Mother was clearly here as her signature need for perfection was stamped on every surface. The ceramic tiling on the roof was perfectly laid. It had been moss-covered and cracking the last time I’d been here. The wood shingles on the walls were new and not yet gray from the sun. A rough lumber delivery was stacked in the covered bay to the right of the house, sorted by grade and still beading moisture from the end grain. Even the saw oil marks on the lumber looked fresh, and the lumber was quartersawn, something Mother always insisted upon.

I took a calming breath as I reached the wood door. Its paint was fresh and bright without a hint of algal growth, and here I was, damp and blood-soaked, shivering, my hair slicked against my head. The palace staff had offered me clothing, but I didn’t want to deal with their questions, and I didn’t want to dawdle either. Still, looking like this, I’d be lucky if Mother let me inside at all. Maybe we could say everything we needed to from the doorway. Maybe she wouldn’t care because now she had dozens of apprentices she could pick from—masters, too, if she wanted, even the grandmaster’s own firstborn daughter. Maybe everything would be all right.

I knocked.

It sounded too loud, set in from the main square as I was. When I looked around, however, there was no one on the street to notice.

No sounds came from inside, so I knocked again. This time, the door swung ajar. I walked in, daylight spilling across the threshold, and stopped just inside.

“Mother?” I called out.

My voice echoed, and the sound chilled me further. The room was bare. Where lathes and saws had once crowded, there were only shadows of sun-damaged wood flooring. The room had been an eating area where the master’s first daughter and his thirteen fosters had shared a meal with Mother and me during our last visit. I’d sorted wood shavings by color, there, with the first daughter as we chatted about our parents and our inevitable inheritance under Sorpsi’s matrilineal inheritance laws. She’d shown me her new carving knife, and we’d doodled our names into the lacquer finish on the bottom of the table. It, too, was gone. The walls were stripped bare of their marquetries and the paneling underneath sanded down and smooth to the touch.

My breath stuttered as I ventured past the threshold. Every room was the same. The three bedrooms were bare and smelled of rough-hewn wood. The outbuilding was scrubbed clean with a hint of lemon. The outdoor workspace didn’t have a single scrap on the floor, not even curls of dust. Woodshops were never this clean.

Mother wasn’t here. And if Mother wasn’t here, if no one was in the grandmaster guildhall, then there wasn’t a grandmaster. Residency was a requirement. Sorpsi held the woodcutter’s guild. Without a grandmaster, and a guildhall, that meant…there wasn’t a guild. We’d lost control, and there’d have to be a census, and the country with the most woodcutters in residence would win the guild, but… I forced myself to take a deep breath. Calm. I needed to work on being calm. They might have just…moved? The guildhall might not have been to Mother’s liking, even after all her improvements. If I could find her before the queen found out and before the treaty talks…

I slapped the wall and cringed. The treaty talks! The census would come around any day now if it hadn’t already passed. If they saw the empty guildhall, the woodcutting guild would be lost to Sorpsi, and the guild secrets along with it. We’d be stuck with…with trade craft.

Where was Mother?!

I moved to the courtyard and slumped to the dirt floor of the outdoor workspace. A thick layer of woodchips had covered it the last time I was here. It had smelled like burnt mahogany. The floor had been streaked with teak oil. It smelled sterile now, and new, and foreign.

Had other guilds suffered the same fate as the woodcutters? The textile guild, perhaps, with the cotton machine that the man had spoken about. That guild was housed in Puget, but still, what about it? Had the woodcutting guildhall closed down, the same as the clothing shop? What manner of machinery would cause that? Would it be machinery, to make a guildhall this clean? This…this suggested magic, and witches, and gods, why did it have to be witches? I’d had enough magic today to last a lifetime.

I gave in to the weight of my eyelids and the dizziness in my head and curled onto my side on the dirt, too tired to go back inside. My mind drifted away from the guildhall, away from the queen’s forest, back to my own bed, somehow intact, and the thick blankets, the warmth of the fire. I could hear ghostly sounds, too, of saws on wood, of hammers, of laughter…

“Sorin? Sorin, what are you doing here?”

I sluggishly pulled from sleep and opened my eyes to a blur of blue and red. The imaginary sounds of saws and gouges faded into the shuffle of boots and the chatter of voices.

I rubbed at my eyes, failing to clear the blurriness away. A woman stood before me, my height, with long black hair braided against her scalp, in fine leathers. She wasn’t wearing her circlet, but she didn’t need to.

Her silhouette was enough.

In my sleep-fogged mind, I had expected to see the apprentices back and working with their handsaws, the treadle lathe spinning, and perhaps even a master expectantly standing over me, a sheet of fine veneer in their hand. Or maybe not a master, but at the very least my mother, annoyed and bemused, covered in wood shavings and leather and demanding to know why I had left Thuja.

Magda wasn’t any of those things. She was the Royal Daughter of Sorpsi, heir to the throne, and she was staring at me as if I were a drunken smith in a shepherd’s guildhall. I caught swirls of red from behind her—Queensguard, no doubt, further in the house—but the yard around me was as empty as when I’d fallen asleep, and the scent of lemon still hung in the air.

“Sorin,” Magda demanded this time, her voice so much deeper than I remembered and laced with authority. I shivered at the formality. It cut deeper than it should have, especially since I was still having a hard time seeing her as anything other than the mischievous child I’d known.

She offered me a hand up, and I took it, my still-damp, bloody clothes clinging to my skin and the cloak wrinkled around me.

“Hello, Royal Daughter,” I managed, swallowing, then squaring my shoulders. “It’s been a long time.”

Magda snorted and put her hands on her hips. “Yes, one could say that. You didn’t think to say hello, apparently, after bringing Master Rahad back to the castle?” She continued to stare expectantly at me, and I pursed my lips, wondering how best to explain. That stare of hers could melt steel if you let it.

How long had it been since we’d stood together like this? Five years? Six, maybe, since Mother had forbidden me seeing her again and stopped our visits. Too long to pretend I still knew Magda. I didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know what to say. The royal daughter was strong, and well dressed, and…regal. I was, what? Damp, and I smelled like blood, and was sleeping on a dirt floor of an abandoned guildhall. And she was right. I had avoided her because it was hard to think of anything outside of getting Mother’s consent and beginning my life with the alchemists.

I put a hand over my pouches, more to comfort myself than hide them.

Magda’s eyes flicked down. “Alchemy?” she asked, incredulous, the irritation dripping from her voice. “One of the unbound guilds? That’s new. What are you doing here, Sorin, if you’re not a woodcutter?”

“Looking for Mother. I didn’t do this.” I gestured to the empty yard, then berated myself for acting so defensively. I had nothing to hide, but this encounter felt more like an interrogation than a reunion.

Magda raised an eyebrow and straightened her vest. “I know. Calm down. The guildhall has been closed for almost three weeks. Even before the grandmaster died, the journeys and masters were drifting away. Demand isn’t what it used to be for any of the guild wares, and somewhere outside the three countries, they’ve got new saws and a way to cut nails with machines. We’re still doing it by hand over in the smith guild.” She tossed her hands up in frustration. “Hand-cut nails hold so much better, but people don’t care. We can’t compete with the price and speed of machined nails, and the woodcutters and carpenters can’t keep up with the new saws.” Her brow wrinkled. “Surely you know about this.”

“I still… The grandmaster is dead? Really?”

“I just said that. Have you not left that Thujan house for five years?”

I looked away. I had, for the most part, been either in the Thujan woods or in Mother’s house. It sounded terrible, thinking on it, but there’d been so much work to be done, and going into the town proper, or even venturing to the capital, all too often came with stares and comments I didn’t want. “No, of course not.”

Magda folded her arms across her chest. She tilted her head, but there was no playfulness in her expression—only irritation, or what looked like irritation. “Uh-huh. Where have you been, Sorin? Why aren’t you a woodcutter?”

Her voice had that same authoritative tone I remembered from childhood, but I couldn’t seem to meet it with the same brashness I’d once possessed. Magda’s confidence, it seemed, had only grown in the intervening years. The same could not be said of mine.

Magda sighed and uncrossed her arms. “Never mind. It isn’t important. I’m here because I want to turn the hall into the new Queensguard office. The one in the palace smells like woodsmoke from the queen’s last visitors. Imagine my surprise to see Amada’s daughter sleeping on the floor. Were you going to lay claim to the building through matrilineal inheritance? That’s fine if you are. Just say the word, and I’ll take a look at the abandoned textile hall instead.”

I ignored the tone. I ignored the question. The word “daughter” hit like a slap, but I didn’t correct her. I’d still used that word, back when we’d played together, and the royal daughter certainly didn’t keep up to date on the evolution of guild children, no matter how familiar.

“No. No, I don’t want the hall. I’m not a woodcutter. I lay no claim to it. Mother can,” I started, but Magda cut me off with a sharp wave of her hand.

“Let’s talk about Amada. Where is she? Why isn’t she with you? I’ve never seen you not glued to her side or hopping at her every command.” Magda’s eyes were sharp with accusation, which I didn’t understand.

I swallowed a lump in my throat and scratched the inside of my palms with my fingernails. My chest felt tight, and it wasn’t because of my binding. “She was supposed to be here. She should have taken over for the grandmaster. That’s why I’m here.” I sounded meek. I hated that.

“Missing? That seems convenient. She’d never let you out into town alone. Where is she, Sorin?”

I blinked at the steeled words. My hands shook. “I really don’t know!”

Magda growled and balled one of her fists. “Of course you don’t. My only decent lead. Well, you should know, then, that the master woodcutter is under suspicion for kidnapping. She took a meeting with the queen at the palace, and neither came back out. Vanished. In a room with only one exit, no windows, and well guarded, and—damn it, Sorin, are you trembling? I’m not going to eat you!”

“Huh?” I looked down at my shaking hands and clasped them. They were sticky as well. I’d torn skin. “No. Of course not. I’ve just…I’ve had a rough night. I’m tired, that’s all. I don’t think Mother would kidnap the queen. They were friends, weren’t they? Like us?” That last part felt wrong to say—like I was pleading for her to remember some fondness for me so she’d stop yelling. To prevent myself from derailing into babble, I asked, “Am I under arrest?”

Magda’s eyes opened in startlement, and the tension dropped from her shoulders. She laughed then, a full, throaty sound that sounded much more like the Magda I remembered. The corners of her eyes crinkled. They were eyes I remembered, dark and intelligent. They were so familiar that if I hadn’t been damp and cold, I could have easily imagined us standing on the palace lawn, the queen sipping tea and smiling, while we chatted about the curious topics of adolescence.

“Arrest? Don’t be silly. You’re being silly. Just, we should talk, you and I.” Again, she looked at my clothing, and when she spoke, there was a trace of confusion in her voice. “I could get you some new clothes? Maybe something to eat? We could catch up.”

My clothes. An uncomfortable reminder that my cloak didn’t cover as much as I would have liked, and my sagging binding was, in fact, noticeable. Gods, I couldn’t go back out into public like this. I couldn’t make eye contact anymore. I pushed my arms into my sides as if I could make my chest somehow smaller.

“Hey, we’ll sort it out.” Magda laid a strong hand on my shoulder. The odd familiarity came again at her touch, along with the scents of flowers, the tang of metal, and an echo of childhood laughter. I looked at her muscled arm and wide shoulders, and memory crossed my mind. She’d joined a guild, hadn’t she? Blacksmith maybe? I vaguely remembered Mother telling me about Magda completing her journey. That meant she was a master now, a master smith. I was…I was nothing. Not even an apprentice.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice scratchy and hollow. I quickly corrected my informal words. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Magda made a noise somewhere between a cough and a grunt. “We should get you dry, at least. The royal daughter can’t be seen with a vagabond, right? No matter how well she’d grown up.”

I understood the attempt at levity, but my emotions seemed to eat it, crushing it beneath the pain in my body, the wrong pronouns, and the events of the past day. Magda offered me her hand, calloused and ink-stained, but I declined. She shrugged, then lead me from the hall and onto the road. There, she pointed west to a string of shops with deep alleys along a brick lane. The second one, with a thatched roof and cedar plank siding, had a swinging sign with a glass wine decanter on it.

“I’ve set up an operations table at the pub there. It’s closer to the Queensguard building than the palace, and I manage a lot more paperwork without servants nagging me. We’ll go there. Pour you something warm to drink, and see if we can’t get a runner for new clothes.” She cocked her head to the side as she studied me, this time, her eyes lingering on the lumpiness of my chest. “This is a different look for you.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t. Magda looked so similar to her child self—the same neatly braided black curls, her skin a deep umber-brown, although more scarred now than it had been as a child. Her chin was more pointed than I remembered, her brow more furrowed, but she was still Magda. And I was still me, just a little different.

“Sorin?”

“I’m not a she,” I mumbled.

She paused, eyes still questioning as they went down to my hips, then back to my chest, and finally, my face. “Okay,” she said, nodding. “I can work with that. Come on. We’ll get you dry, get you fed, and then maybe you can explain…well, explain Sorin the Alchemist. Explain why Master Rahad talked to me for two hours last night about fungal powders and some funny oil, and an enchanted palm, and Sorin, his next apprentice.”

I nodded, still not speaking, and followed her from the guildhall into the main road, my arms wrapped high around my chest. Eyes followed us, but mostly, they were on Magda as they had always been in our youth. It was surreal to walk with her now, tracing cracked bricks around the old king’s statue, tripping over the same clumps of weeds we’d tangled up in during our youth. We fell into the same old walking rhythm. If Mother wasn’t at the guildhall, and she wasn’t at the palace, then I had no idea where to look. I’d tried. Surely that would be enough for Master Rahad. If not, well, the royal daughter could release me from a guild bond too. Maybe if we chatted for a bit, I’d get up the courage to ask.

I stumbled on a chipped brick as I continued to follow her but managed to stay on my feet. Magda turned immediately around.

“You all right?” Magda’s eyes flicked down to my crossed arms, and she frowned. “You’ll lose your balance walking like that.”

“I’m fine, and I’m used to it.” I pulled my arms tighter because it was a lie, and she knew me well enough to know it. I expected her to laugh or shake her head, but Magda set her jaw in a manner I couldn’t quite interpret, then reached out and lightly touched her fingers to the back of my left hand.

“No one will say anything, Sorin. Not with me around.”

I smiled tightly. People didn’t have to say anything. Sometimes their stares were plenty.

“It’s really nice to see you again. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear earlier.”

I nodded, knowing my smile couldn’t look anything but forced.

“I missed you.”

I bit my lower lip and looked down at the red brick of the street. Something deep in my belly twittered. “I missed you too. Mother said—”

“It shouldn’t have taken both our mothers going missing for me to see you.” The bite returned to her tone, and when I looked up, her eyes were stormy again.

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know how to explain, not in the middle of the capital, and not with so many eyes upon us, but neither could I look away. Magda snorted, and though she started walking again, her arm went around my shoulders and drew me to her, close enough that our shoulders and hips touched. She was warm, and I wanted to lean into her, but my shoulders stayed rigid, and my back refused to bend.

“You can explain at the pub, and it had better be detailed and sufficient. You’re a terrible liar.”

I shivered at the sting in her words. “Royal Daughter, we need to talk about the guilds. Also, in Thuja, people came, and…”

Magda directed me through the door to the pub, then pointed to a narrow staircase. She stepped away, leaving a gap of cool air between us. Her voice calmed and warmed, and when she spoke again, it was with a gentleness I never would have believed she possessed.

“It’s all right, Sorin.” A smile ghosted across her face, and I shut my mouth. I hadn’t known what to say anyway. “Get clean, get warm, and then we can talk about the woodcutters, and the alchemists, and any other dead guild that will never return to Sorpsi. Then maybe, if we have time, we can talk about us.”