Page 68 of Tusks, Tails & Teacakes
Lira held her golden eyes for a several breaths. She’d known the archer long enough to know she wasn’t lying. Cali had never been a good liar, anyway.
Iris closed the distance between them and took Lira’s hands. “You’re scaring me, love. What’s going on?”
“She’s been betrayed, that’s what’s going on,” Sass said with an angry flutter of her hands.
Iris gaped, and Cali stood quickly, dropping the book into the chair.
“We don’t know it’s betrayal,” Lira said, her calm tone in sharp contrast to Sass’s heated one. “But someone has been to the cellar and tried to loosen the rocks in the corner.”
Iris sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re sure?”
Lira gave the woman a curt nod. “Mortar doesn’t scrape itself onto the ground.”
Cali looked between the three women. “Would you mind filling me in?”
Lira did, compressing the information into as few sentences as possible and avoiding her friend’s gaze. When she’d outlined everything from stashing the recipe book and gold in the tavern to coming back and finding it walled over to discovering that the book was much more than a recipe book, including the revelation that her gran had been a mage and Iris a rogue, Lira finally looked up. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
Cali’s tail quivered behind her as she stared at Lira for entirely too long. “That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with having things you keep only for yourself, even if that thing is a spell book the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a century.”
Lira’s vision swam for a moment as she nodded at her friend. “Thanks, Cali.”
“Now that we all know,” Sass said, “what are we going to do? Someone who isn’t one of us must know about the book.”
“Did you tell anyone else?” Cali asked.
“No, just us three, but she talks in her sleep,” Sass answered for her.
The archer’s whiskers twitched, and Lira wasn’t sure if it was from amusement or surprise, or a bit of both. “Does that open the field of candidates much wider?”
Lira narrowed her eyes. “You know it doesn’t, but our crew did sleep rough together.”
Cali shook her head. “Rog snored too loud to ever hear one of us talking in our sleep, and Vaskel…?”
Lira understood the questioning tone as her words drifted off. Despite Vaskel being a Tiefling and the reputation of the devilish creatures, she had never believed him to be dishonest. In fact, he was scrupulously direct. When you were that devilishly attractive, you could be.
Iris sighed, as she twirled a strand of dark hair around one finger. “Rygor already suspects gold is somewhere in the tavern. We did leave the mortar I scraped on the ground.”
Lira could have kicked herself. She was too good a rogue to be thatsloppy, but it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone else, including the wyvern, would brave the dank darkness of the cellar. “We can’t be sure Rygor tried to loosen the wall, but we do know that someone did.”
Iris glanced at the group. “Which means we need get the book and gold ourselves—and soon.”
Forty
Lira sweptthe back of her hand across her damp brow as she pulled a cake pan from the new oven, setting it on the top of the stove with a satisfied clatter. There was no smoke, no smell of soot, no odd clang as it heated.
She used one of Val’s knit squares to transfer the pan to the worktable, pleased by the brown, crackled top of the cake. The blast from the oven had brought with it the aroma of apple cider, and Lira felt reasonably confident that she’d replicated her gran’s apple cider cake recipe.
“Yes, yes,” she muttered to Crumpet as he sat grooming hisfluffy white tail on the windowsill. “I made the cake that Korl mentioned.” She held up a finger. “But don’t you start too.”
Crumpet chittered at her, chittered at the oven, and then twitched his whiskers at the cake.
“It’s good to have something else to serve now that I’ve gotten meat pies and scones well in hand.” She wilted under Crumpet’s gaze. “But yes, the first cake is going to Korl and his dads for the new stove, especially since they refused payment.”
Korl and his father had been leaving the kitchen when she and Sass had returned to the tavern. She and Sass had both tried to offer payment to Korl and Vorto, but neither had entertained the thought.
“It’s a gift,” Korl had insisted. “You don’t pay for a gift.”
Sass had elbowed her, and she’d elbowed the dwarf back hard enough for her to stumble through the swinging doors.
