Description: 1 "They say Lord Dorric is dying," Tassel told Keri, swinging without ceremony into the bakery kitchen. She let the door slam shut behind her. It banged hard because its frame had warped in the wet spring weather, an event predictable as the blooming of crocuses and daffodils. The bell chimed, once and again and a third time, as the door bounced against the frame. The chime was a bright, cheerful sound, meant to turn away ill wishes and evil sorcery while allowing good luck to enter along with any visitor. But this spring, the sound only reminded Keri that she needed to hire someone to fix the warped frame. Keri''s mother could have gotten out a hammer and a handful of twopenny nails and fixed the doorframe herself. If Keri tried to do that, she would probably bend all the nails and crack the doorframe and knock the head off the hammer. But since her mother''s death, the bakery never seemed to earn enough in a week to pay a carpenter to repair the door, so from week to week the door continued to bang in its frame. These days all such tasks seemed to go undone, until both house and shop creaked with neglect. Keri sighed, blinked, and looked back at the immediate task facing her--one she could at least address properly, and one that would earn decent coin. Maybe this cake would even pay for a carpenter at last. Tassel began to hitch herself up to sit on the edge of the scarred kitchen table, but then, careful of the lace on her gown, sat on a stool instead and only leaned an elbow on the table. The gown was pearl gray and pink and frothy with lace, certainly nothing sensible for a working kitchen. If Keri had tried to wear a dress like that, even if she hadn''t been working in the bakery kitchen, she would have stained the fabric and pulled out bits of lace within the hour. Tassel was the sort of girl who never tore or stained anything. Tassel watched critically as Keri piped frosting around the outer edge of a cake layer and then spread peach jam across its top. "Did you hear what I said?" Keri produced a wordless murmur, more interested in keeping the peach jam from oozing out of bounds than in Tassel''s far-from-surprising news. She placed a second cake layer on top of the first and repeated the piped circle of frosting and filling of peach jam. "Yes, but my cousin says you can stand in his back pasture and actually watch the mist thinning," Tassel persisted. Her voice dropped portentously. "He says, some days lately, you can see right out through the mist into Tor Carron. He says you''d swear you can glimpse the tips of mountains against the sky." "Um?" said Keri. She placed the third layer on top of the second and began to spread frosting in large swirls across the sides and top of the towering cake. Tassel clicked her tongue in exasperation. "Not Gannon, and not any of the girls. It''s Cort who says he''s seeing mountaintops through the mist." Her attention momentarily captured, Keri glanced up. She tried to imagine Tassel''s most humorless cousin standing in his back pasture, gazing into the border of Nimmira, frightening himself with vague shapes in the mist. Her imagination failed her. They had all been friends, she and Tassel and Cort, but Cort''s father had died, and then her own mother, and after that everything was different. "There, you see?" said Tassel, satisfied that she had finally impressed Keri with the significance of her news. She then spoiled her portentous air by asking in an entirely different tone, "Are you going to use all that frosting? It''s the kind you make with soft cheese and whipped cream and white sugar, isn''t it?" "It is," said Keri heartlessly. "But, yes, I''m going to use all of it." Tassel blinked, woebegone, her dark eyes filling with tears. It was a trick she had used to great effect when she was little. Tassel had been an exquisite child, all huge eyes and curls and porcelain skin. She had been able to weep beautifully, with never a blotch, even before she was steady on her baby feet. Keri would have envied her friend that skill except it would have been wasted on her; she had never been pretty enough to make tears charming, and besides, Keri''s mother, unlike Tassel''s parents, had never been in the least susceptible to charm. At least, not since falling, briefly, for the charm of Keri''s father. Tassel was still exquisite, although no longer a child. They had all grown up rather suddenly a year or two before, but where Keri had gone awkward and self-conscious for a season, and Cort had spent a gawky year tripping over things while his voice broke, Tassel had stepped straight from pretty childhood to adult grace. She was tall for a girl, taller than Keri, nearly as tall as Cort, but somehow this did not interfere with her ability to wear frothy pink. Even so, Keri only raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "If you want some frosting, next time offer to whip the cream." "But that''s hard!" Keri snorted, but she also relented so far as to dip a spoon into the bowl of frosting and hand it to her friend. Tassel accepted the spoon cheerfully. "Mmm." "So what else does Cort say?" "Only what I told you. But if it''s true, doesn''t it mean the Lord must really be dying this time?" Keri shrugged. Dorric Ailenn had been a fixture of Nimmira for forty years at least, more than twice Keri''s whole life. She supposed he''d been a good Lord at first--people were. Nimmira didn''t choose anybody to be Lord--or Lady--unless they''d be good at it. So Lord Dorric must have been a good Lord at the beginning. Only then he''d become a little bit self-indulgent, and then a little bit selfish ... and once you started giving yourself license to be selfish and thinking you had a right to be self-indulgent, there was no end to it. Or so Keri''s mother had said, on the rare occasions she said anything at all. Keri thought that must be true. Look how Lord Dorric had turned out. Keri had imagined Nimmira with a different Lord; of course she had. She probably spent a good deal more time on such daydreams than most people. But Lords of Nimmira were generally long-lived. Keri thought Dorric would probably rule for another twenty years. No matter who imagined he could see through the boundary mist. Finished frosting the cake, Keri eased away the parchment that had protected its glazed platter from unsightly crumbs and dabs of frosting. Then she replaced the parchment with a ring of sugar flowers, carefully nudging each one into place around the base of the cake--violets for happiness and bluebells for honesty, and a single hibiscus for the top, tinted pale blue to match the other sugar flowers. Hibiscus for endurance, but Keri liked them because they were large and showy and impressive. "No roses," observed Tassel. Keri looked at her, eyebrows raised. "Oh, well," Tassel said philosophically. "I know. Borage for a brave young man, bluebells for an honest wife, hawthorn for abundant land, violets for a long, sweet life. But I like roses." "They''d probably throw the cake away. And refuse to pay for it." "Well, I don''t care. That''s just children''s nonsense, that thing about roses. You can put roses on a cake for me one day." Keri slanted another raised-eyebrow look at her friend. "Oh, can I? Something you haven''t told me?" It was Tassel''s turn to snort. "Hardly. All the boys in Glassforge are boring. Predictable little puppies who trail after you with their tongues hanging out ..." "That''s just you, Tassel. Anyway, if and when you need a cake, I will not either put roses on it. I''ll make you a nice hibiscus flower in pink, if you like." Keri placed the hibiscus flower carefully, handling it with the lightest possible touch, lest she break a petal and have to make another. "So," said Tassel, changing the subject with what she no doubt imagined was studied casualness, "who do you think Nimmira will go to, if Lord Dorric really does die?" Keri shrugged. "Oh, now, Keri--you must have thought about it! You, of all people! Would Brann get it, do you think? Or Domeric? Domeric''s strong. He might be able to deal with the Bear Lord of Tor Carron, if it took a bit for the mist to thicken back up. But what if the mist is thinning all the way around, even up north between us and Eschalion? If the Wyvern King realized we were here"--she shivered theatrically--"he wouldn''t likely be so easy to put off for a day or two, and, well, Brann''s the clever one." Keri shrugged again, more elaborately, refusing to comment. Nearly everybody did expect the succession to go to one or the other of Dorric''s elder sons, and argued about which would be better. Probably everybody was right, but Keri was not about to join in that particular argument. "I''d rather have Lucas," Tassel said wistfully. "Those lips! Those cheekbones! Those eyelashes!" She batted her own, which were exquisite. Keri lifted her eyebrows in one of her mother''s best looks, the skeptical one that could stop a boy from carelessly tracking in mud or a child from threatening a tantrum. "That would certainly be entertaining," she said, drawn in despite herself. "The players would throw him a huge party. Half of Nimmira would get drunk and kill themselves falling down stairs and into fountains, and the other half would die of apoplexy." Tassel laughed. "Keri! Which half would you be in?" "Oh ... both. Anybody could see Lucas would be an awful Lord. A player never sticks to one thing or stays in one

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