“Now, tell me about these bakers.” Says ?nnywella as she sinks into one of the tufted leather chairs and places the butt in the ashtray on the table next to her—glad she had taken the time to move it from the mantle above the fireplace. She lights another cigarette.

  “Tell me your plan first.” K?spar sits down in a chair of his own. “So I can tell you what's relevant.”

  ?nnywella drums her fingers on the arm of the chair, her rings clicking against the exposed wood of the arm. “Franheska has suggested that Drewer may have an adverse reaction to nuts—specifically almonds or honeyed almond paste—which can lead to ‘sudden suffocation,’ though the chance of this working is fractional at best and hopelessly idealistic at worst. High Priestess Seliani's interpretation of my vision from Our Lady was—condensed: Styd?n will attempt to take Sc?dstan.” She pauses, watching K?spar nod and lean in. “Colaus and I believe that this is plausible because Drewer’s advisors will be hiding behind a child as... well—a mask. We have decided that the best course of action is to, unfortunately, kill Drewer, using—hopefully—this sudden suffocation; it will prevent any blame from being directed towards me. I need to have the head chef of the Drewer’s court—what's his name?”

  “M?l Teygwyr.” K?spar answers. He does not like the idea of killing a child, even if they are the king, but he has enough trust in ?nnywella's judgement to know that she has thought this through and deemed this the best option.

  “Well, I need M?l to serve a dish with honeyed almond paste, without a direct request from me or anyone. I’m hoping that M?l will—”

  K?spar laughs, interrupting ?nnywella.

  “Do you have a comment?” Asks ?nnywella, slightly taken aback.

  “No, not at all; that’s just—if my assumption of where your plan is going is correct—quite diabolical.” K?spar responds. While the thought of killing Drewer is sickening, he understands her familiar reasoning. “Your father would be proud—if it works.”

  “Verily, in all honesty, I don’t know if I want it to work.” She frequently wonders how close she had come to being assassinated as a child, how frequently she had been in the same position Drewer is in now. “Now may I finish?”

  “Who would? Yes, of course.”

  “I wish to hire two of the other masters in Styd?n...” She pauses and takes a drag. She looks to K?spar again, signaling to him to respond.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  “Wann Sor?c, owner of ‘Sugar Sea,’ and Tyes Tenitz, owner of ‘The Morning Muffin.’”

  ?nnywella blows the smoke from her nose “Why can’t people just name a bakery something simple like Tyes’s Bakery? why ‘The Morning Muffin’?” She shakes her head.

  “The Morning Muffin was a nice store. I think you would be quite fond of it; Sugar Sea though... Sugar Sea was something else.” He rolls his eyes at the thought of the store.

  ?nnywella looks at K?spar inquisitively before continuing, interested in what about ‘Sugar Sea’ called for an eye roll, but she didn’t care enough to ask. “Anywho, I wish to hire them to cater the weddings of Dyder and Ilsenila. I will write them personally and request them. I assume that this information will reach M?l, so during my visit with Drewer and the Advisors, he will serve a dish similar to the cakes at the weddings, seeking to impress me and make me regret ordering from the others... killing Drewer by sudden suffocation.”

  K?spar nods; it went exactly where he thought this plan would be going. He was no novice with poison, but this was new. “I will be shocked if M?l doesn’t make a similar dish; I spoke with both Wann and Tyes—Wann can only cater to Sc?dstan—and both said that M?l is very competitive, going to where he spies on and steals recipes from others. When I was talking to the bakers, I told them I had a friend in Brachb?sc who will be having a wedding; Wann said he wishes he could take the offer just because of the idea of M?l pulling his hair out—M?l really dislikes Wann. M?l, when told of the wedding, seemed to assume he was already hired, getting quite offended when I suggested that we were still looking for someone.”

  ?nnywella grins. “I remember my father talking about the way guild masters behaved when I was younger; this behavior doesn’t surprise me. Did you learn anything else useful? or did you spend three days reading and eating pastries?

  “Did you hear about the disappearance of the previous High Priestess in Styd?n?” asks K?spar.

  “Not initially, no, but I heard about her corpse washing up in the Lun?r River north of S?gsetun.” ?nnywella pauses. “Why?”

  “Apparently one of the current advisors to Drewer, Mar?l Humel, was responsible for having her run out of the town, because she refused to be bought.”

  “Bought in what sense?” She briefly remembers the state the corpse was in, and her face curls in disgust—she locks the memory away as quickly as it had come back. “No, never mind; I know in what sense.”

  K?spar continues. “Mar?l Humel tried something similar with the current High Priestess, a woman named Ny??, who refused and went to her brother—whose name I wasn’t told. This brother threatened Mar?l, who immediately backed down. Now, Mar?l was the former head of the guard in Styd?n, so I’m going to assume that this brother is either tied to or in charge of some sort of crime syndicate in the area.”

  “That seems plausible; now let’s posit that this is the case; now there is an additional faction vying for control over Styd?n; Mar?l doesn’t like this faction, and this faction doesn’t like Mar?l.” ?nnywella pauses, tapping her index finger against her cheek. “I think we need to offer Mar?l protection; if Drewer dies, it's safe to assume his counsel will collapse, meaning we have someone on the council in favor of joining us.”

  “I agree.” says K?spar.

  ?nnywella stands and heads for the exit. “As always: Excellent work.”