Severine was back in the attic. Bloodburster was back in its corner. Runa revelled in how good the first one felt, how right, and tried not to think about how the second felt right, as well.

  Not that there was time to dwell on questions of bloody fate. Pothollow was simmering with excitement as the last night of harvest approached.

  Runa cut another thick chunk of bread, slathering it with butter as she asked Tam, “So, the Harvest stars appearing for the first time tells you when to start harvesting. What do you do if the stars pop up, and the crops aren’t ready?”

  “What, because an unseasonable dump of snow froze them in the fields?” Tam made a face. “We do what we can. Harvest stars rising means the end of summer. Whether the crops had a good year or not, it means winter’s on its way. It’s not like more snow is going to help them, is it?”

  Anticipation buzzed louder than the bees humming in golden clouds over the last summer blooms.

  Runa didn’t know how her neighbours managed it. The simmering was easy enough to explain. Late summer hung over the outer slopes of the Cauldron like a too-heavy cloak, and the whole village and half the town below were out in the sun each day, clearing away weeds that threatened to choke the crop, watching the fruit-laden trees and the wheat stalks grow heavier and heavier.

  But the fact they still had the energy to do anything at all, while the heat pressed down on them?

  “Tell me it’s going to be cooler by the time you’re actually out there cutting the wheat,” she said to Tam and Errant one night as they were finishing up dinner at Junilla’s.

  “Maybe.” Errant scratched his chin. “Maybe not. Whole idea is to get to it after it’s ripe, but before the rains come through.”

  “And who’s this you?” Tam demanded. “Whole village turns out for harvest. Just because you’re making the first loaf, doesn’t mean you can duck out of cutting wheat with the rest of us.”

  “First what?”

  “First loaf.” Tam raised his eyebrows. “Oh, come on, you know what that is?”

  Runa stared at him. Was he joking? She’d needed a tiny fire-breathing lizard on board before she could bake anything without half of it burning to a crisp.

  Not that he knew that. Nobody was still being fussy with who got to know it existed. Severine knew, but everyone else in Pothollow still assumed that Runa had gotten better at baking through her own hard work.

  “Let’s pretend I’ve only been doing this a few months, and if you haven’t told me something, I don’t know it,” she said dryly.

  “But it’s the first loaf!” He threw his hands up. “The first bread made from the first flour milled from the first wheat harvested beneath the harvest stars marks the start of the Harvest Festival. It’s the way we’ve always done it, for as long as there’s been a harvest.”

  “To celebrate the fact there is a harvest,” Errant added. “There’s always been a festival, but since the Deathless burned the fields two hundred years ago, first loaf’s been how we start it.”

  Runa nodded soberly, and exchanged a silent glance with Severine. Everyone knew the old story of the dead harvest, when the Seven Deathless starved swathes of the continent to add to their armies.

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  It felt like a bit less of an old story, now Runa knew she’d faced one of them herself.

  But the Blood Lord was dead. Again. He wasn’t the problem—his sword was.

  Bloodburster was safely wrapped up in Severine’s pack, but the hairs on the back of Runa’s neck prickled as though if she looked around, she’d see those red stones in its hilt peering back at her.

  “I haven’t seen a recipe in the book for a ‘first loaf’,” Runa said, determinedly not looking at Severine’s pack. “You mean the festival buns?”

  “No, those are for a different festival. First loaf is wheat from the harvest just been.”

  “The harvest that’s just about to be,” Tam inserted helpfully.

  “And it’s just regular bread? Nothing special?”

  “It’s extraordinarily special.” Tam leaned back, a highly suspicious spark in his eye. “Each farmer leaves some of his crop unharvested for the last day. The final day of harvest begins in the fields around Dawdledale, and climbs up to us. The uppermost fields are the last to be scythed, and then all the wheat from the day is cleaned and brought to the mill to be ground. The baker—” he nodded at Runa. “—stays up all night turning into bread, and in the morning, we feast to celebrate having food to feast on.”

  “All the farmers contribute wheat from their own fields?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All the farmers?” Runa narrowed her eyes. “All the fields?”

  Severine looked from her to Tam and back. “What am I missing?”

  “How far up the caldera does this procession go? Up one side and down the other, maybe?” Runa raised an eyebrow at Tam, who wriggled uncomfortably.

  “Technically, they stop before the Rim,” he admitted.

  “And if someone happened to stumble on ahead, and find a stand of a strange corn—maybe not so strange-looking in the dark, as it might be getting late by then…”

  Tam raised his hands in surrender. “I swear to you by all the liches in all their cursed graves, I’ll not add my Cauldron corn to the festival harvest.” His expression of dutiful resignation cracked, and he grinned. “Look at you, though, calling me on it instead of sitting glowering in the corner and stomping off to deal with it yourself later. You must be getting used to us.”

  She lifted her mug to him. “Imagine that.”

  “I’m not leaving my corn for First Loaf Night. What a thought. Sweetmeadow will have moved on entirely by then, with my luck.” The curseland was barely accessible as it was; the bog that had been bubbling in to take its place was pushing in more by the day. He scrubbed the last scraps of stew out of his bowl with a slice of bread. “I’ll be out there tomorrow…?”

  “Was there a question in there?”

  “Want to come make sure I don’t get swept away by the Cauldron if things start moving around? Also I can’t say I’ve ever been particularly good with a scythe.”

  “Can’t help you there.”

  “You’ve planted crops in the Cauldron?” Severine exclaimed in horror.

  “See? See how a normal person reacts to you?” Errant covered his eyes with one hand. “I don’t know why I put up with you sometimes.”

  “The rest of you forage there. That’s just as bad.”

  “Solberries don’t whistle eerily at you when you pick them,” Errant pointed out.

  “No, you just have to avoid the carnivorous flowers, sweet sharp-teethed woodland creatures and deadly waterways to reach them,” Runa drawled. “Bait doesn’t have to act dangerous. That’s why it’s bait.”

  “Delicious bait.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “I still don’t understand how you could travel in the Cauldron for years and never try anything that grows there. You weren’t tempted? Not even once?”

  Runa gave him a nice try, but this conversation is over look and grabbed everyone’s mugs to take to Junilla for a refill.

  She’d gone a lot of hungry nights because of her refusal to eat anything from the Cauldron. But it had always seemed a step too far. She’d loved the Cauldron so much, and loving a place made out of all the worst things to happen in the world wasn’t a good thing, was it? Surviving it—she could do that. She made a life out of doing that.

  Anything else seemed… risky.

  Especially now that she knew Bloodburster had her in its sights.

  A woman who was half ice, half fire, who navigated the Cauldron of All Curses with the fabled greatsword of the Blood Lord on her back?

  She shivered.

  It should have sounded ridiculous. Instead, it sounded like the first stanza of one of her father’s songs. Or some twisted version of what her mother always told her: that she shouldn’t worry if she felt she didn’t fit in on the islands, because one day, she would find her perfect habitat.

  What if the Cauldron was it?