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Mercenary faces were tough enough to tenderize steaks. And that was that.

Dream-boat laughed when Mary told him, although the laugh was coffee bitter, and kisses from his wife could not ease his anguish. Defeat could not be swallowed easily, and a fallen kingdom could not be comforted.

“We ran like ducklings squawking for their mama,” Dream-boat told her. He normally didn’t like to talk about work, but what else could he do, when mercenaries roved ‘round and ‘round the castle with their royalty trapped inside?

“I think,” Mary replied, “you did your best. But when people paid to do a job fail, it’s up to the citizenry to do it for free. Don’t worry about it.”

“Uuuugh, Mary Contrary. What is in that fool head now?”

She told him her plan, because it was polite to inform one’s spouse when intending on weaseling way into enemy territory. Besides, as a royal guard of substantial position, he would have good pointers.

“No. I don’t have any pointers!” he howled. “This is just so you can get a big fat promotion, isn’t it?” His sweat looked like sandy glass beads. “What good is being executive chef when you’re dead?”

Deary, he knew her too well. But Mary knew him well too, and applied the screws.

“Don’t you say the security of the kingdom is up to every citizen? While you and your co-guards figure out how to beat them—”

“This is madness.”

She shook her saucy head. “Am I to sit by while terrorists terrorize? Am I to go gentle into good night when I have a job to protect?”

“I knew it.”

“Someone has to keep the King and Queen alive.”

His generous hands wrapped around her waist to shake her gently. “It doesn’t have to be you.”

Surely, this was what an ancient sage must feel like, because Mary pronounced words of profound verisimilitude (she thought): “I must be true to myself.”

He rolled his eyes. “Names aren’t everything.”

“You earned your laurels, Dream-boat. I earn mine.”

That did him in. He couldn’t resist “Dream-boat,” even though that’s what she called him all the time. Mary attended to her war-making in peace.

For armor, she borrowed the shabbiest shawl (slightly damp) from an antediluvian neighbor, wore a faded and tomato sauce-stained apron, and put on her scuffed boots with the soles rubbed so raw all the tread was gone. Hidden within a basket (she was willing to sacrifice), were her weapons of war. She was ready.

“How do I look?” she asked, stooping her shoulders.

“Like an old granny out for a noonday stroll, and not the fiery black-headed minx you like to think you are.”

“Thanks, schat. Now a kiss on both cheeks, and a wish for luck.”

Thus dressed, Mary tottered to the gates of the enemy, never imagining she would one day approach her old workplace with such trembling knees and heart beat like interview day. But who could blame her, with two rough-and-ready mercenaries scowling at her like crows sitting on a flag pole?

Hopefully, they were only hangry. Mary made the sign of the Cross (even though she wasn’t of that persuasion), and stepped up.

“Get outta here, lady!” Mercenary Uno snarled, brandishing a lively sword.

“Scram before we do something to ya!” Mercenary Dos barked, picking his teeth with a pocket knife.

“Are you two boys talking like that to a little old granny like me?” Mary’s voice shook with terror, but it added a gravel that helped sell the act. “What would your mothers say?”

That was all it took.

“Our mothers?” Uno asked, getting misty-eyed.

“Yes. When was the last time you wrote her? And you!” She shook a finger at Dos. “Take that knife out of your teeth. Do you have a death wish?”

“No, ma’am.”

After applying the bitter, came the salve. Mary reached into her basket, and pulled out two chocolate sablés. “You two are good boys, aren’t you? Remind me of my own. Have a cookie.”

Mary’s cookies were one-hit wonders. All it took was one bite, and they were laid out, taken to sugar heaven. Not even Uncle Monty was capable of that.

With Uno and Dos behind her, singing her raptures on sugary lips, Mary climbed the curving steps of the front entrance balcony of the castle. Trying the door knobs, she was stunned to find they were locked.

“Let me in! Let me in!” she screamed, pounding the knockers.

A nearby casement window swung open, where two men leaned out. One looked rather riffraff, a gray sort of fellow with a top hat he almost knocked against the window pane, while the other was far more handsome and less pirate than she expected, but just as self-satisfied as she presumed. He seemed content to let the other do the talking.

“Whad’dya want, toots?” Riffraff spat. His mouth seemed stuck in an eternal snarl.

Mary peeled back her shawl so they could see her for what she truly was, and declared herself. “I am the sous-chef.”

“Well, congratulations.”

“Oh, for goodness … I want to know what you’re doing to the Queen and King in there.”

Riffraff leered. “You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you? Awful things. Awful, awful things! It would make your blood curdle if I told you.”

“My blood’s already curdling thinking of how you’re poisoning them with low-quality cuts of beef and squab!”

He beat his hat against the window pane. “We’re fine cooks! The kid’s on it.”

Mary clutched her apron. “Kid? Oh, the culinary stylings of peasants and terrorists. My poor Queen and King.”

“They’re fine. Now leave us alone.”

“Let me cook for them!”

They didn’t listen, naturally. After they pulled back and shut the window, they even latched the sash. Mary put her basket on the stoop and went home.

The next day, she left strawberry cream macarons. The day after, raspberry linzers and caramel stroopwafels. All in all, she left ginger molasses cookies, pizzelles, Florentines, and palmiers. It was the white-chocolate dipped lemon poppyseed madeleines that got her in.

The unfortunate reality of the Saporians was they were exactly what Mary had suspected. Pungent, rude, argumentative, angry louts. Even the attractive leader, hiding a hate-seed behind insincere smiles. Not to mention the kid.

Oh, ay, Mary’s disappointment about knocked her flat when she found out the kid was no Saporian, but a native of Corona. Surely, he’d come from better stock than that.

“You fell for the cookies?” he said, the first time he walked into the kitchen alongside Andrew. He was a hateful little cuss, brimming with rage that was bigger than he was, speaking in curiously shortened syllables. “That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

“Shush, friend,” Andrew answered, smooth as yogurt. “She did good in the interview. She has the skill set and experience we need.”

Mary quietly whipped up a risotto, sneaking ganders at the kid as she realized this must be the one that made all the front papers some months ago. This enfant terrible? Drowning in clothes by far too large, with the knees in his pants down to his ankles, and his shirt hem practically to his knees? Incredible.

“She’ll put arsenic in your mac and cheese,” the enfant warned.

“I trust the mac and cheese.”

“Andrew, you’re vegan. You shouldn’t be eating mac and cheese at all.”

“She said she makes it vegan.”

Mary kept silent. She had never once made anything vegan in her life, and she had no intentions of starting. But lying during interviews was the norm, was it not?

“Hey, Varian.” Andrew put his hands on the kid’s shoulders and squeezed, smiling a lie in his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Leave the hard decisions to me.”

The boy pouted decadently as Andrew left. When his eyes flicked towards Mary, she shoved her hands to her hips.

“Don’t ruin this for me, chico.”

“What are you here for? No one else has tried to come back.”

“Not even Old Lady Crowley? I thought she cared more for her linens than that.”

He grinned, devilishly. “Well, she certainly didn’t stick around for Freddie.”

Nauseated, Mary clung her eyelashes together, too grieved to see this strange world anymore. “What a disservice your parents did. Too bad.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, when your parents gave you your name, how could you be anything other than disloyal?”

Mary’s method of shaming (i.e. bringing up the parents) always worked. Beet-faced, Varian stomped out, and Mary was free to make non-vegan vegan mac and cheese.

Names meant something. With just a few syllables in interesting or mundane combinations, a person’s fate was sealed.

As evidenced by Mary’s sealing fate when her mother named her “Mary.” It wasn’t the “Mary” part that caused all the trouble, but the “Contreras” part at the end. Mary Contreras.

Her father understood the joke. “How does your garden grow?” he asked frequently throughout her childhood.

“I don’t have a garden!” she answered back, saucy glower.

“But you live up to the rest of it, don’t you, chica?”

All right, it was true. Mary had decided early on that if she was going to be a Contreras, she was going to be Contreras all the way. Contrariness characterized her every achievement in life. From schooling to marriage to jobs. Was she going to let Saporians end her streak? Hardly.

But, then again, they were the terrorists. Maybe it was time to put the contrary to the side a little, and resort to the fall back plan of every good “the Help”: blend.

It was easy! The natural territory of the servant class is in the shadows, after all. As a caterpillar in chrysalis, a servant transforms from a human to a cow only but for the milking. A mindless, unintelligent, booving cow, not capable of understanding unless spoken directly too. They were wrong, of course. No one knew the state secrets better than the laundry maid.

“Keep your head down, keep quiet, and for sun’s sake, don’t argue!” Dream-boat had told her. Mary complied. She stuck to the kitchen, even sleeping on the floor before the hearth. Blendblendblend was Mary’s tactic of survival. She’d stay out of their business, if they stayed out of hers.

But that boy! He refused this unspoken agreement, and invaded her every chance he got. How she’d like to box his ears for being in the kitchen, making bread and sandwiches, or what … what-have-you.

The what-have-you did her in.

“Don’t I cook good enough for you?” she demanded, when he took over Stinky, the prep table. At least he hadn’t taken over Clunky, who was Mary’s table, but still, poor Stinky. Stinky used to be for preparing herbs and vegetables for the saucier, but was now camouflaged like a glassblower’s nightmare. And then the ingredients were so strange, too. “I know my food is better than whatever it is you’re making.”

“I’m not cooking.”

“True. I don’t see how anyone could call it cooking. More like stirring witch’s brew than soup.”

“I’m still working on getting the lab space.”

“It’s not up to me, little sir.”

Part of the art of blending was not antagonizing terrorists. Besides, if Mary got along with him, he’d hopefully keep quiet about all the eggs and butter she was using.

She would use psychology to get on his good side. “What are you making?”

“You want to know?”

“Sure. Seems similar to cooking.”

“It is.” His nose wriggled like a bunny tail in a strawberry patch. “I’ve been making all sorts of things. Fertilizer. Sticky traps for the windows. Bath bombs.”

“Bombs?” Mary clutched her apron.

“Bath bombs. Even sleeping powder.”

Mary nodded, slicing a tomato. “A guilty conscience makes a difficult bed companion.”

“It’s not for me.”

“I never said it was.”

Varian scowled, eyes slivered. “Maisie’s got insomnia.” In a sudden sun-dawn shift, his eyes turned from suspicious almonds to devilishly humored eggs, eyebrows frowning along his forehead. He sniggered. “Maybe I’ll make this batch extra strong.”

Stunned, Mary concentrated on preparing salade niçoise (sans tuna and eggs, of course). So the terrorists didn’t get along, did they?

“Don’t spy!” Dream-boat had said. “I know how much of a busybody you are, but don’t do it.”

“Mi esposo, you will be proud of how deaf I become.”

He wasn’t a simpleton, and there was no way he believed her words. Mary was certainly not deaf, and heard many things, since she blended so well. But it was all innuendo, half-baked explanations, and the tail-end of eavesdropped conversations. Probably, some horrible plot was in the works, and maybe she could help stop it. Well, there was only one way of extracting information: honesty.

“You’re not happy here,” she told the disastrous whelp.

It worked like magic.

“What do you mean?” Varian spat. Oops, he reversed it on her, a sort of counter-curse.

“Nothing, little sir.”

She just wanted to know where he wanted to go. All he did was clamber about Andrew taking him somewhere, and Andrew always refused, saying they must wait until it was “safe.”

One day, when Varian was peacefully making actual food (carrot cake), Andrew and Maisie walked in, and Varian lay the bomb: “I’ll just go by myself!”

They didn’t need to know the topic of his conversation.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Maisie sneered. “Unless you want to reserve your spot at the gallows.”

Gulping, Varian stirred his batter furiously, the spoon banging into the sides of the bowl, and the bowl quivering closer to the edge of the table than Mary liked to see.

The boy’s surrender wasn’t enough for Maisie. He dropped words like burning ingots in a forge: “Didn’t Andrew tell you to do something? What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I did tell you to do something else, didn’t I?” Andrew said slickly, rubbing a bit of flour off his belt buckle. “Which isn’t cooking.”

Varian threw his spoon into the bowl, so his batter gobbled it up. “Work on your project,” he parroted, voice high-pitched. “Finish your lab. Do this, do that. How am I supposed to get anything done around here if you make me do everything?”

Instead of raising his voice at this backtalk, Andrew did the reverse: he dropped it eerily, like needling out a splinter. “If you used your time wisely—”

“Do the laundry! Do the laundry, Varian! Do the laundry!”

Still yet, Andrew’s voice went softer and more exacting. “If the laundry is the problem, and not sleeping in all morning, we can fix that.”

Varian’s mouth gaped helplessly. “I was only sleeping in cause I was working all night.”

Maisie laughed. His laugh was so ugly—wispy, faint, and fleeting, a spider’s web caught in a hurricane. “Sure, kid. Working all night in the library.”

“I was doing research.”

“Oho! I didn’t know Flynn Rider novels are such fountains of alchemical knowledge.”

Varian spat a word! Such a word!

“Whoo-whee!” Maisie slapped his hands onto the countertop, elbows sticking out like the spindly, freckled legs of a crab. “Where’d you learn something like that?”

“In prison. Where’d you learn to be so ugly?”

Mary had had enough. She couldn’t do anything about grown men acting like this, but she could do something about a ragamuffin. “Out!” she shouted, flopping a dish towel at Varian. He jumped back. “If you can’t keep a civil tongue! What must your poor mother think?”

“Eh, she’s probably just as proud as his daddy.”

Fire flew through Varian’s fingertips, out the top of his head, out through his toes and eyeballs and ears and everything else. “You take that back!” he roared at Maisie.

“Why? Didn’t you do to her what you did to him?”

After staring at Mary and Andrew, as if waiting for a miracle that couldn’t come, Varian ran out. Mary threw the towel over his batter, since it was swimming in egg yolks. When she turned to French onion soup, she was a booving cow again.

Andrew withered a look at Maisie. “Nice.”

“Don’t give me that.” Leaning against the counter, Maisie ate walnuts Varian had cracked open for the carrot cake. “Keep a tighter rein on him. If you don’t watch it, we’re all gonna end up like his daddy.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, maybe. If you stop antagonizing him.”

Taking two uncracked walnuts in hand, Maisie pressed them together until the shells broke apart. Deary, he really was more insect than man. “I’m sick of his lazing around. He isn’t delivering what you said he would.”

“He just needs the right motivation.”

The way Andrew said that made Mary feel like too warm panna cotta melting. Was there ever a group of allies so unallied?

But the last thing she was doing was getting involved. She wasn’t that contrary. And that was that.

It was a dark day when they started making Mary do the laundry.

“It’s not in the job description!” Mary screamed, when Maisie put a basket of dirty clothes right on her clean butcher block.

“It is now, toots.”

“Ay! How your poor mother must be, with a child like you.”

She knew Maisie was hatched, with how immune he was to her usual weapon. Carelessly, he threw up a plum in one hand, and caught it with the other, shining a lottery-winner smile. “You want to keep working here, you better do it. We could fire you at the drop of a hat. Then who knows what we might feed your precious king and queen.”

Mary had never been fired from anything a day in her life, and the thought alone made her heart quiver. She curtsied with all meekness. “Whatever you say, sir.”

After he left, she fire-hosed a number of Spanish and Dutch phrases to make her parents’ ears turn red. Varian, standing at the stove, elbow-deep in unnatural pink gelatin, asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m a sous-chef, chico, not a laundress. I don’t know where to begin.”

“I’ll show you.”

Mary blinked at this moment of kindness, before realizing this was no kindness at all. “Good work, getting me to do your chore for you.”

“I didn’t tell them to make you do it.”

“Okay, you didn’t.” The smell wafting from the laundry basket wrinkled Mary’s nose. Fish on a Monday smell. “How am I to feed the demands of those pigs if I am chasing their dirty drawers all day, hmm?”

“It won’t take all day, if you do it my way.”

“Oh, so? Lies, or just big talk?”

“It’s true. With alchemy, it won’t hardly take time at all.” After slipping his fingers into his apron pocket, Varian pulled out a little glass wedge that was filled with white crystals.

“Salt?” Mary asked, after he tossed it to her.

“Not salt. Stain-remover. Sprinkle a little into the water.”

Mary detected not just pride in the lad’s words, but also (could it be?) a desire to be useful.

“Bueno, chico. Misschien ben je niet zo’n verloren zaak.”

But what was she thinking? He was a lost cause. He’d gotten his chore put on her!

It was true. With alchemy, things hardly took any time at all.

And it was a good thing, because Mary’s list of chores grew with each passing day. It was enough to make her lose her mind, except for two things. With one, her additional chores put her in contact with the King and Queen more often, so she could be eased for their general well being. (She couldn’t say much about their states of the mind, but she’d take what she could.) The second thing that made it bearable was Varian’s assistance. Even if she had to pay a price for that.

“I am not giving you a ride up the dumbwaiter,” she told him, when he came running at her with stars in his eyes.

“Oh come on, please! It’s big enough.”

“It’s meant for dishes, not people. It isn’t safe.” Mary wrapped a kitchen towel around her forehead, getting ready for a trip to the garden. “What are you doing knowing about the dumbwaiter anyway? Isn’t it hidden behind paintings of dull landscapes?”

“Cass showed me.”

“Hmph.”

Varian didn’t say another word. He didn’t have to: he had eyes. Did he have eyes! Bottomless and luminary blue. Enormous, blossoming bachelor’s-button eyes, and radiant—almost like a real boy’s. How could Mary resist it for long?

“We will do the compost after, right?” she grumbled.

“Right!”

Grinning wide, Varian scrunched in the dumbwaiter like a toasted marshmallow in a s’more. Mary told him to hang on, and grabbed the rope to pull him up. The cart ascended slowly.

“Aren’t you too old for this?” she shouted up the shaft.

“Keep pulling! I’m not at the top yet.”

Sweating, Mary did as ordered, until the cart reached the top. She listened closely, and didn’t dare let go of the rope until she heard Varian slide open the door at the top and climb out.

“Now can we compost?” she asked once he rejoined her, huffing from running down several flights of stairs.

“Now.” He grinned so huge, she almost didn’t notice the tear tracks on his cheeks.

Glory be, Mr. Tummell, the Royal Gardener, already had a compost heap set up near the vegetable gardens. That was one less puzzle for Mary to solve. When Kai had told her to start composting, because it was “good for the planet,” she had nearly died on the spot. And when she had demanded he tell her what composting was for and how to do it, Kai had twiddled his fingers, and then suddenly remembered he had a “thing” he had to do.

Varian, farm boy from Old Corona, explained and showed her the … well, there were no ropes involved, but at least she understood.

“Dank u wel,” Mary told him.

“What language is that?” Varian tipped a bucket of kitchen scraps into the heap. “Sometimes it sounds Spanish, but that didn’t.”

“My father was Spanish, but my mother was Dutch.” Mary tipped her own bucket too, broken egg shells collecting on the black earth like she was growing polka dots. At least with composting, she could hide her kitchen misdeeds.

“Then you gotta churn it every now and again.” Varian demonstrated, spinning a garden fork through the darkening and sloppy heap, grunting as he poked in ways mysterious. “So your parents made you learn Dutch and Spanish?”

“I more picked it up omosisly. They fought in their own languages, thinking they could win if the other couldn’t understand.”

“That’s some fighting.”

Mary pulled the towel from her forehead to her nose, blocking the soiled breeze coming from the bin (or trying to, anyway). “They couldn’t help it. The name, you know.”

“Name?”

“Contreras.”

Varian scratched his chin. “You mean, because it sounds like ‘contrary.’”

“We all are, because of it. I am more than most. Being Mary Contreras will do that.”

The boy scratched so much Mary at first wondered if he’d become infested with some sort of compost flea. First he scratched his arm, then his elbow, then his knee cap. Then the reason for all his scratching came to light when he asked, “How come you said my name means I can’t be loyal?”

Pursing her lips until they were dry as overcooked meringues, Mary took the garden fork from Varian and sludged it through the heap. It was preferential to let him keep churning it, but not as preferential as taking a potential weapon out of his hand. “Every name as a meaning that directs our fate. How can a name that means ‘varying’ make a person of character, loyalty, and stability?”

Credit was owed the kid, after all. He was furious, cold and heat at once, a snowman under a beating winter sun. But he didn’t rail or spit or curse or do any of the things she’d seen him do before. This time, he rubbed his arms while walking away, his shoulders transparent.

Well, he asked.

Maisie awoke her that night, with a nudge of his boot into her shoulder.

“How dare you come in here!” Mary screamed, never mind he was the terrorist while she was a mere valiant sous-chef. She felt very outraged in a dignified away, but since she was in a bed roll, she suspected she looked more a worm with paper crown than royally ticked-off royalty.

Maisie took it like that, too, because he answered, “Shaddup. The Queen is sick.”

Mary’s heart froze. “Sick? It must have been the spaghetti. She isn’t used to such plebian food.”

“It’s not the spaghetti.”

“What do you mean?” Her heart froze all over again. “Are you saying it was the salad!”

“No, I mean … I mean, maybe it is the plague!” Maisie never missed a chance to torment her. “Get up there and take care of her.”

It took all the power in Mary’s body, natural and unnatural (and possibly supernatural), for her to slug herself to her feet. Her sacrum ached, her shoulders twinged, her neck shrieked. Sleeping on the floor was beating her round about the ears, because her ears ached, too. But her pain was nothing if Queen Arianna was ill!

After tucking a first aid kit under her arm, Mary lit a candle and climbed the staircase of the long, lonely tower to the bedroom the Queen was currently sleeping in. She knocked on the door, and when there was no answer, gently let herself in.

“Your Majesty?” she whispered, peering into the plum-black room carefully. What if she had gotten the Queen’s and King’s rooms mixed up? She couldn’t blame them for wanting to sleep in separate rooms now, but it sure made it difficult for a sous-chef in the dark of the night!

She felt safer when the only breathing was a heavy one, and not a foundation-shaking snore. “Your Majesty?”

No answer.

Mary pulled back the bed canopy, revealing Arianna lying gently in the bed, asleep. She seemed peaceful and resting well, and was cool to the touch.

“Ay, Your Majesty, I am no nursemaid, but I am here for you. Please remember this when it’s time for promotion.” Mary installed herself on the settee with an extra pillow and blanket from the linen closet. Ah! Such divinity was this settee, soft as a soufflé, plump as a Christmas goose. It had been so long since she’d been in anything like a bed.

“I must not fall asleep, only rest my bones,” Mary told herself.

The next thing she knew, a hand gently shook her shoulder, and a voice softly cried, “Hello? Mary, dear. Hello.”

Mary opened her eyes to a vision of Arianna standing over her, enveloped by a halo of blinding light. Had the Queen died in the night, and this was her apparition come to torment Mary for her sloth? Of course, it was just silly-thought, because the Queen had no wings. So that meant, the light was …

Darting up, Mary looked, horrified. The sun was up, shining through the balcony window, long past dawn. Arianna was dressed for the day.

“Oh, deary. Your Majesty, I am so sorry.” Mary shook the blanket off, all a-tremble. “I fell asleep, deary me. How do you feel?”

A shapely eyebrow sloped down a royal brow. “I’m fine, Mary. What are you doing here?”

“They said you were ill. I was to nursemaid you.”

“I was? You were?” Arianna felt her own forehead, before laughing like a sparrow at a birdbath. “But I feel wonderful.”

And glory be, she looked very healthy, feather bloom in her cheeks, and eyes sharp as blades of grass and just as lively green as the same.

“You weren’t sick, last night?” Mary asked again.

“I don’t remember.”

Ah, the Queen’s persistent amnesia explained it. Mary crawled off the settee. “Then whatever you had mustn’t have been as bad as all that. Now, I believe you ought to have a gentle broth for breakfast. What say you, ma’am?”

The Queen had appetite enough to feed a circus, the animals included. Mary left the room in awe, murmuring, “After the breakfast she ordered, she will certainly be ill.”

When she got down the staircase, Varian was stumbling around on the bottom, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“I’m starved,” he moaned.

Mary tucked his arm into her elbow. “Come then. I will make you French toast, rye porridge”—he fussed at that, but she held her ground—“fried mushrooms and tomatoes, potato omelet …”

But when they walked through the kitchen doors, the Queen’s breakfast order went right out Mary’s head. Andrew stood in the center of the room, leaning his palms into the prep table, staring at these words on the wall, painted in huge, bleeding, red letters: “BeTter wATch youRself littlE ALchemist.”

Mary looked at Varian. He was silent, adhered to his background, his face without emotion, petrified. His weight was huge on her arm. The only moving parts of him were his eyes, tracing every letter that had been splattered across the wall.

“What happened here?” Maisie gruffed, slipping into the room from behind.

Andrew held his arms out helplessly. “Someone broke in last night.”

“Outrageous! How’d they get past the traps?”

“I don’t know.”

“We need better traps.”

Squealing a sound like a duckling in a pressure cooker, Varian slammed his hands over his mouth and tried to run from the room. Andrew was quicker than Mary (her horror made her molasses), and caught the boy around the elbow. Varian whirled around and panted.

“Hey, friend. Hey, buddy,” Andrew crooned, resting his hands on Varian’s quaking shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll keep you safe.”

“No—no. I …” Varian mewled.

“We’ll move you to the room next to mine, okay? In between mine and Maisie’s.”

Doll-like, Varian jerked his head in a nod. “Yeah. ‘Kay.”

“We’ll get your lab finished too. You won’t have to come back here. Mary can handle the cooking for now.”

With glazed eyes, Varian ducked his head and went out with Andrew. Maisie followed them, giving Mary an anachronistic expression as he left, what shouldn’t have been made until the truth of the affair was out. Gulping, Mary stood alone in front of the bloody scrawl, bunching her aprons in her fists. Now she knew she was in over her head.

Dream-boat, Dream-boat, mi amor, schat.

“If you were only here to talk to.”

This was Mary’s singular wish, day-in, day-out. If her husband was available, she would tell him everything. All about the clues she had gathered, and he would put them together for her and make it make sense. It was his job, after all. But to leave the castle to talk to him would mean leaving it forever; the mercenaries that hedged the perimeter were nothing more than her jailers.

Mary was no investigator, only a busybody. But there was a detectable ugliness in the current: a beast rode the murky waves, hid in the flimsy shadows and the light-dawned surf, stalked through sea foam and sea spray. For what reason it hunted, she didn’t know, but she knew the target: the boy who had lost his way. The boy who now was running scared for his life, wearing new clothes to make him appear wicked and mean, hiding behind a big, big persona, when he was a young boy.

Someday, Mary would tell Dream-boat about him. For now, all she could do was watch and wait. And most of all, be contrary.

There was almost no seeing Varian anymore. More and more tasks were laid on Mary’s shoulders, leaving her with no thinking to spare, only time for doing. Maisie was a remora on a shark, nibbling at her constantly to keep to her chores. Breathing being involuntary was her only saving grace.

Did Varian also have his remoras?

It seemed so. He ran about his tasks too, but one day, he left her a gift, sneaking into the kitchen when she lay asleep one night, setting a little basket on the counter to greet her eyes when she awoke. There was a little folded rectangle of note tucked in, with her name on it.

“Keep these for protection.”

“Protection from what, chico? Do you suspect more than what I think?” she murmured. “What are these?”

Two small glass orbs nested in the basket, sitting on a bed of red-checked handkerchief. They were filled with brilliant blue liquid, not entirely watery but completely translucent, as if he had jarred a bit of sky and cloud together.

“Sky jam,” she whispered. An orb went into each of her apron pockets, and would stay with her always.

If she could get him alone, perhaps she could convince him to come with her. “Dream-boat will protect you,” she will tell him. That was that.

“Do you have more of that bread?” Kai asked, wringing his hands prayerfully.

It was bad enough he had come into the kitchen to poke around, but now to make a request … Mary bit her tongue until it was engraved with the marks of her teeth.

“Pão de queijo?” she asked, playing dumb.

Kai wiped a tear from his eye. “Catalan. Such a beautiful language.”

Hiding her grimaces, Mary got him a bowl of the desired bread rolls. Much to her disgust, he didn’t take them and go away, but instead settled on a stool to eat them right there. They were bite-sized, but he made them massive in his manner of eating—taking delicate little nibbles, such a prim princess.

Then Clementine walked in, wondering where the bread was.

Mary snatched up a basket and headed towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Kai asked.

“Just the … the compost, sir.”

He grinned, his double-stuffed cheeks ballooning.

Mary cursed his name in the garden. Not just his name, but also his parents’ names, his grandparents’ names, his great-grandparents’ names, and so on, thirty thousand generations back.

“Thieves and murderers them all, they had to be!” Remembering Varian had told her the heap probably needed churning, she picked up the garden fork and stabbed at the stinking pile. She was on the bow of a salt-crusted whaling vessel, slaying deep sea creatures with her harpoon. “Kai. What does that mean? Ignoramus? Daft? Bully Brouhaha? Maybe it means nothing. Maybe he is just a figment of my imagin—”

Clunk, went the heap.

Clunk? There should be no clunks. Mary tried again.

Clank-clink.

Clank-clink? There should be no clunks, clanks, or clinks.

“Who put metal in here? I’ll kill them.” Mary tried to dig at whatever was making that sound. It creaked and rolled mysteriously as she prodded. Finally, she jabbed the fork in harder than ever, her bicep pulsing, until the thing gave one final gasp. Then, with shoulders brewing, she wrenched the fork up. It was caught on something! The something was heavy and emerged from the heap slowly, pushing ahead of it broken eggshells and walnut shells, browned carrot trimmings, rotting raspberries and tomato cords, and the black soil it all became. Everything tumbled away from whatever it was, revealing, revealing …

It was … it was …

It was a paint can.

“¡Ay, carumba!” Mary oathed.

Blending was no longer an option.

The art of blending was lost to Mary, by committing a single act of “getting involved.” She was a human again, no longer a booving cow. In hopes of blending in spite of herself, she did everything Dream-boat had told her to excess: she kept her head down, kept quiet, and for sun’s sake, didn’t argue. Cooking was her talent, not fighting terrorists. That’s what she would stick too. Cookies, cakes, puddings, pies. Proud towers of pâte à choux to impress the senses, rainbow gelatins to feast the eyes, kouign-amanns to feed all of Brittany. Soups, salads, pastas, rice. Lots of rice. Crispy rice, boiled rice, fried rice. She hoped, in the manner of servants, she would disappear by providing service.

Then one day while she was heading to do laundry, dragging a basket towards the terrace, she heard Andrew and Maisie talking nearby. They were outside, and an open window let in their words.

“How could you lose it?” Andrew growled.

“Blast it, it should be right there. I didn’t lose it,” Maisie spat back.

“You better find it, if you know what’s good for you.”

Mary dropped the basket. Now she could not hope for an opportunity anymore. She must act.

“Now where have you gone, chico?” she wondered, standing in the ancient halls, hoping her senses could lead her right. Wandering, she supposed the best place must be away from the fancier quarters, and eventually, decided to just trust her nose. Certainly enough, after a time, she smelled those vibrant, acidic scents that she hadn’t smelled since Varian was in the kitchen. Sniffing like a hound dog, she found a room in the basement with a green glow seeping under the crack in the door.

Carefully, she pulled the door open an inch, and peered in. There was some movement, a dark shape, and then, “Fiddlesticks!”

Mary opened the door all the way, and it was true—here was Varian in his lab, surrounded by glassware. He weighed out purple granules onto a scale. So that’s where the scale had gone.

“Psst!” Mary pssted.

Raccoon-eyed, Varian looked up, and then lifted his goggles. “Mary?” he asked, in wonder. “Why did you—”

Mary motioned for him to keep his tone down and tucked and rolled into the room. She checked the corners, which were pleasingly bare of Saporians, before asking, “Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“I, uh …” Could she really come out with it? Now that the moment had come, she realized her plan was too simple. Get him to the kitchen first, hope no one was in there, then show him the evidence. That was the better plan. “I need your help. I made madeleines. A new recipe.”

His mouth wavered, frowned in confusion, then perked into a laugh. “Oooo-kay.”

“I made them savory. With salami.”

“Oh.” He scratched his chin. “It’ll be nice for lun—oh! I see.”

“Smart boy.” After pressing her finger against her lips, she took him by the hand, and together, they clandestinely made way to the kitchen. He understood the need for secrecy. After all, the presence of salami must be gotten rid of quietly in a castle of vegans.

They made it to the kitchen without being accosted, and the kitchen was empty except for them. Now again, Mary hesitated. She couldn’t just lay it on him, could she? She had to approach him carefully, work out what his motives actually were. It was a dangerous game she was playing, if it turned out she was wrong about him.

“Madeleines. And orange juice?” she asked.

“Oh yes, please!”

Mary brought out the pitcher of orange juice and a plate of madeleines from the pantry. She poured him a glass and took it all to where he had relaxed himself at Clunky the prep table, where he looked with interest on the bed of croissant dough she had been rolling out before Juniper had threatened her with life-and-limb for not doing the laundry.

“It really is …” Mary murmured, before realizing she didn’t know what she was saying. She picked up the rolling pin, and tackled the dough into a proper rectangle, and not the lump it was. “How are they?”

As an answer (or more likely, a non-answer) Varian took the longest draw of juice from his cup, gulping like a baleen whale at dinnertime. Well, the truth was clear: Mary had made the madeleines three days ago in hopes of keeping him at her side for a few minutes, and they had to be the driest, saddest things around.

She changed the subject. “You’ve been busy.”

“Yeah. Andrew’s got me making improvements to security. Someone broke in again. It’s the third time.”

Mary nodded, folding the dough like a letter for mailing. There had been a noise late last night, what sounded like mercenaries making brouhaha. She had ignored it like always. Their leader wandering around was mercenary enough for her.

“This goal of yours is interesting, no?” she asked. “Turning Corona into New Saporia.”

Varian’s cup clinked against the tabletop as he set it down, his hands white-knuckled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean … it just seems ridiculous.”

She watched his face carefully, waiting for some self-righteous rage to make it clear he truly did believe in New Saporia. Instead, he only looked miffed, even embarrassed, before he turned savage on her, white speckles speckling his livid red cheeks. “I don’t care what you think of it.”

“Oh, well. Hmm.”

“What are you going to ‘hmm’ at me for? The Saporians have treated me better than anyone in Corona has ever done.”

Mary pressed her full weight on the rolling pin, since the dough was being stubborn by refusing to press out neatly again. “It seems the only thing allying you and the Saporians is how much you seem to dislike one another.”

It seemed she disarmed him. With his face angling away, his fingers shoved divots into crumbling madeleines. If he had nothing to say, and certainly no rebuttals, maybe she had a chance.

“Chico.” She laid aside the rolling pin. “Can I show you something I found?”

Was he going to agree? Perhaps, she had pushed him too far too quickly. The goggles on his head caught the light as he tilted towards her, flashing two bright halos—

The door slammed against the wall as Maisie burst in. “All right, you cow, where’d you put it? I know y—” He sucked back his words as his eyes landed on Varian.

Mary froze, trying to blendblendblend, no matter he had already caught her. Maybe, if she could duck behind the prep table … but she was frozen.

“That’s just like you!” Varian spat at Maisie. “Don’t be so rude!”

Maisie’s hands jerked towards his beard. “I—”

Andrew stepped in, completely unruffled, taking in the scene with the same composure he took in everything. Master of his universe, and apparently, everything he laid eyes on.

“Everyone wants to ruin their appetites for lunch,” Varian snarked.

“We’re not here about lunch.” Andrew brought his hands up to grasp the seams of his vest. His green eyes settled on Mary, making her wonder if this was how Eve felt in the Garden with the Serpent. “I’m afraid it’s time we let Mary go.”

No one moved as the room absorbed this information.

Is that all? Mary thought, hesitating to do anymore than breathe.

“You can’t fire her!” Varian sputtered.

Andrew’s face closed up. “Her work hasn’t been up to snuff.”

“That’s not true. She’s working harder than ever.” Varian looked between Mary and Andrew, his eyes melting lollipop-style in confusion and outrage. At Mary, he looked full of wonder. “You can’t fire—”

“This is between the adults.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I told you to go.”

“If you fire her, you fire me, too!”

Even Andrew lost his composure now, nothing compared to Maisie buffaloing in silence nearby: for the briefest moment, the smarmy, caked-on, lipstick squeeze that coiled before Andrew’s eyes flashed away, revealing yellow pops of hatred that strive and consume. Blindly, Mary struck her hand out until she found Varian’s sleeve and latched on. They would go out together.

Andrew stepped forward, pressing his torso against the other side of the table. “Varian, I told you to leave.”

“You’re not firing her!”

Thrusting a finger at Mary, Andrew spat, “She’s the one who painted the words on the wall! You want her to stay?”

It was the heated blast to a face when an oven door is opened. Mary’s face tingled and her cheeks numbed, and she found her voice. “You lying—”

“Don’t deny it, Mary. Everything points to you.”

“Lying—liar!”

“What are you trying to do? Get him out there so you and your soulless Coronans can avenge yourselves on him?”

Mary screeched out several Dutch and Spanish phrases that would have brought her mama and papà on her heads like demons if they had heard.

Varian hadn’t given up on her entirely—even if he wriggled his shirt sleeve out of her grasp and step away. But he only stepped away to the end of the table, standing tangential to them all, his face butter-yellow. “What are you talking about?”

He was the locus of the argument now.

Smirking, Andrew pitched his voice towards cool professionalism. “Think about it. How did the person who broke in manage to do it without alerting the mercenaries or setting off a trap?”

“It wasn’t me, Varian,” Mary cried. “It’s them—”

“She sleeps in this room. How would anyone be able to paint all that without waking her up?”

“The Queen! The Queen was sick that night. I tended her.”

Now Maisie joined in. “Ridiculous, toots. When did the Queen ever get sick? Pretty convenient, she getting sick for only one night.”

“And only the night the words were painted.” Andrew finished.

“She said she had even slept great that night!”

Ice-picking realization shattered Mary. What a fool she was. The sleeping powder. She’d forgotten about it.

She looked helplessly at Varian, who had become the color of cream.

“There’s two possibilities.” Andrew’s voice trembled. “Either she did it herself, or she let someone in. Maybe, it was her husband the guard she let in.”

There was nothing for Mary to say, anything further would seem nothing more than the vain denials of a guilty person. Realization of how easily she had been played and vomit at her own helplessness got caught in the bottleneck of her throat. Her fingertips were seared. What a fool.

Varian had thrown his arms over his ears and ducked his head, caught in a nightmare of Andrew’s making. Now, he was firmly lost.

“Maisie, get him out of here,” Andrew murmured.

What more a sign of Varian’s broken spirit than his allowing Maisie to put an arm around his shoulders and lead him out?

Andrew and Mary stared at each other as they were left alone, a greater burden settling over the room. Now it was a new game. Andrew had won the last, but Mary must win this one.

She picked up the rolling pin. “How did you know my husband is a guard?”

Smoothly, Andrew smiled, not even so much as flickering an eyelash at her weapon. “It wasn’t too hard to figure out. I have, you might say, a passing acquaintance with the guards. Even him. And you know, I didn’t really know, until you confirmed it for me just now.”

What was Mary’s plan? She didn’t know. Delay him, for one. Maybe, get him angry, so he’d make a mistake.

The rolling pin creaked as she twisted it under her palms. “You’re not this smart! This was no grand plan of yours, idioot.”

“You’re right. There was no grand plan.” He rubbed a thumb over an eyebrow, too self-assured to let himself be insulted. “I didn’t have any plans at all. But when you showed up, so desperate to get in—so contrary—how could I turn you away? A time just had to come when you would become useful to me.”

He moved. Not quickly, a meander, nothing hurried. Mary matched his movements, skirting down her side of the table towards the left, as he approached the right. She would keep the table between them. Clunky was a very long, heavy oaken table, and would not allow Andrew to reach her easily. But the door out was at Andrew’s end of the room.

His gaze hopscotched over the nooks and crannies of the kitchen, until they landed on the pitcher of orange juice. He set it on the floor, and then kicked it across the room. The juice bubbled as it spilled, the metal clanged against the table legs. But who cared about juice when he pulled a twelve-inch bread knife from the knife block?

“The funny thing is,” he slicked, “all I really wanted was some cookies.” He passed the knife from hand to hand, testing its weight, his grin slithering as it must have pleased him. Then his free hand whited towards the knife block again, pulling out a paring knife, hardly longer than the length of his hand. This, he slid into his belt. “Where did you hide it?”

Saliva pooled in the corner of her mouth. “You promised. You promised him you wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“Please. You’re not that naïve. Besides. Accidents happen.”

She tried to swallow away the dry kindling feeling in her mouth, stepping as he stepped, always opposite. As he went right, she went left. One old, squeaking granny boot crossed over the other. She bounced her soles against the tile, wishing she had more traction.

They were now standing at the opposite ends of the table, its full length between them. How was this going to work? Perhaps, if she kept moving thus, he would stupidly keep going in the same direction they’d had been, and come around the corner. That corner would be an obstacle, no matter how short, between him and the door. Perhaps, she’d have time to get out.

“People are only objects to you,” she said, keeping one eye on the doorway and the other on him. “You think because the King and Queen are yours, you can make him yours, too? He’ll see you, some day. When he realizes you need him more than he needs you.”

“He’s already mine.” Andrew stepped around the corner.

Mary flew. A chuckle gashed through the air. Something whipped—black whistling in the corner of her eye. Blindly, Mary swung the rolling pin, ricocheting the paring knife away. Andrew groaned. With heart beating and swallow’s-flight hopeful, Mary dared look over her shoulder. But she had not gotten lucky and impaled him with the knife. Instead, gritting teeth, he pressed his hands under the table stop, trying to push it over. He would pin her against the ovens, if he could.

But Clunky, her trusted prep table, didn’t budge, far heavier than Andrew had estimated. Just like him to overestimate his strength. He cursed. Mary had run nearly three-quarters down the prep table. The doorway was just a few more yards away. She’s survive! She’d survive, she’d survive—

Gravity let loose, throwing Mary into the ether. Weightless, she whirlwinded from the earth under her feet, sliding across the tile floor. She let go of the rolling pin in desperate attempt to catch herself, but her ankles treasoned against her. Her feet shot out in different directions. The floor came up as she went airborne.

The tang of orange juice blasted across her nose when she crashed. Her teeth clattered. She thought she tasted juice, but it was blood. Glass tinkled against her hips. Mary rolled onto her back, and Andrew was at her feet, the bread knife smiling against the ceiling.

Glass! But she had heard glass!

Mary dove her hands into her apron pockets. Please, let nothing be broken! What met her palms were cold, smooth, edgeless, perfect.

“Stay back!” she screamed, brandishing the blue orbs Varian had given her.

Andrew skidded to a stop, his eyes bulging. “What are those?” he snarled.

“Sky jam. And if you don’t stay back, we will find out what that means.”

Music, music, music was Andrew’s harsh, guttural breathing. His mouth moved like a moth against lamp glass. She could see in his darting eyes wondering if he could still get her, but she made as if she would smash the orbs together, and he stepped back.

“I’m sorry, chico,” she murmured to herself, as she scooted backwards, and then climbed to her feet. The orbs stayed out as she backed out the door, and waited as the door swung shut, that gap shutting out the vision of a ravening Andrew.

She ran for her life.

The castle entrance had never seemed so far, sitting on the edge of eternity. There were glimpses of the others as she passed—Saporians, King and Queen, maybe even the mercenary leader. If any called out as she passed, she wouldn’t know. All she heard was her own gasping, all she saw was the precipice of an ancient cliff she stood on. The vultures spiraled around her.

“Nitwit. Idioot.” The orbs went back into her pockets as she hefted her skirts into her hands, favoring speed as the front doors materialized at the end of the hallway. She flung her hands out and pressed through the front doors. The warm Corona sun awaited her, the bright Corona sun.

The carpet in the hallways had dried her boots, allowing her to skim down the balcony without falling on her face. When she reached the bottom, prickles broke out on the back of her neck as movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned to look, and at the top of the balcony stood Varian. Mary slowed, then stopped, pressing her hand against her side in stitches.

Her heart broke to look at him, who tried to look aloof. Andrew had twisted the good in both of them. She had allowed herself to be manipulated. Because of that failure, Varian was trapped here.

But maybe, there was one tiny thing she could do to make it up to him.

“Varian!” she called.

He stiffened, his body brutal and honest in his loneliness, but he stayed. Even as his face lay deep in mystery.

“Varian, chico. Schatje. I was wrong about your name. Do you remember what I said about it?”

He stared with broken egg shell eyes, before nodding.

Mary rubbed the sweat dripping in her eyes. “It does mean ‘varying’, but that’s not a bad thing. It means the boy you were yesterday is not the boy you are today. And the boy you will be tomorrow will not be the boy you are today. It means you’re growing, Varian. What a wonderful thing.”

She smiled at him, burden feathering away, but there was to be no more to this conversation. Andrew had caught up.

He wasn’t ready to show his hand to Varian just yet. Coolly, he walked out of the castle, and then stood on the balcony, putting a hand on Varian’s shoulder. An energetic current bubbled under his skin, like milk about to sour. How he’d like to get his hands on her! But he could not, so he merely called down, “Don’t ask for a good reference, Mary.”

Mary shouted back, “I’m not sorry to be gone. I’ve never worked at a place so toxic!”

She dipped her head and knees into a curtsy, then turned for the entry gatehouse, where the doors, with mercenaries stationed on either side, gave her a glimpse of her fallen kingdom. How depressing, in its way. Dream-boat didn’t like to talk about work, but she would tell him about hers. She would tell him how she had failed the lonely boy in the castle, all because she had been deluded.

“I’ve been trying to live up to a name that isn’t mine anymore,” she will say. She was a Larson now. That was that.

From behind her, the wind rushed, bringing the conversation on the balcony, dropping breadcrumbs in a silent forest.

“I will miss her cooking though.” Andrew sighed. “I’ve never had vegan cooking like that before.”

After a moment, Varian answered, his voice at first weak, and then strengthening. “It’s okay. Mary taught me some of her vegan recipes.”

Mary grinned to herself, once more. Should she give up hope so easily? Of course not. Her last name may have changed, but her middle name was still the same. It was still Constance, and constant she would be.

And that was that.