The recipe really was as simple as could be. Just sugar, salt, flour, and Jane’s choice of flavoring. She chose cinnamon, since she knew it to be a bit stronger and rounder of a flavor, just to make sure she could really taste the difference after adding it. She whipped the butter, added the cinnamon, mixed that into the sugar and salt, and then finally mixed in her flour to make dough.

  Once she’d formed the dough into a large rectangle, the recipe informed her that she was supposed to let it cool in her cold box until it was quite firm. She was going a different way, though. Glancing around to make sure both her doors were closed and the shades were all drawn, she recited the simplest charm she knew of, and perhaps the shortest spell that was even possible.

  “Let it be still.”

  She focused her attention on the pan holding the dough. At once, the entire pan frosted over, so cold that she could have gotten her tongue stuck on it.

  For reasons even the wisest mages couldn’t explain, stillness was cold, in the same way that motion was often heat. While there were dozens of incantations that created heat in different ways, the base of every spell involving cold was precisely the same. To make cold, you commanded things to be still.

  Jane had thought about her magic long and hard the previous night. Now that she had her note from Xand, being discovered using magic was far less of a sure disaster than it would have been before. For her, that adjusted the scales of wisdom just enough to allow using her magic in little, simple ways, provided she did it well out of the sight of others and knew how to accomplish the same thing with conventional means.

  Within minutes, the rectangular block of dough was stiff enough to cut into little slices, which she then decorated with the textured side of a fancy glass the former owner had left in a cupboard. Laying the squares out on a few pans, she put them into another oven, setting the heat just-so before she moved back to her loaf of bread.

  The cookies had taken enough time that she didn’t have to wait long before the bread needed her attention. She opened the stove a few minutes earlier than the recipe called for, and found the crust just a few shades lighter than she wanted. She needed that for what she was about to do, both to increase the chance of a good outcome and to stave off disaster.

  Pumping a lot of power into a spell was easy for her. It always had been, and that was mostly why she had what it took to be an archmage candidate in the first place. Using less power was harder, especially after years and years of being instructed to ‘make the effect as big as you can.’

  Holding up her hand, she closed her eyes for a moment. She focused on stilling the circulation of magic in her body and withdrawing her sense of the magic around her as much as she could. Only once that was done did she chant.

  “Let the spirit of fire hold until it bursts. Heat Wave.”

  Normally, a heat wave spell could topple acres of forest. The power of the magic would build up, as if behind a wall, and then be released all at once. Here, Jane made a pathetic little bubble of magic so weak that it could barely hold its form, then let it pop. A single wave of heat washed over the oven and the bread, eventually reaching Jane’s face as a gently warm breeze.

  It was still almost too much. Jane could smell the singe as the top of the loaf dealt with just a moment’s heat. Her thought was that by creating the weakest, shortest burst of fire she could manage, she could approximate the burnt-top bread without dealing with a piece of coal at all.

  Hardly able to wait, she pulled the darkened bread out of the oven and set it to cool, then went outside for a short stroll while the cookies finished baking. Only once that was done, and the cookies were out of the oven and cooling on a rack, did she finally cut a slice of the bread.

  The aroma of her last batch of bread had been good, but she had been so nervous and well-fed that it hadn’t affected her much. Now she was hungry and confident, and the smells of the roasted herbs and seeds set her stomach grumbling.

  Careful not to burn herself, she took a bite of the crackling-crisp crust and a good healthy portion of the bread, then almost cried as the flavor spread through her mouth.

  “So good.” She spread a little butter over the bread and took another bite. “So very good. Am I supposed to say that about my own bread? I guess I don’t care.”

  Once the cookies were cool, she tried one of them, too. The bottom of the cookies had just started to brown when she took them out of the oven. They, too, were perfect.

  Yet ‘perfect’ wasn’t enough.

  With a sigh, she acknowledged the problem with that particular batch of delicious confection. They were perfectly baked. They carried the flavor she had imparted to them very well. She enjoyed them. Still, there was only so much they could be, even with her book’s guidance.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Almost on accident, Jane had stumbled onto something she expected might be wisdom. All her favorite breads had been made well, but what had made them her favorites was that they were special in some way. The bakers and cooks who’d created them all had little tricks for making each loaf something other than normal: perhaps imperfect, but unique.

  The bread recipe she had adapted from the book, combined with the burnt-top bread’s coal technique, was less perfect than the breads she had tried before. Frankly speaking, it was a little bit burnt in a way she would need to figure out how to avoid. Even so, it was better than the bread from yesterday.

  It surprised her tongue.

  She kept the bread for future meals as she swept the cookies into a jar. She would have to figure out things to do with her excess food over the next few days, since she had a feeling she’d be making a lot of it.

  “OK, house.”

  She revved up her magic, just a little, and began to clean the ovens and kitchen. Away from the risk of trouble, it felt right, somehow. The magic was still part of her, after all. She had never hated it. Now that she had found ways to use it in making something, it felt better.

  She felt like she had finally given her magic the home it deserved.

  —

  “I keep seeing people stopping at your door. Every morning.”

  This Lee-day, Bella had swept into Jane’s house without warning and leapt straight into conversation as she placed parcels of food on the counter. Jane decided she didn’t mind that one bit. She couldn’t imagine many moments Bella didn’t make better just by being there. If the woman wanted to burst through doors unannounced, that felt closer to a blessing than anything else.

  “It’s mostly priests, too. What did you do, Jane? It must have been pretty bad.”

  “Shush. They were just coming by for the food,” Jane replied, looking through the parcels. “I’ve been practicing, and I’m making much more bread than I can use. I figured the priests would find a good use for it.”

  “Well, sure. But I could have used it too, you know. You didn’t think to give your friend Bella some for her shop?”

  The idea hit Jane like a brick.

  “I suppose I could have,” she said slowly. “It honestly never occurred to me. You are a professional, Bella. I can’t ask you to subject your customers to my cooking.”

  “Why not? You must have made at least some progress, Jane. I run a breakfast joint. The standards aren’t that high.”

  “Still. I don’t want anyone else betting their coins or their reputation on me until I’m absolutely sure.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. A month? Two? More? There’s still so much left to learn.”

  Bella scowled thoughtfully before relaxing.

  “I guess maybe that’s how it is when you start out from nothing, but… I don’t know. It just seems like such a long time.”

  “Well, maybe I’m wrong and it will be shorter. That would be nice.”

  Jane took the various doughs she had been working on all morning and shoved them onto various shelves in her various ovens running at various temperatures, arranged so that all of them would get exactly what they needed. She was much, much faster at that kind of work now, and there was no need to hide her weak cooking-spells from Bella. Once the pans were in their ovens, she was just about done with her party preparations, a good hour before everyone else was set to show up.

  There were to be six of them, overall. Jane would be playing hostess, and Bella would be making sure she didn’t mess up too much. Sadie was coming, as was Emily the librarian. The blacksmith, who turned out to be named Brit, had also asked Bella to get him an invitation. He’d promised to bring some special ale from the blacksmith guild’s tavern.

  And, of course, Allen the Tinker was coming. Which, to Jane, meant that any small problem or mistake would seem like a disaster.

  It was all very silly, really. She hardly knew Allen, and he knew her even less. If she never saw him again, he probably wouldn’t notice.

  Even so, she needed everything to be perfect. Or at least so perfect that he wouldn’t notice whatever imperfections were left.

  “So, Bella…” Jane leaned on the counter and lowered her voice. “I have a question for you. It’s one of my weird ones, though.”

  “They aren’t weird, Jane. They are perfectly understandable questions, given how you’ve told me you spent most of your childhood. They weren’t even that odd before I knew that. I just thought you were a little… what’s the word?”

  “Sheltered?”

  “Yes. That. Which I suppose you really were. So please stop apologizing. I’ll help.”

  “OK, then.” Jane took a deep, deep breath. “How do people have fun?”

  To Bella’s credit, she didn’t react. She took a very long moment to reply, but her poker face held admirably.

  “In general?” she asked.

  “I mean at a party like this. I’ve never been to one. I know food is part of it, and wine, and… I tried to find books on having fun at parties and what people do, and they had some games, so I got some of the things to play those games, like marbles and little balls to throw at little cups and that kind of thing, but then I thought maybe that wouldn’t be enough, so…”

  Bella was at her side then, patting her on the back. “Whoa, there, Jane. Deep breath. Slow down. Gods, I didn’t realize this was eating at you, or I would have solved it much sooner. Breathe, Jane. That’s good.”

  “But I still don’t know.” Jane took a deep gasp of air as Bella rubbed her back, which really did help. “How is it done?”

  “Not your problem, Jane. No, I’m serious. You invited everyone. You are providing a place for people to gather, and most of the food. You have some options for games if people want to play them, which they might not. It is nice of you to want everyone to have a good time, but it is not your responsibility. Plus, it doesn’t even work like you think it does. Here. Drink this water.”

  Jane took a glass of water from her friend and sipped on it as Bella set her gently on a stool. That helped too, and she almost felt herself again.

  “See, when people hang out for a night, sometimes it’s not fun at all,” Bella explained. “That happens. Sometimes it’s the most fun anyone has ever had before. That happens, too. But there are so many things that factor into having fun. Nobody can possibly predict them all.”

  Jane’s shoulders sagged. “So it might not be fun? At all?”

  “You only hear the bad parts, don’t you?” Bella shook her head with a grin. “It might not. But it will probably be at least a little fun, and it’s even more likely that it will be more fun than that. This won’t make sense to you until later, but that’s just how it is. You have to give a party like this a good start, then step back and give it room to breathe. If you don’t, you’ll smother it. The rest is up to chance, the gods, and the quality of the wine. Do you trust me?”

  As always, Jane found that she did.