“I’ve got no idea,” said Mizuki. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t. But you’ll be able to ask your guild in another day or so. And even if they say they don’t, which I don’t know why they would—” Mizuki shrugged. “—being a druid,” she went on, a bit sad to let the idea of ‘woods witch’ die, “is kind of like being a sorc, I think, where people have all these ideas about what you’re like and what you do, and none of it changes that you’re just a person with your own stuff going on. You don’t need to be the way that other people think you should be.”
“That’s a lesson found in books,” said Isra. “No one seems to believe it though.”
“Well,” said Mizuki, “yeah, you can run into problems if you’re too different or different in the wrong ways, I guess. And people will make their own judgments about you, which is probably fine if you’re a fairy princess, but not so much if you’re depending on the kindness of strangers, or having a job, or getting customers, or whatever.” Mizuki tapped her lips. “But I don’t think any of that applies to dating if you’re a druid, because it’s not like the other druids are offering you anything, and if they have a problem with you finding a boyfriend, I’ll be first in line to help you drown them.”
Isra faltered. “Drown them?”
“Um,” said Mizuki. “It’s a Kiromon saying. I think there’s something like it in Inter. It’s just an expression.” She racked her brain trying to think about where it came from. Something from the Abohan Dynasty? A buried memory slowly resurfaced. “Drowning kingdom officials was, um, a traditional punishment.”
“Why did the kingdom do that?” asked Isra. There was a bit of alarm in her voice.
“Well, the kingdom didn’t do that,” said Mizuki. “It was the village folk. The kingdom had officials who lived in every village as part of taxes and other stuff, administration, I guess, and they were mostly jerks, I think, but sometimes one of them would cross a line, and the villagers would get together to drown them in a local pond. They did it with drowning because then people could say that it was an accident, and the kingdom kind of looked the other way, because if you were enough of a jerk to be held down by a dozen villagers, you probably deserved it. Grim, I know, but those are the kinds of stories my grandfather was full of.”
“You would help drown someone for me,” said Isra.
“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “I guess. Depends on what he had done. I don’t know you well enough to know what your standards for drowning someone are.”
“When I was thirteen years old, my father died,” said Isra. “I was left all alone. One of my father’s friends, a man named Angun, came to our house bringing food and condolences. He tried to poison my drink, something to make me sleep, but I could tell that something had gone wrong when my back was turned. When I refused to drink, he subdued me and stole everything of value from the house.”
“Wow,” said Mizuki. Again, she felt a tightness in her chest, like her heart was being squeezed. Isra already seemed like someone who perhaps didn’t need to be defended but whom Mizuki would gladly defend anyhow. Imagining little doe-eyed innocent Isra being assaulted and taken advantage of like that, well, Mizuki felt a great deal of pain and anger, and she took a moment to wipe away a tear that had been forming.
They walked in silence for a bit, and though Mizuki had thoroughly lost her bearings, she felt like they were going back the way they’d come. It felt good to walk, especially if they were going to be able to take a shortcut back to Pucklechurch when the end of the day rolled around.
“I guess finding him will be the first step,” said Mizuki. “And then getting away with it will be the hard part. I don’t know what kind of entads the Greater Plenarch province has for doing detective work, but we’d want to figure that out. If we made it look like an accident, they wouldn’t do a full investigation, but we’d really want to know what we were going up against.”
“I don’t think that’s what I want,” said Isra. She was hesitant. “When you talked about drowning someone, my mind went to him. I want what was stolen returned to me. I want justice.”
“Oh, good, I was getting worried, I have no idea how to kill a person,” said Mizuki. She shook her head. “I mean, I know how to kill a person in theory. Magic is supposed to be pretty good at it. But I’d have been way out of my depth.” She took in a breath and was feeling better about it. If Isra had immediately started talking about logistics, well, Mizuki would probably have gone along with it, but it might have ended up as one of those things she went along with because it seemed like a good idea, then turned out to be a very bad idea. Still, screw that guy. “Did you ever report the crime?”
“I was thirteen,” said Isra. “They would have taken me from my home.”
“Probably,” said Mizuki. “I can’t imagine what I would have done in your situation. I was just asking because now that you’re old enough, they can’t do that, so you could report the crime and maybe get a bit of help from the province, depending on what was taken.”
“It was five years ago,” said Isra. “He could be halfway across the world. Or not even in Inter.”
“Sure. But going to the authorities couldn’t hurt. There are some fabulous tracking entads out there if there was something in particular you wanted to get back. And if it’s justice you want…” She shrugged. “Sorry if this isn’t anything you wanted to hear, it’s just what I’d do in your shoes.” Mizuki wanted justice too.
“There were entads,” said Isra. “Five of them. There were also a number of rings stolen.”
“Good entads?” asked Mizuki.
“Some. A feeding spoon. A bottled garden. A dagger that went through the air like a whisper.”
Mizuki felt questions coming and swallowed all but one of them. “A bottled garden?” she asked.
“It was small,” said Isra. She stopped her hiking and turned back to Mizuki and showed with her hands, something no larger than a cabbage. “A seed dropped into it would shrink down and grow quickly, usually within a day. A miniature. We had a small tin of seeds that we’d saved. It gave us oranges in the winter.”
Mizuki nodded, though she had more questions about the bottled garden. It sounded neat. Were they eating miniature fruits? Could you pull a whole tree from it? How were they getting the fruits out? She had lots to ask, because it seemed like an interesting thing to have, with lots of complications. Talking excitedly about something that Isra had lost, especially something with sentimental attachment, seemed like it would be a big and obvious misstep though, and for once, Mizuki was able to shut her mouth in time.
“Is it okay if I talk to Rolaj about it, or not?” asked Mizuki.
“About the entads?” asked Isra. “No.”
“No, it’s okay, or no, it’s not okay?” asked Mizuki.
“It’s okay,” said Isra.
“I don’t mean to butt in with your business,” said Mizuki. “I just thought… maybe it would be worth a shot. And if you’d like, I can go deal with reporting the crime.”
Isra was silent. “Why?”
“Um, I’m hoping that it would help get this,” she waved, trying to find the word, “resolved?”
“Why are you doing it for me?” asked Isra.
Mizuki shrugged. “I’ve been alone for a bit. I have lots of friends in town and had a series of boyfriends, but I know what it’s like to not really have someone to depend on, not that the community hasn’t been good for me.” She’d been looked after and checked in on when her parents left, but it wasn’t really the same. “Hannah came in and said the house looked neglected, which I guess is true, and Verity came in and said that my garden was terrible, which was definitely true. But here I’ve got a chance to do something for someone, even if it’s just stuff like dealing with the hexmaster for you or talking to a bunch of entad people about what’s gone through their stores in the last five years. Those seem like things that you might not want to do or that you’d find annoying, and I won’t say that they’re exactly things that I’m good at, but I don’t think I would find them annoying. And if I did find them annoying, I’m willing to be annoyed for your sake.”