After washing up, brushing the undercoat out of a yak, washing up, chopping wood, and washing up again, Archie’s hands still smelled like yak dung.

  It didn’t have the knockout quality of the pig pens near Sain, but beneath the earthy smell of grass, a pungent undercurrent lingered.

  “We stockpile wood throughout the year,” Buart told Archie and Barley as they tied bundles of wood together with rope and threw them over the backs of the yaks. “We save most of it for when we really need it in the winter. Even in a cold summer like this one, yak dung is enough to keep us warm.”

  Buart fixed some of Archie’s knots. “We have to do it around here because of all the people living around Khaldeer. But in central Khala, they really have to preserve wood. Trees don’t grow so well in the higher altitudes, so they can’t afford to cut down too many.”

  Archie’s hands smelled from the dung, his arms hurt from the woodcutting, his head still buzzed from the quarterstaff incident, and to top it all off, his stomach growled.

  Luckily, Buart heard that last bit. He slapped his thighs, the universal symbol for being done with the task at hand.

  “This should be good for today,” he said. “One last job for you fellas. A Chef job. Cook a couple of steaks for all of us, yeah? Show me what that famous Academy is teaching you.”

  Hawthorn picked out the meat, handing it to Barley, and picked out a dried chip of dung, handing it to Archie. To Archie’s surprise, the smell was only moderately unpleasant when he threw it on the fire.

  “Alright, I’m empty after all that extraction,” Hawthorn said. “Show me what that double cooking exam gets ya.”

  Archie grabbed the slab of yak meat and tossed it around in his hand, assessing it. It looked the same as a dead harvest, but Archie could tell it lacked the same amount of essence. “Should I try to duplicate it?”

  “Nah,” Hawthorn answered. “Duplicating off an extraction is like…Purple Jacket stuff. Or Red. Just use whatever essence is there for flavor. I’mma judge you based on the taste.”

  Barley chopped up rosemary and thyme while Archie melted yak butter in a pan. They put two steaks in with the herbs, tilting the pan to pool the butter so they could spoon it over the meat.

  As Archie basted the steak, he thought back to some of the things he had learned the previous year. The spirit of motion. Putting a bit of essence at a time into each movement. Coaxing out the flavor. His time in Khala thus far had illuminated his deficiencies in combat. In extraction. But cooking? Cooking he knew.

  Buart insisted they eat the steaks “like men.” No side dishes, no forks, no knives. Just teeth and tearing. Archie refused. The smell of yak dung still lingered on his hands. He didn’t care to find out how it might taste. Buart would have been disappointed with Archie if he hadn’t been so happy with the flavor of the steaks. He took bite after bite before managing to swallow the one before it. Even Hawthorn was impressed with Archie’s cooking.

  Once they had eaten their fill, they took their goods into town. The wood was the heaviest, so three yaks carried it, Buart leading the yaks. With Barley and Hawthorn being stronger than Archie, they carried the meat that had been stacked high on two wicker platters. That left Archie with a platter of dried yak dung chips that he held down at his waist in an attempt to keep it away from his nose.

  The meat had preset destinations. Six slabs at this restaurant, eight at that restaurant. A couple went to a tailor that sewed the Monastery’s jackets—Archie promised to come back to get a padded version for himself and his friends.

  Per Khalyan law, Buart had a right to sell half of the harvest to whoever he’d like. People ran out of their homes when they heard the dangling bells on the yaks. Buart haggled with them without ever stopping, a wake of people following him down the road in a makeshift auction. With each sale, he tossed a few coppers the Chefs’ way. Fortunately for Archie, the dung was free, people taking a couple of chips at a time and helping shrink the stack away from Archie’s nose.

  By the time they arrived at the Monastery, hardly twenty pounds of meat remained—three of which Buart gave to them on the condition that they would feed it to Picea and the rest of Archie’s friends. “Khalyan hospitality,” Buart called it.

  While Barley and Hawthorn took the meat back into the kitchen, Archie spotted Sutton sitting at a table near the yard with a scattered pile of papers. Sutton didn’t look up when Archie sat across from him.

  “You smell awful,” Sutton said as he dipped his quill in a jar of ink. He crossed something out and started writing in the margins. “These records are a mess. For as much as they value conservation of resources, you’d think they’d have a better system.”

  Archie leaned over the table and stuck his hand under Sutton’s nose. Sutton recoiled and swatted Archie’s hand away, never looking away from his papers.

  “The problem is the bartering,” Sutton explained to Archie, who hadn’t asked for an explanation. “The standard for a pound of meat is three silver. The standard for a gallon of ale is two silver. Fifty feet of rope is a gold. But the Monastery gave someone eighty feet of rope for three gallons of ale and two pounds of meat.” Sutton took a bunch of papers in his hand and waved them around angrily. “Someone out there got twenty feet of extra rope!”

  “I’m sure that kind of thing happens in Ambrosia City all the time,” Archie said, laughing at Sutton’s exasperation.

  “Oh, I can assure you it does not,” Sutton said. He slammed his quill down and finally looked up at Archie, his head jerking as he ranted. “The—the—the frivolity of all of this would never happen there. Everything in Ambrosia City is about the bottom line. Everyone knows exactly what they’re worth and they always get their due. Here? Here? Here they look at the accepted standards and take them as suggestions, not rules!”

  “Eh, I kinda like how they do things here.” Archie shrugged and looked away. He spotted Blanche sitting in the dirt of the yard. “What’s she doing?”

  Sutton returned his attention to his papers. “Training.”

  Archie left Sutton to his papers, walking over and leaning against the outside wall as he watched Blanche. She sat with her eyes closed and her palms to the ground. Her face was slack, her mouth hung open in concentration.

  Archie had seen that expression on her before. Not in the kitchen. Never in the kitchen. The kitchen was a place of frantic lip chewing and head scratching and crying. But in the greenhouse and in the fields and here, Blanche seemed at peace. Anchored. As if she had grown from the soil herself.

  “That one,” she said as she pointed her arm back and to the left. Archie followed her finger to find Picea standing in the corner of the yard.

  “Are you sure?” Picea asked.

  Without turning, Blanche responded. “Yes.”

  “Four in a row!” Picea cheered.

  Blanche twisted around to look, a big grin forming on her face as she transformed from plant stalk to excitable girl.

  “They told me you were good, flower…but this! You’ve never done this before?”

  Blanche shook her head with a grin, seeing Archie as she stood. “Archie! How was being a yak farmer?”

  “Yakdak,” Archie clarified. “It was…good. What’s going on here?”

  “Learning how to forage,” Blanche explained while Picea dug into the ground. “Head Chef Picea dug out a spot in those two corners. She puts a radish in one of the corners, overloads it with essence, and then I have to guess which corner she put it in.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “So how do you know?” As Blanche walked over to him, Archie noticed the dirt caked to her jacket. Most people had an instinct to brush off their clothing when they got up from the ground. Blanche never seemed to mind.

  “Well, I send out my essence through the ground. When it hits something else with a lot of essence it sorta…bounces back to me. Then I know which direction it came from.”

  Picea yanked a radish out of the ground and patched the hole in the dirt. “She’s got the direction down faster than anyone I’ve taught. Most people get thrown off by all the essence in the garden. Scrambles them. Give her a couple weeks and she’ll probably start getting the distance down.”

  “Blanche, have you eaten?”

  As expected, Blanche shook her head. Everyone from the Academy knew how Blanche would forget to eat when spending time in the gardens.

  Archie nodded back to the kitchen. “We brought back steaks. Get Barley and Hawthorn to make you one.”

  Blanche hopped over with an excited little squeal. “She’s a really good teacher,” she told Archie as she skipped past.

  Archie was ready to put that to the test. “Head Chef Picea? Could you teach me how to fight?”

  Picea stomped the dirt flat to cover the hole and wiped off her hands. She smirked. “Who said I know how to fight?”

  Archie laughed. Anyone that had ever seen Picea knew she could fight. “Hawthorn says you fought a yeti.”

  “Ooooh yeah.” Picea flexed an arm and patted her tricep. “They call me the Yeti Wrangler. When one of them big hairy apes gets too uncomfortably comfortable being near people, I remind them why we’re at the top of the food chain.”

  A jolt of excitement shot through Archie. “Are they tough?”

  “A couple of them have given me some real trouble. Especially since I try not to kill ‘em unless I have to. One in particular was one of the hardest fights I’ve had.”

  “What was your hardest fight?”

  Picea let out a single hearty chuckle. “Tarragon’s over at the Academy, right?”

  “Yeah. He’s…he’s a real mentor to me. Do you know him?”

  Picea erupted into the laughter of a drunken oaf, startling Archie. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve met a few times. I see him every few years. He sees me every night.”

  Archie looked confused. Picea laughed even harder, hardly able to tell the story.

  “Every night when he shuts that one good eye of his, I imagine he sees the last thing he ever saw with the lost one—prime Picea coming at him with a meat tenderizer.”

  Archie’s confusion turned into shock. Picea’s laughter only grew.

  “Of course, I missed him with the meat tenderizer, otherwise you wouldn’t know him.” Picea wiped a tear from her eye, trying to control her laughter to finish her story. “Got him real good with a meatball though. Pushed his cheekbone up into his eye aaaaand…” She flashed her hands open. “Pop!”

  Archie fought to keep his steak down.

  “We’re friendly now, of course. It was just war, you know? But he was a good fighter. Best I went up against. Is he a good teacher?”

  “Yes!” Archie answered, hoping his enthusiasm would redeem Tarragon’s defeat somehow. “He said I have a fighter’s spirit. Although so far it’s really been more about conjuration and less about combat.”

  “A fighter’s spirit, huh?” Picea stepped into the middle of the yard. “Let’s see what you got.”

  Archie looked around the yard as if it were somehow not an appropriate place to train. “Right now?”

  Picea frowned and shrugged. “You’d be surprised how little you get to choose when to fight. Come on, I promise not to take an eye out. Show me what you know.”

  “Should I—”

  Picea held up her thumb and forefinger, conjuring a meatball to fill the space between. “If you don’t show me how you attack, you’re gonna have to show me how you defend.”

  Archie liked having two eyes. And he had no confidence in his ability to hurt someone that could hurt Tarragon. He decided not to hold back.

  First, distraction. He pushed his essence down into his right hand, conjuring a blueberry and throwing it sidearmed. It burst just before reaching Picea’s face, covering her in a blue smokescreen.

  His essence took a moment to reset to its neutral state before he could push it down into his arm again, this time conjuring a noodle that he whipped at Picea, hoping to wrap it around her torso.

  Despite the smokescreen, Picea’s spare hand still managed to reach out and grab the noodle. It wrapped around her hand harmlessly. She stared at Archie, not even bothering to assume a battle stance.

  “A nice idea,” she commended. “Covering the slowness of the noodle with the smokescreen.”

  Archie had thought the noodle was fast.

  “You’re a little raw, though,” she continued. “And slow. Can you make your essence do two things at once?”

  “Uh—kinda.”

  Archie dispelled the noodle. He held out his left forearm, hardening it with sugarskin. Once his technique succeeded, he put a reserve of essence into his left arm to maintain it while pushing the rest of the essence of his body into his right arm to conjure a noodle. It took all of his concentration to keep the two reservoirs of essence separate, resulting in a noodle whip with half the length and pop of the last one.

  “Kinda, indeed,” Picea said, wincing out of one side of her mouth. “I suppose that’s pretty good for an Orange Jacket, but—”

  “—I got perfect scores in conjuration,” Archie protested as he dispelled his magic. “I’m the best in my class.”

  “Alright, alright.” Picea pushed her spare palm at him twice to signal him to stop. “But when I say do two things at once, I mean at once. Here…”

  She underhand tossed the meatball halfway between her and Archie. It hit the ground with a thud. Then it kept going. With untold weight, the meatball burrowed nearly two feet into the ground. Archie wondered how Tarragon had only lost one eye.

  Picea bent her body sideways to look up. “This is your speed…”

  She threw a blueberry high into the air. Her arm came back down and up again, launching something noodle-like into the air to whip the blueberry. The blueberry burst and the noodle-like object coiled back into her hand, forming a cinnamon roll.

  Archie thought she had done it pretty quickly.

  “And this is the speed you want…”

  Picea threw her left hand up into the air. Before the blueberry could leave her hand, her right hand started moving. The compound movement ended in a flash, the conjurations occurring at the same time. The blueberry only made it a few feet in the air before the cinnamon roll struck it down.

  “Of course, I don’t expect you to be able to do three conjurations at once. But doing two would be a major step.”

  “Three?”

  Picea lifted one leg and rapped her knuckles against her tanned calf, producing a hard knocking sound. “Crustskin. Never hurts to have the defenses up while you attack.”

  Blanche applauded Picea from the sidelines, having hidden behind a pillar to watch.

  “Go eat!” Archie scolded.

  Picea smiled at Blanche. “Thanks, flower. Alright, Archie. You got the blueberry smokescreen. The noodle whip. The sugarskin. What else ya got?”

  Archie cursed his inadequacy. He had three techniques and Picea could do all of them at the same time. “That’s it…” he muttered.

  “Oh, Archie. That’s plenty to start with. And a warrior doesn’t sulk. It leaves them vulnerable.”

  Picea moved too quickly for Archie to even register, the cinnamon roll unfurling and swinging around before whipping Archie’s butt with a snap!

  As Archie yelped and hopped around, clutching his butt, Picea brought the cinnamon roll back and swung from the other side. “Show me those defenses!”

  Archie barely managed to move his essence, instead choosing to move his body. Despite his attempted dodge, the cinnamon roll still managed to snap on a cheek. Blanche giggled as Archie hopped around the yard, the cinnamon roll whipping his backside again and again.

  “Like I said, you have talent, but you’re raw!” Picea finally stopped her assault and just grinned. “But don’t worry, I’m good with the meat tenderizer.”

  She swung once more, slowly this time. Archie let out a half-grunt, half-yell as he conjured a noodle and slammed it down on the cinnamon roll, deflecting it to the ground.

  “There we go,” Picea cheered. She nodded her approval as she let the cinnamon roll dissipate. “That’s something I can work with. I was starting to worry that there might not be a bit of ferocity in your bunch.”

  Archie rubbed his butt. “If you want to see ferocious, you should spend some more time with Nori.”