Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher Page A

glanced at the girl, eyeing her up and down, before she reached for the poker and thrust it back into the oven, into the coals where one of two tiny fire furies that regulated the oven wasn’t doing its job. She raked the poker through them, stirring them, and saw the flames dance and quiver a bit more as the sleepy fury within stirred to greater life. “As soon as I have a moment to spare,” she told the girl.

    “Oh,” Beritte said, somewhat wistfully. “I’m sure we’ll be finished soon.”

    “Just peel, Beritte.” Isana turned back to the counter and her bowl. The water within stirred and then quivered upward, resolving itself into a face—her own, but much younger. Isana smiled warmly down at the fury. Rill always remembered what Isana had looked like, the day they’d found one another, and always appeared in the same way as when Isana, then a gawky girl not quite Beritte’s age, had gazed down into a quiet, lovely pool.

    “Rill,” Isana said, and touched the surface of the water. The liquid in the bowl curled over her finger and then swirled around quietly in response to her. “Rill,” Isana said again. “Find Bernard.” She pressed an image from her mind, down to the fury through the contact of her finger: her brother’s sure, silent steps, his rumbling, quiet voice, and his broad hands. “Find Bernard,” she said again.

    The fury quivered and swirled the water about—then departed the bowl, passing through the air in a quiet wave Isana felt prickling along her skin, and then vanished, down through the earth.

    Isana lifted her head and focused on Beritte more sharply. “Now then,” she said. “What’s going on, Beritte?”

    “I’m sorry?” the girl asked. She flushed bright red and turned back to her peeling, knife flashing over the tuber, stripping dark skin from pale flesh. “I don’t know what you mean, mistress.”

    Isana placed her hands on her hips. “I think you do,” she said her tone crisp and severe. “Beritte, you can either tell me where you got the flowers now, or you can wait until I find out, later.”

    Isana felt Beritte’s fluttering panic, dancing around on the edges of the girl’s voice as she spoke. “Honestly, Mistress, I found them waiting for me at my door. I don’t know who—”

    “Yes you do,” Isana said. “Hollybells don’t just miraculously appear, and you know the law about harvesting them. If you make me find out on my own, by the great furies, I’ll see to it that you suffer whatever is appropriate anyway.”

    Beritte shook her head, and one of the hollybells fell from her hair. “No, no, mistress.” Isana could taste the way the lie made the girl inwardly cringe. “I never harvested any of them. Honestly, I—”

    Isana’s temper flared, and she snapped, “Oh, Beritte. You aren’t old enough to be able to lie to me. I’ve a banquet to cook and a truth-find to prepare for, and I’ve not time to waste on a spoiled child who thinks that because she’s grown breasts and hips that she knows better than her elders.”

    Beritte looked up at Isana, flushing darker with awkward humiliation and then snapped back with her own anger. “Jealous, mistress?”

    Isana’s temper abruptly flashed from a frustrated blaze to something cold, icy. For just a moment, she forgot everything else in the kitchen, all the events and disastrous possibilities that faced the stead-holt that day, and focused her attention on the buxom girl. For only a moment, she lost control of her emotions and felt the old, bitter rage rise within her.

    Every kettle in the kitchen abruptly boiled over, steam flushing out in a cloud that curved around Isana and flowed toward the girl, scalding water racing over the floor in a low wave toward her seat.

    Isana felt Beritte’s defiance transformed in an instant to terror, the girl’s eyes widening as she stared at Isana’s face. Beritte thrust her hands out as she stumbled out of her chair, the feeble wind sprites