Cinnamon & Copper

Shae Hartford was twenty-three years old and she had a problem, and the problem was not the dough sticking to her knuckles.

The problem was her husband.

She kneaded the morning bread with more force than it strictly deserved, flour puffing up around her elbows in the warm hush of the bakery. The Copper-Spice Market hummed outside the open shutter, the crystal grinder's tent next door singing its little glass note, the liquid-dream cart across the lane burbling like a happy drunk. Cinnamon hung in the air so thick she could practically chew it. It was a good smell. It was her smell. And for two whole years it had not been enough to get one honest answer out of Mitchell Hartford.

"Whatever you like," he said. Every single time.

She had asked him last night, flat on her back, hair everywhere, his mouth still busy, and she'd gasped out the question right at the peak of things, which she thought was clever timing because surely a man at that moment would tell the truth. And what had he said? "Whatever you like, love." Whatever you like! While she was about to come! Who says that?

Well. She knew who. Her sweet, maddening husband, who was twenty-five and built like a spice barrel and had never once, not once, told her what he actually craved in bed. He was happy, he always said. Happy! Shae believed he was happy. But happy and silent were not the same thing, and a woman could only take so many nights of guessing games before she did something about it.

She punched the dough flat and blew a curl of hair off her face.

The bell over her door jangled, and there was Olivia Willows, twenty-nine and grinning like a cat that had gotten into the cream, a little green bottle held up in one hand like a trophy.

"Candor-wort syrup, fresh pressed, one drop does it," Olivia announced, wiggling the bottle. "Well. Three drops does it, but one is plenty for a nudge. You said nudge, right? You didn't say confession rack, did you?"

"Olivia, get in here before the whole market hears you," Shae said, wiping her hands. "And yes, a nudge. He doesn't need breaking, he needs... opening. Like a stubborn jar."

Olivia hopped onto a flour sack and crossed her boots at the ankle. She and Shae had been friends since Shae was twenty-two, three years now, and Olivia had heard every word of the Mitchell saga, twice. "So you're really doing the tart."

"I'm really doing the tart."

"Honey-cinnamon? His favorite?"

"Honey-cinnamon, glazed, and maybe a whisper of your syrup. Just a whisper! I'm not trying to turn my husband into somebody else in our own loft. I'm trying to get him to say what he wants while he's already... warmed up." Shae felt her face go pink and hated it. She was a married woman, she baked lewdly shaped pastries for a living, she was allowed to blush about exactly nothing.

Olivia cackled. "So he eats the tart, the candor-wort loosens his tongue, and you ask him the question. Shae, that's diabolical. I'm so proud of you."

"It's not diabolical, it's... practical." Shae took the bottle and held it up to the light. The syrup inside was the green of new leaves and it moved slowly, like it was thinking. "You're sure it's mild? He's not going to blurt out state secrets or the names of everyone he's ever found pretty?"

"He'll blurt out what you ask, that's all it does. It's a door-opener, not a crowbar." Olivia slid off the sack and patted Shae's shoulder on the way past. "You've been married two years. You deserve to hear an actual sentence with an actual want in it. Make the tart."

Shae watched her go, then got to work, and honestly, this was the part she loved best. She rolled the pastry thin, lined the little tin, whisked the honey with cream, and then stood over the bowl with the green bottle in her hand for a long minute. The syrup moved slowly, like it was thinking. She put the cork back in and set the bottle on the high shelf. A nudge he hadn't agreed to was not a nudge, it was a trick, and she did not want secrets that had been bought, she wanted them given. The tart would be just a tart. The question would be hers, out loud, to his face. Cinnamon from her own husband's stall, which she had bought fair and square that morning, thank you, no spousal discount involved. The tarts went into the oven and came out glossy and golden and smelling like everything good in the world.

She wrapped one in cloth and set it aside. Tonight.

* * *

The closing bell rang across the market at sundown, that great bronze gong from the clocktower that made every stall cover its wares and every enchanter snuff their little lights. Shae had the shutter half latched when Mitchell came up the lane, and she stopped latching, because something was off.

Not bad off. Just... off. He was distracted, she could tell, his satchel bumping his hip forgotten, his eyes somewhere past her shoulder. And he smelled strange. Not bad! Strange. Faintly of copper, which was fair enough, he weighed spice all day and half the market smelled of copper dust. But under that, something floral. Sweet and green, like crushed stems.

Since when did her husband smell like flowers? He smelled like nutmeg and sweat and the leather of his scale-brush. She'd told him so. She'd told him she loved it, on more than one memorable occasion.

"You're late," she said, and it came out lighter than she meant, almost teasing, which was fine, teasing was fine.

"Am I? Sorry, love. Lost track at the stall." He kissed her cheek and stepped past her into the bakery, and she noticed he was careful not to look at her while he did it. Careful the way he was careful when he'd misplaced money in the till and was hoping it would turn up before she asked.

"Mitchell. Look at me a second?"

He looked. Brown eyes, warm as always, and hiding something, absolutely hiding something, she'd bet her oven on it.

"Long day?" she asked.

"Long-ish. Busy. The Ambergate caravans came in, everyone wanted cinnamon, my best cinnamon too, the..." He waved a hand and trailed off, which he never did. Mitchell could talk about cinnamon for an hour. Mitchell had talked about cinnamon on their first date until Shae had kissed him partly to shut him up, though he had asked first, sweetly and nervously, "May I, er, interrupt my own monologue with a kiss?" She'd said yes. She'd said yes very fast.

She smiled at the memory and steered him toward the little back stairs to their loft above the bakery, where the lamp was already lit and two plates waited on the low table. "I made you something."

"Oh? What did I do to deserve..." He stopped. The tart sat on its plate, honey-glazed, cinnamon-dusted, small and innocent as anything. He looked at it the way a man looks at a pie he suspects contains a sleeping cat.

"Dinner first," Shae said quickly, her heart picking up, and she put soup and bread in front of him and chattered about the day, the crystal grinder's new apprentice, the liquid-dream cart tipping over again, anything, everything, while Mitchell ate and nodded and kept glancing at that tart like it might get up and walk.

He was nervous. He was actually nervous, her unshakeable spice merchant, and Shae felt a twist of something between guilt and triumph. The tart was meant to open a door. But what if the door opened on a room she wasn't ready for?

No. She was ready. Two years of "whatever you like," she was ready.

She cleared the soup bowls and set the tart between them and cut it in two, and she watched Mitchell swallow.

"Go on," she said. "It's your favorite."

He picked up his half. He looked at her. "What's in it?"

"Cinnamon. Honey. Love." All true!

He smiled at that, that slow sweet smile, and took a bite, and she took hers, and the glaze was warm and sweet on her tongue, honey and cinnamon and nothing else. Mitchell's eyes closed for a moment, the way they always did over honey. When they opened he looked soft and wondering, and Shae thought, there, that's my husband, and he's just as nervous as I am.

"Mitchell," she said, and reached across the table to take his hand. "I want to ask you something, and I'd like a real answer tonight, if you're ready to give one. Not whatever you like. Not I'm happy. A real answer, or a not yet, either one is fine. What do you want? In bed, from me, what do you actually want?"

He set down the rest of his tart very carefully. The lamplight caught his face, and for a long breath he said nothing, and she could see the words crowding behind his teeth like customers at a stall right before the closing bell.

"Shae," he said at last, hoarse, "there's something I have to show you first."

He stood up, and she stood too, because what else do you do when your husband of two years looks at you like that? Like he's about to hand over contraband?

"Stay here," he said. "Or, no, come with me. Yes, come with me, I don't want to do this alone."

"Do what alone?" Shae asked, following him down the stairs and out the back door into the market lane, lamplight spilling gold across the cobblestones. "Mitchell, what on earth are we doing?"

He didn't answer. He crossed to his spice stall, three doors down between the crystal grinder's tent and old Bela's luck-charm cart, and fumbled his key into the lock twice before it caught. Shae hovered at his elbow, arms crossed against the night chill, watching him dig through the crates at the back. Bay leaves. Dried chilies. A crate marked SALT, DO NOT SELL that she'd never once seen him open.

And then he lifted out a wreath.

"Oh," said Shae.

It was beautiful, was the trouble. Braided willow and copper wire, hung with dried flowers she couldn't name, little glass beads that caught the lamp glow and held it. It looked like something you'd give a bride. It also, she noticed as he turned it in his hands, looked faintly wrong, the way enchanted things always did, a shimmer just under the surface, like a fish under water.

"Mitchell Hartford," she said slowly. "What is that?"

"Can we go back upstairs?" he asked, voice cracking right down the middle. "I'd rather tell it sitting down."

They went back upstairs. He set the wreath on the table between the tart plates like evidence at a trial, and then he sat with his hands folded and his ears going red, and Shae sat across from him and waited, and the wait lasted about four seconds before she cracked.

"Are you having an affair with an enchanter?"

"What? No! Shae, no!" He put a hand over his heart like she'd shot an arrow into it. "It's nothing like that. It's... okay. Okay. I bought this. Six weeks ago. From Isaac Gallagher, the stall by the north gate, the one with the..."

"I know Isaac's stall," she said, because everyone knew Isaac's stall, Isaac Gallagher with the silver rings and the soft voice who sold amorous wares and never once met anyone's eyes longer than polite.

"Right. Well. He had this. He called it a wreath of wanting." Mitchell swallowed. "He said, er, he said you hang it above your bed and it glows when two people say true things to each other. Whatever a person's too shy to say. It doesn't do anything to you, it just lights up to cheer you on. He said a couple could finally, mm, say the unsayable."

Shae looked at the wreath. She looked at her husband. A very strange suspicion was beginning to unfold itself in her chest like a cat in a sunbeam.

"Mitchell. Love. Six weeks ago?"

"Six weeks ago, yes."

"And when did you last hang this above our bed?"

He went redder. Redder than the chilies, honestly. "It's, ah. It's not above our bed. I was going to. I bought it for us, that was the entire idea, I swear. But I couldn't work up the nerve to bring it home, so I kept it in the salt crate, and I'd take it out sometimes and just..." He gestured helplessly. "Hold it. In the stall. After close."

"You've been sneaking off to hold a love wreath in your spice stall for six weeks," Shae said, and she could hear her own voice climbing with every word, "and that's why you've been acting like a man hiding a stolen goose?"

"When you say it like that it sounds mad."

"It is mad. Sweetheart, it's completely mad, and also the most Mitchell thing I have ever heard in my life." She reached across the table and grabbed both his hands. "Why didn't you just bring it home? I would have hung it in a heartbeat. I'd have hung it from the rafters and danced under it."

"Because." And there it was, the thing under the thing, surfacing at last. He looked down at their hands. "Because I bought it for a reason, Shae. I bought it because there's something I want. From you. In bed. Something I've never been able to say out loud, not in two years, not in two hundred years, I'd sooner wrestle the liquid-dream cart. And I thought if the wreath did the talking I wouldn't have to."

The room went very quiet. The bakery below ticked and settled. Somewhere out in the lane the crystal grinder's apprentice was sweeping, whisk, whisk, whisk.

"What is it?" Shae whispered. "Mitchell, what do you want?"

"I don't know if I can..."

"The tart," she said quickly. "Olivia gave me candor-wort syrup. It loosens the tongue, it's gentle, it just makes it easier to say true things. I was going to put it in the tart, and then I stood