AI The first thing Rory noticed was the smell of pears.
It drifted through the standing stones at the edge of Isolde’s grove, sweet and ripe enough to make her mouth water. Beyond the stones, Richmond Park lay under a hard December frost. Inside them, wildflowers crowded the grass, and something invisible breathed warmth against her face.
“Pears,” she said.
Nyx’s violet eyes brightened in the shadow of an oak. “Not from here.”
Their voice moved through the branches like a draft. Rory looked between the stones again. She could see the park path, a fallen limb, the grey trunks of trees. Nothing that ought to smell of fruit.
The Heartstone hung beneath her jumper. Its pulse had grown steadily warmer as they crossed the grove. Now it beat against her breastbone like a second, smaller heart.
Isolde stood beside the nearest stone, her silver hair stirring although the air around her was still. The frost held no trace of her passage. “A door may wear a familiar face,” she said, “and still open onto a stranger’s house.”
“You’ve never been through it?”
“No.” Isolde laid her palm against the weathered oak stone. “I have seen its other side. Seeing a feast and tasting it are different hungers.”
Rory adjusted the strap of her delivery bag. Inside were a bottle of water, a torch, her phone, and a photograph in a clear plastic sleeve. She had put the photograph there herself after Yu-Fei showed it to her: a woman in a flour-dusted apron, smiling with her eyes squeezed shut while a little girl hung from her arm.
Three nights ago, that woman had vanished from her kitchen. Her name was Lin, and she had been making mooncakes for the Golden Empress.
The police had taken a statement. They had not known what to do with Yu-Fei’s account of a man who smelled of burnt sugar, or the small crimson stone Lin had left on the counter, still warm when Yu-Fei found it. That stone had gone cold by morning. Rory’s pendant had not.
“Once we’re inside,” Rory said, “how long have we got?”
Isolde’s pale eyes shifted toward the winter sky. “An hour may be a minute. An hour may be a week. Carry what you cannot bear to lose, and do not trust a clock.”
“That’s not especially useful.”
“It is as useful as the truth allows.”
Rory took out her phone and checked the time anyway. Four seventeen. She sent Yu-Fei one last message, though she had already said where she was going , as far as she could explain it. If the message arrived after Rory did, at least Yu-Fei would know she had tried.
Nyx unfolded from the oak’s shadow, taller than either woman. For a moment their body was almost solid, a dark shape against the pale grass; then its edges loosened and flowed across the ground.
“I can go ahead,” they whispered.
“No,” Rory said. “We stay together.”
Nyx inclined their head. Isolde raised her hand, and the space between the stones quivered . Rory could not see what had changed, only the way Isolde’s fingers disappeared at the tips.
She pulled the moonsilver dagger from its sheath. The leaf-shaped blade was cold enough to sting. Isolde had given it to her that morning without ceremony, placing the hilt in her palm as if passing her a house key .
Rory stepped forward before she could decide not to.
The world pressed gently against her skin. For one disorienting instant she felt herself standing in two places: frost beneath one foot, warm earth beneath the other. Then the cold vanished.
She stood in an orchard beneath an amber sky.
The trees rose in long, curving rows across a hillside. Their trunks were dark and glossy, their branches heavy with fruit: pears as large as Rory’s fist, apples striped blue and gold, things shaped like pomegranates with translucent skins. Farther down the slope, vines climbed terraces of black stone. Their leaves flickered copper in the warm light.
No sun hung overhead. The sky shone evenly from horizon to horizon, as though lit from behind.
Nyx came through beside her, drawing themselves out of her shadow. Isolde followed, and the flowers at her feet sprang upright without a mark upon them.
Rory turned. The doorway had no frame on this side. Between two pear trees, the air smelled faintly of wet leaves and frost. The pendant was warmer still, its crimson glow visible through the knit of her jumper.
“At least we can find our way back,” she said.
“Keep it close,” Isolde murmured. “Doors are not always where the traveller leaves them.”
A sound rolled across the orchard: a deep, resonant note followed by a scatter of lighter ones. Rory looked up. Glass bells hung among the branches, each enclosing a small brown seed. As the wind moved them, the seeds struck the glass from within.
Someone had planted this place to be heard.
They took a path paved with flat, pale stones. Moss filled the cracks, but the stones themselves were worn smooth by feet. Rory ran her fingers over the bark of a pear tree as they passed. It felt warm, almost velvety, and the scent that rose from it was so rich she had to remind herself she had eaten lunch.
A pear fell a few yards ahead. It struck the ground and split, releasing a puff of fragrant steam. Tiny black insects poured from the grass and carried the flesh away in neat, shining pieces.
Nyx flowed around the remains. “I would not eat here.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
Her stomach gave a loud, traitorous growl.
Isolde’s mouth curved. “The orchard has good manners. It offers before it asks.”
“And what does it ask?”
“That depends on the guest.”
Rory kept her hands to herself.
The path descended toward a wall so old that the roots of the trees had climbed over it and found soil on the other side. Beyond it, a vast roof rose above the orchards. At first Rory thought it was made of copper. Then the light shifted and she saw overlapping leaves, each the size of a door, tiled across a frame of dark timber.
Smoke issued from a hundred chimneys. It smelled of roasting meat, citrus peel, butter, and spices she could not name. The aromas changed with every breath, one making way for another before she could settle on it.
A gate stood open in the wall. On either side, figures had been carved into the stone: cooks carrying platters, dancers, people kneeling beneath great baskets of fruit. Their faces had worn away, but their hands remained sharp and detailed. One stone hand held a knife; another cradled a loaf marked with the imprint of a thumb.
Rory touched that thumbprint . Someone had carved it there long ago, and someone else had polished it smooth.
Inside the wall, the path widened into a courtyard. Chefs hurried between low buildings, carrying trays and baskets. Some looked human. Others had horns curled close to their skulls or skin that gleamed like the inside of an oyster shell. A broad-shouldered man in a white apron walked past with a live flame cupped in each hand. Neither flame touched his skin.
No one challenged them.
Rory slid the dagger back into its sheath. She was conspicuous enough without walking through a kitchen yard with a weapon drawn.
A woman sat at a table near the gate, shelling something that resembled silver peas. Her apron was floury, and a paper label had been pinned to her collar. Names were written on the labels of several other workers, Rory noticed, each with a line of smaller script beneath.
The woman glanced at Rory’s bag. “Delivery?”
“Looking for someone,” Rory said, taking out the photograph. “Her name’s Lin. She came through recently.”
The woman wiped her hands and peered at the picture. Her expression changed, not quite to recognition, but to calculation .
“Pastry,” she said. “North kitchens. Ask for the sugar room.”
“Thank you.”
The woman returned to her peas. After a moment she said, without looking up, “Don’t follow anyone who offers you a better room.”
Rory waited, but the woman said no more.
They crossed the courtyard. Beneath the bustle, Rory could hear water running. Channels cut into the paving carried clear streams between the buildings, branching and rejoining. Cooks dipped ladles into them or rinsed their hands as they passed. In one channel, a little silver fish swam upstream against the current.
At the north kitchen, heat billowed through an open door. Rory stepped inside and stopped.
The room was enormous. Ovens lined one wall, their mouths glowing orange. Tables stretched away beneath hanging racks of copper pans. On the nearest table, a spun-sugar tree stood taller than Rory, its fine branches bearing glassy leaves. A woman in a paper cap touched one leaf with a brush, and a drop of gold spread through it.
At the far end of the room, cooks were assembling a landscape on a platter the size of a dining table. Rory saw mountains of dark pastry, a river of translucent jelly, and tiny figures made from almond paste. One figure carried a basket on its back. Another stood beside a bridge, its painted face no larger than a grain of rice.
A cook set down a cake and called, “Make room for His Highness’s vineyard.”
Several people moved at once. Nobody looked pleased to hear it.
Rory caught a young man carrying a tray of delicate shells. “Where’s the sugar room?”
He jerked his chin toward a narrow door and hurried on.
The sugar room was cooler. Marble counters ran along the walls, and glass jars stood in orderly ranks above them. Lin was at the far counter, bent over a tray of pale round pastries. She wore the same kind of paper label Rory had seen outside. Her dark hair was tied back, and there was flour on her cheek.
For a second Rory could not speak. The photograph had prepared her for a face, not a living person with tired eyes and a small burn on the back of her hand.
“Lin?”
The woman looked up. A pastry slipped from her fingers and landed softly on the tray.
“Do I know you?”
“I work for Yu-Fei. I’m Rory.” She pulled out the photograph. “She sent me.”
Lin stared at it. She put one hand flat on the counter.
“How is Jia?”
“Angry,” Rory said. “Worried. She’s with Yu-Fei.”
Lin let out a breath that shook. “How long?”
“Three days.”
“No.” She looked down at the pastries, then toward the door. “I’ve been here since yesterday afternoon.”
Rory glanced at Isolde. The seer said nothing.
Lin pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I asked him. I asked him how long.”
“The man who came to your kitchen?”
“He said the work would take one night.” Her voice sharpened. “And it will. The feast isn’t until tonight.”
Rory looked around the room. Fine silver writing had been set into the lintel above the door. It caught the light when Lin moved toward it.
“What happens if you leave?”
“I tried.” Lin held up her burned hand. “I got as far as the yard.”
Nyx drifted closer to the doorway. Their violet gaze rested on the silver letters. “A ward.”
Lin saw them properly then and flinched. Nyx drew back into the shadow beside a cupboard.
“They’re with me,” Rory said. “Can the ward be cut?”
Isolde’s gaze went to the dagger at Rory’s hip. “A thread may be cut,” she said. “The hand holding it may notice.”
Lin looked between them. “If I leave, what happens to the contract?”
“What does it say?”
Lin reached into her apron and produced a folded sheet, creased from handling. The writing inside was painfully small. Rory read it twice.
One night’s work in the kitchens of Prince Belphegor. Payment on completion: enough money to clear Lin’s debts and keep her daughter in school. The final clause stated that a worker who abandoned the kitchen before the feast would forfeit payment and remain liable for the cost of ingredients.
Rory read the figure beneath it. She counted the zeroes and read them again.
“Can they collect that on Earth?”
Lin’s silence was answer enough.
A bell sounded somewhere in the great kitchen. Voices rose, calling for trays. Lin folded the contract with careful fingers.
“I can finish,” she said. “I have to.”
“Jia thinks you left her.”
Lin’s face tightened. She turned to a shelf, found a scrap of wrapping paper and a pencil, and began to write. The pencil kept catching on the rough paper. Rory looked away, giving her what privacy she could.
On the counter sat a bowl of red fruit, each piece no bigger than a cherry. As Rory watched, a bead of juice formed on one and rolled upward, gathering into a trembling drop before settling back against the skin. She reached out, then remembered the insects in the orchard and stopped.
Lin folded the note around something small and placed it in Rory’s hand. Through the paper, Rory felt a hard plastic bead.
“She made me a bracelet,” Lin said. “One of the beads came off. Tell her I kept it.”
“I will.”
“And tell Yu-Fei I’m sorry about the kitchen. I left the filling out.”
Rory tucked the note and bead into the sleeve with the photograph. “We’ll come back if you’re not home after the feast.”
Lin looked at her, hope and fear crossing her face so quickly Rory could not separate them. “The man who brought me said he’d take me back.”
“Then we’ll give him a chance.”
The bell sounded again. This time someone shouted Lin’s name.
They left her at the counter, already reaching for the next pastry. Rory wanted to take her hand and pull her through the door. The silver writing gleamed above it, and Lin had made her choice with the contract in front of her.
Outside, the amber light had not changed. The courtyard seemed busier now. A procession of cooks carried the pastry vineyard across the paving, shielding it from the breeze with sheets of stiff white paper. Rory moved aside to let them pass. Up close, she could see individual grapes fashioned from sugar, each one touched with bloom.
They climbed the orchard path more quickly than they had descended it. The glass bells rang overhead. Somewhere among the branches, a voice began to sing, low and tuneless, and another answered from farther up the hill.
At the place where they had entered, Rory found two pear trees and a carpet of fallen leaves. The pendant was hot against her skin, but the air no longer smelled of frost.
She stopped.
Isolde stood very still. Nyx spread along the ground, searching between the trunks.
“Close,” Rory said. She took the pendant out from beneath her jumper and held it by its silver chain. Its crimson light glowed faintly in her palm.
She walked a few steps left. The warmth eased. She went right, past one tree and then another, until the stone pulsed sharply against her fingers. There, beneath a branch bowed with fruit, the air smelled of wet leaves.
“Here.”
Nyx gathered beside her. Isolde touched the space between the trees and nodded.
Rory looked back down the hill. Smoke rose from the kitchens into the amber sky. She could no longer see the sugar room, only the broad leaf-tiled roof and the orchard spreading around it, beautiful and carefully tended.
She closed her hand around the pendant and stepped through.
Cold struck her face. Frost glittered on the grass beyond the grove, and the wildflowers stirred at her feet. Rory pulled out her phone. The screen showed four twenty-nine.
Twelve minutes. Her legs ached as though she had walked for hours.
She called Yu-Fei. While it rang, she took Lin’s note from her bag and checked that the bead was still inside. It pressed against the paper, small and unmistakable beneath her thumb.