Honeycomb Cellarhog's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Honeycomb slept an hour, then woke to a scrape she knew. Cellar latch. She kept still on the cot above the stairs and counted breaths. Two sets. Not the familiars. She slid down in her stocking feet, headdress crooked, and lit no lamp. In the barrel-light she saw a small shape stuffing a honey jar into a sack, and another prying at the spigot of a cider cask. They ran when she shouted. The moon-clover cask was still on the counter. She set both paws on it and did not move for a long minute. By dawn the lake road had the news. Three cellars hit in one night. A swarm of honey-thieves working the road while owners slept. Her best cask sat in a building anyone could shoulder open. The steward was not due for six days. She wrapped the cask in sacking and pushed it onto the handcart. She needed a room with locks, eyes, and no reason for a thief to look. She thought of the fox seamstress up the road, the one who threw parties by moonlight and kept her doors open past midnight. Not a friend, exactly. A neighbor who owed her nothing. Honeycomb pulled the cart anyway. The textile hall was loud before she reached the door. Sheep everywhere, chewing trim, sitting on folded bolts, one asleep in a basket of ribbon. Vivienne Tailweaver stood at a cutting table in a powdered pink wig, pinning a bow to a sleeve, a lamb tucked under her arm like a loaf of bread. "You look robbed," Vivienne said, without looking up. "Almost," Honeycomb said. "They'll come back tonight. I need somewhere to put this cask that isn't my cellar." Vivienne set down her pins. She looked at the cask, then at the room full of wool and sheep and half-sewn skirts. "Put it under the cutting table. I'll drape it. No one steals from a fabric shop. Wrong shape of greed." "I can pay in mead." "You'll pay in mead at my next party," Vivienne said. "Full moon. Bring enough for forty." Honeycomb rolled the cask under the table. Vivienne threw a length of patchwork over it and a sheep promptly sat on top. A small winged pup drifted in through the open window, sniffed the cloth, and settled on the sheep, blinking gold. Vivienne did not comment. Honeycomb walked home lighter and emptier. The cask was safe. The moon-clover was out of her hands. The steward would arrive in six days and she had promised forty bottles to a moonlight party in three. Her best mead was hidden under a sheep, and now she owed a debt in the one currency she did not have enough of. She went down the cellar steps and began counting barrels.