The royal messenger passed Honeycomb's bee tree without slowing, and the invitation scroll in his satchel was not for her. She watched from the ladder, a jar of golden honey in one paw, her beekeeper headdress askew. Three years she had brewed in the cellar beneath her tree. Three years she had chased one mead worthy of the harvest feast. No taster from the palace had ever set foot on her path. Unheard brews were never poured at the high table. She climbed down and went below. The barrels rose in stacked rings along the far wall, bound in elven silver, familiars crawling the staves to turn the spigots a quarter each dawn. She pulled a small cask marked with a comb sigil. Moon-clover mead. Her best. She set it on the counter and stared at it. A cask no one would ever taste solved nothing. Hooves scraped the cellar stairs. A long neck ducked under the beam. The half-giraffe traveler she had waved down at noon stood blinking in the honey-light, flute in hand. Behind him came the red-haired ceramicist from the lake road, glasses fogged, a winged puppy tucked in the crook of her arm shedding faint dust onto her sleeve. "You said taste," Melodius said. "I came to taste." "I followed him," Roswyn said. "He walks fast." Honeycomb poured three thimbles. Melodius drank his in one tip. He set the cup down and lifted the flute. He played four notes, stopped, then played them again cleaner. "That," he said. "That is what it tastes like." Roswyn had already set her cup down and was digging in her satchel. She pulled out a slim sheet of birchbark and a quill. "Play it slower." He did. She wrote the notes across the bark in quick strokes, then a line beneath them: Cellarhog moon-clover. Tastes like a song I almost remember. She signed it, dated it, and pushed it across the counter. "The steward reads the lake road mural every seventh day," Roswyn said. "He stops. He talks to me. I pin this to the frame tomorrow." "He'll see it," Melodius said. He said it flat, like a fact he had already checked. Honeycomb held the birchbark under the barrel-light. A written testimony. From an artist the palace already listened to. Her jar had found its voice through someone else's mouth. The winged puppy sneezed and a fleck of dust settled on the cask lid, where it glowed once and went out. "Take a full bottle with you," Honeycomb said. "For the steward. Direct." Roswyn nodded and tucked the bottle into her satchel beside the notebooks. They climbed the stairs. Honeycomb stayed at the counter with the birchbark. The mead was moving. The problem now was which mead she sent, because the moon-clover was her best, and her best was not yet legendary.

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.