“I’ll buy them, and the plums,” said Anya hastily. “Now, I need to get this to a medium fire. What would that be?”
“Hasn’t anyone taught you to cook?” asked Martha. “Watch and learn, dearie, watch and learn.”
She put Shrub back down and rose to her feet, rubbing her hands together with glee.
“Are you a witch?” asked Anya with interest, remembering that all witches were cooks, though not all cooks were witches.
“Well, semiretired. All that coven committee meeting stuff got on my nerves,” said Martha. “But I keep up a little. Didn’t you feel the blessing in my soup? Where’s that recipe you’re following?”
Anya showed her Gotfried’s little book.
“Could you start making it?” the princess asked tentatively, her eye on the sack of frogs. She was still quite worried about Denholm. If he was really sick, it would be vital to change him back as soon as possible. Illnesses went away when you changed shape, as did most injuries, unless they were mortal wounds or caused by silver weapons.
“This?” asked Martha. “Could do it with my eyes shut and my ladle tied behind my head.”
“Thank you, please do it … um … with your eyes open, though,” said Anya. She went over to the frog sack, Ardent at her heels.
“I’ll take them out one at a time,” she said. “Take a look, you can sniff it, and we’ll see which one’s Denholm. Oh, I’ll need another sack or a barrel or something to put the ones that aren’t Denholm in. Martha, can we borrow an empty barrel?”
“Look behind the hut,” said Martha, intent on feeding the fire new sticks and blowing on the coals. “Shrub, you show ’em. Couple of empties there.”
Shrub, still not talking, led the way and pointed. Anya selected a medium-size barrel and rolled it around the front.
The first frog out was smaller than Denholm, Anya thought, and didn’t have the yellow streak. She held it out to Ardent, who sniffed at it while it struggled mightily to get free.
“Definitely transformed,” remarked the dog. “But not Denholm. Old sorcery. Years. Maybe decades.”
Anya stared at the frog. Another transformee?
“Well, we’ll sort you out as soon as the lip balm is made,” she said gently, which made the frog struggle even harder. Anya put it in the barrel and carefully closed the lid.
The next frog was the right size and had a yellowish streak, but Anya didn’t think it looked exactly the same as Denholm’s streak. She couldn’t remember whether his was on the left or right side of his head.
“Also transformed,” said Ardent, taking no more than a single sniff.
Anya put it in the barrel and looked at the dog.
“Maybe they’re all transformed,” she said quietly. She looked at Shrub. “Those thieves who said the Garden was a prison were right after all. There were prisoners there. All the sorcerer’s enemies, turned into frogs and put in that pond, so the Grey Mist could go there and gloat over them. You said that throne was a gloating chair, didn’t you?”
Shrub did his strange shrugging thing, but didn’t speak.
“We’d better sort through all these frogs,” said Anya. “I still need to find Denholm and make sure he’s all right. I wonder how long it will take the Seven Dwarves and the Responsible Robbers to arrive? And … the Duke.”
“I will keep watch,” proclaimed Smoothie. She had found a large smooth rock and was throwing it from hand to hand. “If I see an enemy … wham!”
She threw the rock at a tree. It struck at exactly head height, shearing off a huge piece of bark.
“Don’t do that to the trees when Hedric’s around,” said Anya. “But otherwise, good idea. Shrub, what are you doing?”
Shrub had been slinking away. He turned and shrugged again.
“Maybe you need to wash your mouth out,” said Anya.
“And wash the rest of you,” said Martha from the fire. She was carefully adding the ingredients into the bronze pot. “I didn’t want to say, but you all stink.”
“We’ll wash later,” said Anya. “Though I suppose Shrub can go wash now. Let’s get back to the frogs.”
It wasn’t easy sorting frogs. They didn’t find Denholm for another half an hour, and every single frog Anya pulled out was a transformed human, except for one that, while definitely transformed, hadn’t been human in the first place. At least, Ardent couldn’t tell from the smell what it had been originally.
“The Dog with the Wonderful Nose would have been able to sniff it out,” said Ardent, rather dejected.
“Your nose is wonderful too,” said Anya. She’d kept Denholm separate and was holding him up to the firelight to see if the gray patch had got worse. But it was too hard to tell and he struggled so much she ended up putting him in the barrel with the others.
“I wonder who they all are,” she said. “And how long they’ve been frogs.”
“You can come and do some stirring now, Princess,” said Martha. “My arms are tired.”
“I’ll patrol the perimeter,” Ardent volunteered. Which meant he was going to wee on all the same trees he’d wet before on their previous visit, and sniff all the ones he hadn’t.
“Be careful,” Anya warned again. She looked up at the sky, hoping to see only stars and not the bone ship. It was a race now, to see if she could get the lip balm finished and her allies in place before the Duke got back and attacked her.
She was certain he would attack. It went with the cackle and the secret smile. Duke Rikard couldn’t imagine diplomacy, or even staying on the defensive. Once he knew where Anya was, he would strike.
“Come on, everyone,” she whispered to herself as she stirred the mixture. “Please come and help.”
But by the dawn, none of her allies had arrived.