The climb back up is worse than the descent. Gravity is no longer an accomplice. Every handhold demands a pull-up with two hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight plus the wet drag of salt-soaked clothing. My torn fingernail catches on every ridge. The three parallel gashes across my back split wider each time I reach overhead, and warm blood runs down my spine in thin rivers that pool at my waistband and soak into the fabric around the stolen spice clusters.
The razor hawk circles. Patient. Waiting for me to fall.
I don't fall.
The trail edge appears above me like a finish line. I hook my forearm over the lip, grind my elbow into the packed earth, and haul my torso up in one ugly, graceless heave. I hit flat ground. My legs follow. I lie face down in the gravel for exactly three seconds, breathing dirt, feeling the spice stems press their impossible heat into my hip through the wet shirt.
Three seconds. That's all I give myself.
Then I'm up. Running.
The switchbacks unravel beneath my boots in a blur of loose stone and trampled grass. My calves scream on the downhill grade. Each impact sends a jolt from heel to skull. The gashes on my back have gone from stinging to throbbing, a deep bassdrum of pain that syncs with my footfalls and counts down the minutes.
Through the park. Across the ruined turf where my earlier sprint left scars in the wet grass. The dog tied to the parking meter doesn't bark this time. Just watches. Ears flat. Wise animal.
Main street opens up ahead. The festival bunting stretches between the lamp posts in loops of red and gold, snapping in the wind. The town square already hums with people. Folding tables. White cloths. Judges' chairs arranged in a semicircle before a raised platform where the dishes will be presented.
I see the clock tower.
Fifty-three minutes.
My lungs are two raw bags of fire. Blood from my hands has painted red smears across my shirt front where I wiped them during the descent. A woman walking her toddler physically pulls the stroller to the opposite sidewalk as I thunder past, wide-eyed, and I don't blame her. I look like something the cliff spit out. Because it did.
The town hall kitchen sits at the back of the building. Gray steel door. Small rectangular window. I can see fluorescent light buzzing inside and a shape moving with the controlled, deliberate speed of someone who has elevated cooking to a form of combat.
Solene.
She works the counter with her hand and her good one, both moving in tandem, the injury apparently demoted from obstacle to inconvenience by sheer force of will. The parsnips are fanned across the plate in a precise spiral. The miso glaze base sits in its ramekin, glossy, dense, waiting. Microgreens arranged with tweezers. Edible flowers placed at exact intervals. The plate is a painting missing its final brushstroke.
I hit the door at full speed.
My boot connects with the steel panel dead center. The crash bar buckles. The door blasts inward on its hinges and rebounds off the interior wall with a sound like a car wreck. I stagger through the frame trailing gravel dust, blood, salt crust, and the overwhelming scent of wild Korathian fire salt.
Solene spins around. Tweezers in one hand. A single microgreen suspended in midair.
Her eyes track downward. My shredded shirt. The blood on my forearms. The torn fingernail. The three visible claw marks raking across my collarbone where the hawk's initial strike wrapped around from my back.
Then upward. To my face. Whatever she sees there makes her jaw tighten.
"You're bleeding everywhere. Do NOT drip on my plate."
I yank the crimson leaf clusters from my waistband and slam them onto the steel counter. Red dust mushrooms into the air. The sulfur-honey smell detonates through the kitchen like a flashbang, so concentrated that the overhead fluorescent nearest the counter flickers and buzzes.
"Wild variety." I'm panting so hard the words come out in ragged chunks. "Twice the heat. You'll need to cut the ratio."
She doesn't answer. She grabs the mortar and pestle. The heavy stone bowl rings against the counter when she lays it down, and she strips the leaves from the stems with her fingertips so fast her hands blur. The leaves hit the mortar. She grinds. The friction generates the same brief flash of magical fire I remember from before, but bigger, brighter. The pestle glows orange. The ground powder inside is so deeply red it's almost black.
She dips a clean spoon in. Tastes.
Her eyes close.
"Half the ratio," she whispers. "Quarter the ratio. This could strip enamel."
She opens her eyes. Looks at me with an expression that strips something far more vital than enamel.
"Go stand by the sink. Don't touch anything."
I obey. Blood drips onto stainless steel. My heartbeat fills my skull.