"So what's the deal with this truffle, anyway?" Yarrow asked as the carriage bumped along. They had to clear the Roots before giving the horses a full course of movemash.

Oliver shifted around and cleared his throat. "Well, you see—"

"—I was asking Julienne," Yarrow interrupted.

Oliver feigned great offense, throwing his arms out and launching himself back against the seat. His head hit the wall with a resounding bonk! followed by the pitiful "ooo, ooo, ooo's" of Oliver as he rubbed his head.

Mindy shushed them from the other side of the spacious carriage.

Julienne nodded to Oliver. "He should tell the story. He knows more than I do."

"Now I know that can't be true," Yarrow scowled.

"Yep, yep, it's true," Oliver slurred. He leaned over to look at Yarrow, but he leaned over too far, nearly falling into the well of the carriage. "I'm an exshpert."

Yarrow shook his head. "I can't believe you're drunk."

"Well, good Yarrow on the morrow, more unbelievable things have been known to happen." Oliver smoothed out the sides of his messy blonde hair. "At Lifted Spirits, we believe in meeting our patrons on their level. Which, for us, happens to be on the ceiling."

"Ugh, your bar and its 'lift.' Just a crude version of moondrop wine."

"Sometimes, it's fun to be crude." Oliver wagged a finger at Yarrow and tried to bop him in the nose.

Yarrow slapped the arm away. "If you're going to tell the story, just tell it. And do it without getting your breath on me."

"Alrrrrright," Oliver declared, rolling his r's as he bowed before his impending performance. His voice raised to nearly a yell. "So our story starts in—"

"Hush!" Mindy squawked from the front of the carriage, her voice raspy with sleep. She put a pillow cushion over her head.

"Anyway," Oliver continued. Mindy had managed to reduce his volume, but she could never hope to reduce his flourishes and exaggerated hand rolling as he spoke. "We start our story in the northern valleys of Labrusca, the most lush and beautiful place in the entire world. A place of grandeur and charm, vineyards and villages, crystal clear rivers cutting through lush green—"

He burped and covered his mouth. Julienne leaned back, expecting Oliver to vomit. But he just burped one more time and continued. Julienne scooted away from the stench.

"You get it. Beautiful, fertile land. Good weather. And as a natural consequence, populated by bastards. Buncha sleazy, backstabbing plotters and schemers and politicians. Everyone laying claim to their land and looking at their neighbors and saying they want what they have. A few assassinations later, a couple wars, some mingling of family trees that fold over on each other in incestuous webs, and you're left with blood feuds, century-old grudges, and—"

He burped again. "A third thing." He blinked several times and puffed his cheeks out.

Julienne scrambled to get out of the way. But Oliver didn't puke. Instead, he let the air out of his cheeks in a foul breath and leaned his head out the window. The chilly morning air unwound the knots in his face. He pulled his head back into the carriage with a smile, acting as if his story hadn't been interrupted.

"So, we have beautiful land. Bastards. Wars. Things are getting out of the hand, and the land is turning into a real mess. So some king—I don't go in much for names—decided one year—I don't go in much for dates, either—that while he couldn't stop the buncha bastards from doing their buncha wars, he could try to mitigate their damage. He said, 'Okay, buncha bastards, your feudal wars are officially legal, but no using essence on the frontlines! Otherwise you'll find out how much of a bastard I am!'"

Julienne leaned over to Yarrow. "King Arancini. Year four seventy…two? Three?"

Oliver rolled his eyes at Julienne and looked at Yarrow. "Yes, your nerdy little numbers really contribute to my story. I'm all about events, baby!"

"Shhh," Mindy hissed from beneath her pillow.

Oliver raised his eyebrows and grinned.

Yarrow chewed on the air. "Is there a faster version of this story?"

"All good things in time, all good things in time." Oliver took a deep breath—deeper than he needed, but just deep enough to make Yarrow that much more impatient. "So now we got a buncha bastards, a buncha wars, but also a buncha rules. The carnage deescalates in some ways, escalates in others.

"Soldiers start wearing steel now that no one was allowed to fling acid around to melt it. Big armored knights, riding on armored horses, just hoping to be remembered in a song. A lot of blood got spilled on that beautiful ground, but since no one was tearing it up with terrible spells, that beautiful ground got to growing some beautiful things. And this takes us to our fated Charmant Valley."

"Finally," Yarrow commented.

"Now, the essence in Charmant Valley is more…" Olver curled and uncurled his fingers as he looked for the word. "Dainty. Like…a rose petal caught in the breeze. No one knows why. Might have been an old unicorn breeding ground. Maybe the ashes they spread there were from Ambrosia's hair or her—"

Oliver stopped, but not to burp. He shook his head in an attempt to sober up.

"Point is, the essence there is different. Before, when everyone was slinging around their essence, the essence of the valley was disrupted. Erased? Couldn't do anything. Now, that essence has time to nurture. And in doing so, it creates what we call the Charmant truffle. To pluck it is to shake hands with Ambrosia herself.

"But again. Dainty. With other truffles, you put your hands down, forage to feel for its essence, and then you go track it down. Exposing these truffles to essence does dilute their quality a bit, but it's worth the trade-off to be able to find them so easily.

"But the Charmant truffle? Again. Dainty. Exposing it to someone else's essence wouldn't just dilute it. It would disintegrate it. That's why no one knew about the truffle for so long. They kept screwing it up."

The carriage lurched. "That's the movemash," Julienne said.

Oliver groaned as he looked out the window to see the world zip by in a blur. He took a giant swig of his waterskin.

"So what good is a truffle that can't handle someone's essence?" Yarrow asked.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Julienne leaned over to explain. "It gets sturdier once you've picked it."

"Sturdier!" Oliver cheered. "I like that."

Mindy shushed them again.

"And once you've picked it, it's…" Julienne shrugged. He had never experienced the Charmant truffle, but he had heard tales. "The greatest ingredient of our world."

"It takes the truffles, like, twenty years or something to grow," Oliver said. His voice had died down, sober evenness working its way into his cadence. "And, you know, they're truffles. They're rare. So once some other king realized how potent these things were and everyone got a better understanding of the environment that they need, the king declared the Charmant Valley a protected zone."

"No one's allowed in," Julienne added. He felt comfortable joining in now that Oliver's drunken storytelling had been watered down. "Except for once a year. It's very regulated. You have to have permission from the king, from the three neighboring dukes, and from a court appointed specifically to judge on matters relating to the valley.

"It's treated like a great hunt. All the truffle hunters are let in at once. Once someone finds a truffle, the hunt is called off. They only allow one to be picked per year. Of course, there's all sorts of rules and regulations. No essence usage inside the valley being the obvious one."

"How many hunters will enter knowing that Cafe Julienne is in the hunt?" Yarrow asked.

Julienne shrugged. "Could be three. Could be a dozen. Two. Whoever gets the truffle basically becomes the number one restaurant in Labrusca for a year. Could be generational wealth. Prestige. In the past, it's been the basis for Chefs getting their black jackets or even their white jackets. You have the world's greatest ingredient. What can you do with it? People pay attention."

"What are we going to do with it?" Yarrow asked.

Julienne shrugged again. Yarrow was rapidly approaching the limits of Julienne's knowledge of the mission. "Great Aunt Julienne just said to bring it back in one piece with all of its essence still intact."

"Are they going to let us cook with it?" Mindy asked, the three boys turning in surprise. She had given up on sleep. Perhaps the excitement of the truffle had gotten into her.

"Almost certainly not," Yarrow said. "At least, I won't be able to."

"Guys, I don't know," Julienne said. "I don't know what other questions I can answer."

"Here's one," Yarrow started. He pointed at Oliver. "Why's he here?"

"Because Julienne thought that you two would make for boring company," Oliver laughed.

Julienne took a deep breath. "Because…he is…believe it or not, well-connected in the truffle hunting world."

"That's right," Oliver declared. He jumped to his feet—if they had been in a reasonably sized carriage, he would have slammed his head on the ceiling. "I'm big time."

"Seriously?" Yarrow asked.

"Seriously." Julienne answered.

Oliver put his hands on his hips and leaned over. "You know, Yarrow, I get the sense that you don't like people."

"I don't like clowns."

"I don't think you like anyone!"

Mindy laughed from the front of the carriage. "If you work him down long enough, you can get to neutral. Julienne's the only person he liked from the start."

Julienne laughed and looked at Yarrow, whose lips were pursed and his eyebrows scrunched in a barely held secret. Julienne gasped. "You didn't like me from the start, did you?"

"Uh…" Yarrow peeled his lips back and clenched his teeth. He brushed his straight bronze hair from his forehead. "It took a while, yeah."

Julienne leaned back in shock. He smiled as everyone laughed but still felt a slight betrayal. "Really?"

Yarrow shrugged.

"But you—you hung around me. You cooked with me. You worked on everything with me."

"That was just a combination of self-interest and having a read on you."

"You had a read on me?"

"Yeah. You have a…" Yarrow's eyes drifted around the carriage as he looked for the expression. "A mild-mannered god complex."

Julienne blinked.

"It's not that bad," Yarrow assured him. "The mild-mannered is a big part of it. I could tell from the start that you believed you were better than everyone else, but you weren't desperate to show it. You didn't want people to tell you that you were better, either. You prefer a more subtle form of attention. A more subtle confirmation. So instead of saying you're the best, which you would have hated, I hung around you to show that I think you're the best. I knew you'd prefer it that way. And then you'd like having me around."

Julienne blinked again.

"I mean, I like you now. You're a good Chef. A good person. You really are the best."

Julienne cringed. He realized he really didn't like verbal confirmation. "Okay, so you read my soul and exploited me."

"I mean, I had the Cafe Julienne job. Your uncle gave me that. But I figured I needed to get close to you to prevent getting kicked off the team at some point." Yarrow winced. "Sorry."

Julienne scratched his upper lip. "I…I guess it's fine. You're not just still using me now, are you?"

Yarrow grinned and shrugged. "Just a little."

"Hey," Oliver butted in. "If you're so good at reading people, do me."

"You're a clown."

"And?"

"And that's it."

Julienne and Mindy laughed. Oliver stuck out his tongue.

"What about Archie?" Julienne asked. "I mean, you hated him from day one and still do."

"Archie?" Yarrow exhaled and shook his head. "You mean Archie Kent, right? Because I don't know anyone who just goes by Archie, but I know a kid that goes by Archie Kent."

"He laid off the Kent stuff when he found out about his grandfather," Oliver said in defense of his roommate.

"Yeah, but did he ever stop looking for constant validation? The Kent stuff will be back. Everything he does, he does through the lens of how he'll be perceived. Which is ironic, because he never considers how the things he does will affect others. He's always wrapped up in his own little world. I've seen dogs with more emotional intelligence."

Oliver wore a rare scowl. If things continued, he'd come to Archie's defense with his fists, not his words.

Julienne regretted asking. "Okay, okay. That's enough. He's my friend"

"Why? He screwed up at your birthday."

"And I've forgiven him for that. He was my partner through all of Tarragon's class. We have a fun little rivalry."

"And why did he choose you to compete with? Oliver and I got twenty-fives on our conjuration test. Maybe he chose to compete with you because…what could provide greater validation than being better than a Julienne at something? I'm telling you, it's the lens through which he sees the world."

Julienne slapped Yarrow's arm with the back of his hand. "Alright, alright! Enough Archie talk. Analyze Mindy or something."

"Don't make me come over there," she warned. "You don't want me to dissect everything going on with you, Yarrow."

Yarrow and Julienne exchanged a look of repressed laughter and shrugged. Oliver let out a big yawn and laid flat, Yarrow moving away before his lap could be used as a pillow.

"So, Julienne," Yarrow said. "If we do get to cook with the truffle, what'll you make?"

"Nothing clever, I can tell you that much."

They shared a laugh and started cataloguing all the ways they could think of to use truffles. A truffle omelet. Truffle risotto. Garlic truffle aioli. Yarrow wanted to put it in popcorn. Julienne insisted on a focaccia. On and on they went until their conversation died down and their early morning got the better of them.

Yarrow closed the sunroof and pulled the blinds on the window, leaving them in a dim light. He yawned as he stretched out on the luxurious cushions. "With a carriage like this, it's gonna be hard to justify sleeping on some hard bed in a cheap caravanserai."

Julienne got up to take the extra space on Mindy's side of the carriage. "We're not staying in a caravanserai," he said. "Duke Frolletti is a long-time patron of the Cafe. He has a vineyard on the border with a sizable guest house. We'll be staying there."

Yarrow laughed as he crossed his hands over his chest and closed his eyes. "I can't believe you live like this."

"We'll be expected to cook for them when we arrive, so get your rest." Julienne groaned as he laid down. "We'll be expected to cook for a lot of people this summer."

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