Chapter 21 In Sickness and in Heist
IN SICKNESS AND IN HEIST
Azrion
Well, he wasn’t proud of himself, but Azrion was pleased. Please enough to whistle as he strolled through Heck, to wave at every demon he passed, to reminisce about Kat’s head resting on his shoulder the entire carriage ride home the night before.
And of course there were recollections of the noises that escaped her while making use of him up against the cave wall, but he tried not to dwell on those in public.
He hesitated on the threshold of Heck Post as he always did, half compulsion and half unease with what he might find.
The incaendi moss hadn’t worn off by the time they’d said their goodnights, but surely by now Kat would be…
well, she could be excited to see him, or she could be terribly embarrassed, or worst of all she might be so incensed at what he had let happen that she would order him to leave and never return.
Azrion swallowed thickly there on the threshold, then shook his head. No, certainly not that. In fact, there was a much better option than all those: maybe she would still be in the mood.
The post mistress bade him entry, or rather demanded he stop loitering in the doorway, and then allowed him behind the counter only after he pled his case, which of course was quite easy—Katarina was expecting him and would actually be very upset if he was even a moment late.
It might have been the truth, who was he to actually say?
He crept along quietly, hesitation still thrumming in his veins but spurred on by the desire of just a glimpse of her if that was all she would allow. But then he entered the sorting room, and whatever he might have expected, it wasn’t what he found.
Katarina was leaning against one of the ladders, forehead pressed to a wooden rung and hair falling down all around her face, limp and stringy just like the rest of her.
He didn’t need to see her expression to know she was utterly exhausted, and for the briefest of moments he preened at having had a hand—er, well, a thigh—in inspiring her current state, and then distress set in.
“Darling, whatever is the matter?”
Her body jolted upright, and then she slapped her face with a handful of letters, groaning from beneath the crumpled parchment.
“Do you need a healer?” He closed the distance between them and took her in his arms on instinct, pushing hair out of her face and examining her eyes.
They were far too strange to discern illness, but the violet rings beneath them were a sure sign something was amiss, though the color was rather pleasing.
“No, no healer. I’m just having one of my headaches.” She rubbed both temples with unsent mail as if she could cleanse her pain with the jabbering of others.
Azrion frowned. “I may not know much about humans, but I can’t imagine you’re meant to have ownership over aches in your heads.”
She snorted lightly, and it was laughter surely, but it made her look even more miserable to conjure it.
“Oh, Kat, you look terrible.”
“Thanks,” she grumbled and slipped out of his hold.
He grabbed at the empty space she left behind. “Let me take you to the infirmary.”
“I already have medicine for this, it just takes a little while to work.” Kat stepped up onto the ladder with none of the grace he had seen that first time.
“Longer when I’m on my feet and my eyes are open,” she muttered, and she probably thought it was under her breath, but Azrion was far too keen to let that slide.
“Then you should stop working until it does.” He followed after her, gnawing on the thought that the incaendi moss sometimes caused aftereffects similar to a mild hangover, but by the looks of her, Kat was experiencing a severe one.
“I need to do my job,” she insisted and began to climb.
Azrion hated to watch her, ragged and pitiful, each step a slog. At least she only had a few feet to go before she hooked the latch on a drawer, dragged it open and stuffed it full, then flopped her hand against it to push it back in.
When she touched down safely again, he shook his head. “Well, that won’t do at all.” And then he was off.
Azrion was good at claiming things without a thought about their intended use or ownership, so it took him only a moment to find a cushioned chair and a heavy throw in the residential part of the post. He carried his finds back to the sorting room, and when Kat asked what he was doing, he told her only, “What a mate would do,” and left again to procure a cup of tea and a ripe sytron from the kitchen.
He returned just in time to guide Kat away from the ladder and the letters out of her hand.
“Sit, darling,” he said in his gentlest tone, holding the blanket out of the way and presenting the chair.
She blinked like she’d never seen one of those before. “Who’s going to finish all this?” She gestured to the table in the room’s middle piled high with letters she had probably fallen behind on while accompanying him.
“I will.”
“You can’t.”
“No, probably not on my own,” he admitted, taking her by the shoulder and easing her down. She put up no fight. “But with your supervision, I bet I could do just about anything.” He flourished the blanket and laid it atop her.
Kat curled her legs up under it but turned skeptical eyes up at him. “I’m just sitting down for a second.”
“Of course you are.” He flitted around her, setting up the fruit and passing her the cup of tea.
She took a deep inhale, and her lids went so heavy her eyes might have closed. “Who are you impressing by doing this?”
“Oh, just you, I suppose.” He held up the letter he’d taken from her. “Now, what’s this squiggle mean?”
Katarina, as it turned out, was an excellent teacher even with an aching head and on the verge of sleep.
She gave him apt direction peppered with only a few cutting words between tentative sips, watching him with increasingly bleary eyes.
Eventually he got the hang of the system on the letters and the boxes, and he was deft enough on his feet that Katarina fell into a deep slumber curled up in her chair beneath the blanket.
Azrion was only attacked by a single drayk during the process, which he considered a triumph, and he didn’t slip on the ladder once, though magic and his tail certainly helped keep him upright on two precarious occasions.
When at least half the pile was sorted, he decided he’d earned himself a break, but Kat was still deep asleep, so there was no one to talk to.
Parchment was the next best thing, so he commandeered a spare piece and a quill, and his hands went to work.
It was different sketching her while she was in the room. His memory for detail was exceptional, but he found that her neck was a bit more slender and her nose a bit more upturned, so he took down the details and pocketed the drawing before going back to work.
It was difficult work, especially for a demon whose primary source of physical labor was fueled by bouts of anger—though admittedly he did end up chopping quite a bit of wood—but he would rather work in her unconscious presence than be away from her.
Kat woke hours later when Azrion brought in a fresh pot of tea, second cup, and some meats and cheeses he’d charmed out of the post mistress. The human yawned like a small animal, all of her blunt teeth on display, then she sniffed at the air and finally laid eyes on Azrion. “What are you…oh. Oh.”
He placed the tray on the table beside her. “Dinner.”
“What time is it?”
Azrion shrugged.
“And you’re still here?”
“It seems I am. But Alamar locked up, so I’m not sure how to leave.”
Katarina chuckled, and this time it didn’t look to pain her at all. “I can’t believe I slept all day.”
“You did a stunning job. And you were beautiful doing it.”
Katarina scowled but didn’t wince. And she’s back to normal! Mission accomplished, and damn well if I do say so, which I do.
“And you finished all my work? I’m sorry—”
“No, absolutely not!” Azrion scooped up a piece of cheese and inspected it. “This was the least I could do in return for your assistance, the wedding, dinner with my parents, last night.”
Kat’s face flared bright red as she studied her lap. He could practically hear her thoughts churning as he cursed his big mouth and stuffed it with cheese just for good measure. She picked at a loose thread in the blanket. “So, have you talked to Melora or Fenthorn yet?”
Azrion stopped chewing and blinked at the wall of drawers over her head. Why would he…oh. Oh. By all the stars, he’d forgotten. “No,” he said simply.
She picked up a slice of fruit from the tray. “Did you know they were—”
“No.” He gnawed at the inside of his cheek. “If I had to wager a guess, I would say it’s an extension of the game, but I haven’t…well, I haven’t been paying enough attention to really know.”
Kat nodded as she ate, and silence filled up the sorting room. As she combed out a tangle from her hair with her hands, the low lantern light reflected on the golden strands.
“Also, last night.” She bit her lip, and he remembered its taste, imagining it now coated in sytron. “I shouldn’t have—”
A rapid knocking cut into the sorting room and had both of them sitting up straight. Azrion followed the sound into the front room, dark now, but in the lantern lights of the road outside, a figure stood at the post’s door. “Zaiya?”
His sister had pressed her face to the glass, and even through the mottled surface, he could tell she was distraught. It was such a rare look for her to wear that Azrion jumped over the counter and threw open the lock, pulling her inside.
“Elli,” she said, voice thin and hoarse at once. “She’s missing.”
“What?” Kat rushed from behind the counter, blanket thrown over her arm.
“I don’t…” Zaiya searched the floor, puffiness around her eyes and the remnants of tears streaking her face. “I’m so fucking stupid.”
“No, no, no,” Kat said in a low tone as she pulled over the chair in the entry.
Azrion guided Zaiya to sit and knelt before her. It was easier to see her face like that, but it was much worse too. “What happened? Tell us everything.”
Though it was a jumble at first, and the two had to ask many clarifying questions, Zaiya eventually explained that she had just come from some sort of trial at the council chambers.
There were humans there, one on whom some blame had been thrust and another who stood in her defense alongside a demon in the guard—or not in the guard, Zaiya had wobbled on that, but it didn’t really matter because the conclusion had been that Elliran wasn’t just avoiding Zaiya, she was officially missing.
No one had seen the green demon in at least a week, not since the summer festival.
Kat nodded along and filled in the gaps when Zaiya became overwhelmed.
“They had an argument about us—the humans,” she told him as she worried her skirt and bit her lip.
“Elliran was worried about us, something about the scrolls and the details not lining up, and it was causing her to fall asleep at her job. It sounds like she was being overworked too.”
“I’d expect nothing less of that fucking imbecile Tarzul,” Azrion grumbled.
“Tarzul,” Zaiya said with a sudden bite, head snapping up.
“He blamed Ember for Elliran’s disappearance, you know because of the whole human murder thing, but I know she didn’t.
I was the last person to see Elli that night after our argument.
I thought she was still going to work, and I was just giving her the space she asked for, but Tarzul knew she wasn’t showing up and didn’t say anything for a week.
He knows she doesn’t have anybody else to check on her.
Just me.” She squeezed her fists and turned her head down again.
Azrion traded a glance with Kat, an unspoken agreement that something was peculiar about that.
“That other human, Rosalind, was at the trial. Elli mentioned her before, said she was helping her somehow? I should have stuck around and asked more questions, but I just…I didn’t know what else to do, so I came here.
All I have is this.” Zaiya pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from her pocket.
It had been folded and sealed at one time, but now it lay open, covered in neat script and Elliran’s signature, though there was no magical marker.
Enchanted signatures weren’t always used on private letters, but Azrion still wrinkled his nose.
“This doesn’t sound like her,” he said as he read through the curt letter.
“She was angry with me,” Zaiya reminded him begrudgingly.
“Perhaps, but Elli never used words like eminently and abrogate.”
Kat snorted, but Zaiya just groaned. “Elli’s smart.”
“Yes, yes, I know, but she’s not pretentious. I propose a sabbatical from our liaison. Does that really sound like her?”
“Sounds like you,” Kat muttered.
“Exactly.”
Zaiya ran a hand through her shock of white hair and growled. “Yeah, but only she knows about that thing.”
Azrion looked down a few lines to where his sister pointed then recoiled, shoving the letter back at her. “Details about your liaisons aside, there’s something wrong with this.”
Kat gently took the letter from Azrion and read it, brow cocked and lifting higher with every line. “You’re, um…liaison happened at work?”
The corner of Zaiya’s mouth ticked up. “In a quill closet, yeah. Until someone opened the door on us.”
“So others did know about it,” she said and flipped the letter over to inspect the back. “Also, when the drayks carry letters, they leave claw marks right here and here. This one isn’t marked up, so it wasn’t delivered by the post.”
“Elli could have put it in our postbox herself.”
“Well, someone did.” Kat frowned at the writing. “Someone who didn’t want you to go looking for her right away.”
“Tarzul, obviously.” Azrion pursed his lips and stared off into the darkness of the post’s entryway.
“He was so insistent that it was Ember.”
“Trying to find someone to blame, and who better than a human with a questionable background?” Azrion went cold at the thought of a council member framing one of the humans. If he could do it, even with his half-inept brain, any of them could. “Maybe if we could get into his office we could find—”
“No,” Zaiya said miserably. “I’ve seen his office from Elli’s—hers is right across the hall. There’s literally nothing in there because she does all his work. Except that satchel he carries with him everywhere.”
“He takes it home with him?” Azrion’s gaze pinged to Kat who was already eyeing him back.
Zaiya shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s not like we can break into his house and…why are you two looking at each other like that?”
“Darling,” said Azrion in his most charming voice. “Believe me when I say I hate to ask, and I know it’s not in the contract, but—”
“But you want to break into his house?”
He grinned. “You read my mind.”
Kat straightened and wickedness crept into her features. “It would be my pleasure.”