Chapter 4
Haphazard Half Hazards
Brioni
Brioni swung her legs freely beneath her, the stool she sat on too high for a human of her height to reach the floor or even the rung meant for feet, and focused on the next fold.
If she took this corner of the parchment to that midline—no, then how would she get a tail? Moar’s tail was very important.
“Your porridge is getting cold.”
As if Alamar had ordered her to eat or be executed, Brioni immediately grabbed her spoon and shoveled in a bite. She swallowed hard, throat burning from the mystery spices and lumpy grains, but the demon didn’t notice.
Instead, Alamar was concerned with giving the counters a good scrub.
The postmaster was always busy doing something, probably how she stayed in such good shape despite being quite a bit older, and she refused most help.
Not having to cook was a relief since all Brioni knew how to prepare was toasted cheese, which wouldn’t really work with what the local four-horned goats produced.
Stephan was the closest thing she’d seen to a proper cow in Heck, but Brioni was pretty sure he wasn’t milkable.
Beside her at the small table in the kitchen’s corner, Kat was hunched over her bowl.
Purple light glowed in the sconces affixed to the stone walls, illuminating the stack of pans and rack of glass jars filled with strange herbs, but the warmer color of the fire in the oven cast over Kat’s long fall of tawny hair and lit it up like a golden curtain between them.
“Did you like the yivie tart?” Brioni asked, poking a finger between the straight strands and moving them aside.
One of Kat’s blue eyes peered out of her hair cave, wide and terrified just like the first day they’d been introduced at the post. And the day after, and the day after that… “The what?”
Brioni shot the demon’s back a furtive look. “The pastry I gave to Alamar to give to you last night. How did it taste? Good, right?”
“Oh, I didn’t eat that.” Kat always spoke like she was sneaking through a vengeful god’s temple, but this time there was a sort of sadness folded up inside her words.
Probably because she missed her sister, a thing Brioni was trying her hardest not to bring up since she still had the privilege of seeing Kalypso on her delivery rounds.
“Why not? It’ll go stale.”
“I didn’t know you wanted me to.” Kat bit her lip, the scar running away from the corner of her mouth tugging the skin of her cheek. “I thought I was just supposed to hold onto it for you.”
“I told her,” Alamar remarked as she carried a clean pot to the rack.
Brioni tried to stifle the frustrated sound that squeaked in the back of her throat.
Kat was always so worried with everyone around her, it was like she forgot about her own existence—especially annoying, though for incomprehensible reasons because Brioni really liked Kat otherwise.
Brioni really liked just about everybody, to be fair, but Kat was special in that she probably deserved to be liked more than most.
“I’ll get you another one to celebrate our weekiversary here at Heck Post, but you have to promise to eat it this time.
” She nudged the other woman’s elbow and earned a covert grin.
Their matched shadows flickered on the wall beside them, and then there was a third bustling by, and Kat’s brow knitted with more of that overactive worry.
Kat’s uneasiness was thickest in the air when strangers were around, but it was probably second thickest when she watched Alamar clean and couldn’t partake. She only needed to be told once by the demon to sit and eat rather than help, but Brioni could barely endure Kat’s tremulous anxiety.
“Your porridge is getting cold too, Alamar,” said Brioni as she nudged the third bowl.
The demon sighed, fists on her hips as she surveyed the kitchen like a captain inspecting their troops and then conceded defeat. She finally sat herself across from the two and placed a dish of something that looked like bacon in the middle of the table.
“Ooh, what’s this?” Brioni held up a thick, dark slice.
They didn’t have pigs in Heck, and she’d learned on her first day that it was better to ask before taking a bite—she still didn’t know what a cobgruk was, and after the slimy feel of it in her throat and the way her lips swelled, she did not want to find out.
“Bacon.”
Brioni snorted—okay, so they shared that word at least. “What’s it made out of?”
“Boar from the Veilwood.”
“The Veilwood,” Brioni repeated quietly into the sounds of the other two munching and pretended to be more intrigued by the meat than the other thoughts she was having, consequently a little bit about meatiness too.
“Speaking of, I met that man who lives in the barn last night.” Oh, what a smooth segue, Bri, she thought with completely misplaced audacity.
“You mean the demon Ragnar?” Though Alamar’s eyes were all black, they still had a tell-tale sign of rolling when she was miffed. “I should have warned you about his hostility, though I assume you charmed him.”
“He only threatened to throw me down the stairs once!” she chirped. “Why’s he silver-colored?”
Kat choked on a mouthful of porridge, and Alamar’s tail clapped the human on the back. “Oh, my gods, Bri,” she coughed from behind her hand, “you can’t just ask demons why they’re a certain color.”
“I know, that’s why I’m asking Alamar instead.”
“He’s not silver,” the purple demon told them pointedly. “He’s gray.”
Brioni waited for more, watching the postmaster stir an extra spoonful of spices into her milky grains, but that seemed all she was willing to give, and it wasn’t nearly enough—it was barely semantics. “And?”
“And that’s it.” She lifted her spoon to her mouth and froze, a lump of porridge falling back into the bowl with a splat. “Why?”
Brioni flicked her gaze downward and focused hard on crumbling bits of bacon into her bowl.
“I’ve never seen a silver—er, gray demon before, so I was just wondering what he can do.
You make these pretty lanterns and manage the package portal, and Valgoth conjures actual snowflakes, and that red guard who helped save us can cast real fire.
” She absently rubbed her fingers together, remembering the burn when she’d stuck her hand into the hearth at Ember’s makeshift home.
“So I thought because his barn has green and yellow lanterns, maybe he could do both kinds of magic? But then I saw he uses regular candles upstairs in his house, so maybe—”
“What were you doing upstairs?”
Guilt flooded every one of Brioni’s veins, and she knew her skin was flaring bright red.
“Nothing!” she lied too quickly, because she had been doing something—she was being wickedly meddlesome—and then she corrected into a slightly bigger lie.
“Just making the delivery like you told me to because that’s where he was—upstairs—and I couldn’t just leave his package in the hay on the ground, could I? ”
The demon stared at her for a long moment, and she reminded Brioni of her stepmother then, all unforgiving hard lines and accusation.
I didn’t do anything wrong, she wanted to scream but held her breath instead because she was twenty-four for all the gods’ sakes, and her defenses, true or otherwise, never really mattered anyway.
Alamar’s face finally softened, and the resemblance was swept away, taking with it most of Brioni’s panic but leaving just enough to make her grossly aware of what her own face was doing.
Smile. No, not like you’re up to something.
Like nothing’s wrong. Maybe don’t smile.
No, don’t frown—you’ll look upset, you’re not allowed to be upset!
“You haven’t seen another gray demon because it’s a rare condition, and they tend to keep to themselves,” Alamar said quietly as she stirred her porridge.
“What hap—”
“Not my story to tell. And I would suggest you don’t go sniffing around to find out.”
Brioni swallowed, though she hadn’t taken a bite. “Just because he’s different?”
“No, because he wants to be left alone. Ragnar has spent so much time with those animals, I’m not sure he knows he’s meant to be different from them. You’re very…sweet, Bri,” she said, and it wasn’t really a compliment. “He is not.”
Brioni drew her bottom lip between her teeth. Her worst habit was tricking herself into thinking she knew better when faced with danger. Just because someone was gentle with their pet didn’t mean they wouldn’t also lock her in a stall with a ravenous monster made of muscle and claws.
Too bad Brioni really liked muscle and claws.
“Boar-con.”
Kat and Alamar looked up from their breakfasts.
“Boar bacon. Boar-con.” Brioni snapped her teeth on the slice, expertly redirecting the conversation, her tentative misdeeds forgotten.
It was just as well she’d been warned away from Ragnar’s because Brioni had plenty to do for the rest of the day. Stephan’s cart was full of packages, and she picked up more on her rounds that muddled the route she’d planned if she was going to get them where they belonged before the daymoon sank.
She only got lost twice, but she’d made seven modifications to Alamar’s map, and she was pretty sure at least five of them were accurate.
Her favorite drayk, a teal-colored one with a bad case of farsightedness, crashed into her midday and demanded attention.
Brioni had already taught the drayk to sit on command and shake with her wing, so they worked on playing dead during lunch.
She only garnered a few strange looks when she splayed herself on the ground outside the Lovable Loaf with her tongue hanging out and a half-eaten biscuit stuffed in her cleavage, but eventually the drayk got the idea—mostly.
Dead drayks didn’t wag their tails, but they could work on that part later.