Chapter 4 #2
Brioni found herself in Aldgate Square when the moon was sinking.
The square was nearly empty so late in the day—all the demons who worked in the council chambers had already left except Elliran, who accepted a delivery on the council’s behalf.
Stephan needed a break, so she pulled the cart into an alley and filled a pail from a public faucet beside the Scholar’s Hall by waving her hand over a blue rune.
Cool water spilled out, and she did a little dance as the bucket filled, delighted by the ease that magic allowed.
Humans were so silly being afraid of the stuff—magic was wonderful!
As Stephan drank, she sat on the edge of the cart and contemplated names for the drayk.
Kingfisher was a maybe since the coloring was nearly the same, but there wasn’t much regal about her.
Soara and Glida sounded nice, but her tendency to wreck upon landing made those names seem a little mean-spirited.
“You’re really pretty, like my sister, Camila.” Brioni snickered, resting her chin in her hand as she watched the drayk teeter on the edge of the bucket and share a drink with the qapian. “And Camila would hate having to share a name with you.”
“Busy day?”
A demon appeared out of nowhere, and Brioni almost fell off the end of the cart.
He stepped out from one of the decorative alcoves that lined the side of the Scholar’s Hall, the last of the moonlight falling on his robes, suggesting that was where he probably came from.
The deep blue complimented his orange skin and curling horns.
“I made Stephan double back a lot today, so he needed a break.” She sat straight and smiled wide, the appeal against her own laziness bubbling up her throat as she hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “Only two more packages left.”
“Ah, then you wouldn’t mind a third, I presume?” He produced an envelope from the depth of his bell sleeve.
“How did you…” She shook her head—magic, that was how he made it appear so artfully.
The Scholar’s Hall was for the best of the best, she’d heard, and the seriousness of the demon’s faces when they entered and exited confirmed that.
She slid off the cart and reached for the envelope.
“That looks light enough for a drayk to deliver.”
The demon snatched it back before she could accept. “No drayks,” he said sharply, black eyes narrowing. “Hand delivery only.”
Brioni flicked her gaze down to her open palm. “It’s breakable?”
The demon raised a ruddy brow. “You could say that.”
She didn’t let her smile falter, though it tried to tug itself downward as if it knew something the rest of her didn’t. “That’s no problem—we hand deliver things all the time.”
“We,” he said, tapping the envelope against his horn. “What will it cost to ensure you deliver it?”
Brioni’s mind tumbled over a number of ideas then all at once: How much did it cost to have a letter delivered?
Alamar ran the counter at the post, and Kat provided backup in the sorting room, but Brioni just took whatever coin she was handed along with packages—she never counted and Alamar never complained.
Surely she wasn’t allowed to charge her own special fee, and she had no plans to become a renegade deliverywoman anyway.
What would Alamar think of her going rogue and undercutting Heck Post?
Or charging even more for vigilante parcel service?
She could really get in trouble for something like that, couldn’t she?
She could get fired. Then where would she live?
Would she still get her stipend? She didn’t know how much it cost to procure housing in Heck, or anywhere for that matter—she didn’t even know how much it cost to send a letter!
And how in the world was she meant to survive when all she could cook was toasted cheese?
“I make deliveries all day,” she finally said with a cheerful shrug. “What’s one more?”
“That’s what I was hoping to hear.” The orange demon flipped the envelope around skillfully in hand.
Brioni squinted at it, both sides blank. “Oh, uh, I do need an address though. Or at least someone to deliver it to.”
“The destination is a little more complicated than a district and a name. You’re familiar with the mason’s guild?”
She nodded. She had delivered an extremely heavy package there only two days ago, a pretty piece of marble they intended to carve their new sign into. The stone mason’s guild was also just east of the path to Ragnar’s barn, and she didn’t bother hiding the excitement that realization sparked.
“Have you been behind it?”
“Oh, sure, to that cute neighborhood set up in a spiral? I brought a crate of these weird spiky fruits to a house with frogs painted all over the shutters there. The owner, Hilde—she runs Hilde’s Hearth by the way—said she was making jam for winter out of them.
I asked her how cold it gets here, and she said not cold at all in her house, which might have been because she was red, but she also had a lot of little kids, so she might have been making a dirty jo—”
“You’re very observant, aren’t you? What about behind the spiral neighborhood?”
Brioni twisted her lips as she thought. “Just…trees?”
“The Veilwood, yes. About twenty paces past the trees, there’s an old well with faded runes that no one uses any longer, and a path running deeper into the trees still marked by demondrake growing along its edges.
You’ll find a cottage at the end, stone front, thatched roof, green door.
It’s about a fifteen-minute walk, due north.
Well”—he looked her up and down—“twenty minutes for you. That’s where this needs to end up.
” He offered the envelope to her once more.
“Oh, I can’t go in the woods.”
The demon cocked his head. “Why not?”
She held up her arm, and the cuff caught the dimming moonlight.
“Right.” He nodded knowingly. “We can fix that.”
“What do you—”
The demon ran a finger over the runes on her cuff, an orange light sparked between them, and green smoke sizzled into the air. The demon pursed his lips, blowing the minty-colored haze away, and then it was done.
“Did you just…” She couldn’t say because it couldn’t have actually happened—the runes couldn’t actually be broken. But then the envelope slid into her hand.
“No need to thank me, but best we keep this between us. The council wouldn’t be happy knowing one of the humans had unsupervised access to Heck’s borders.
It does make you a bit of a liability, but I know you wouldn’t break our trust and flee back to the humans intent on divulging all of our secrets, would you?
” He chuckled like it was a ridiculous suggestion, and yet he made it anyway.
“No, I wouldn’t…” She wanted to touch the cuff, but the strange heft of the envelope was more intriguing, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it.
“Quickly, before moondown,” he said, and when she finally looked up again, he was gone.