Chapter 12 The Sign of a Noble Soul #2
Brioni could be quick when she wanted to—quick enough to pretend like she didn’t hear Ragnar calling after her to ask where she was going.
She wasn’t running off into the forest but back into town, so she knew he wouldn’t follow, a good thing because she couldn’t wait to surprise him.
He was going to be so pleased when she fixed everything.
She finally caught sight of Felgon’s spiraling horns as he entered the market, crowded in the middle of the day. “Excuse me, sir!” she called at least three times, weaving around carts and dodging tails. Eventually she sprinted past him and hopped into his path. “Hi!”
He started, disgust passing over his face, but at least he also stopped. Running into a human was worse, she supposed, than being flagged down by one.
“You must not have heard me calling you.” Toothy smile at the ready but far from any of her best, Brioni took a deep breath.
“I just wanted to say that I appreciate all you do to keep Heck running. I’m so impressed by the hot water at the post and the spigots all around town so that Stephan can get a drink during the day—Stephan’s the qapian who helps me deliver the mail, I’m sure you’ve seen him, he’s about yea big”—she stretched her arms out to either side—“and he does such a good job. I wouldn’t be able to get anything done without him, and he wouldn’t be able to get anything done without water, so I guess you could say neither of us could get anything done without you! ”
“Yeah…okay.” The demon sidestepped her and continued on his way.
“Um, also…” She swallowed, hurrying to keep up and reaching into the back of her mind for that conversation with Elder Balgenath.
“I noticed you’re using cast iron pipes instead of the elm wood ones we have back in Ankerick, and I just wanted to say that they’re so well poured. They’re just really…round.”
The demon gave her a sidelong glance but said nothing. Nothing was better than dismissal though, so she took it as permission to go on as she hopped over a crate of melons.
“I don’t know anything about magic because, you know, human, obviously.
” At this she tittered and flourished her hands like she was presenting a surprising fact that wasn’t as plain as the blue of his skin.
“And not that I can understand it or anything, but one day last week, the oven rune went out at the post, and Alamar called Hilde over to carve us up a new one in an hour, which was so kind of her and also so fast, and I know water and fire are different, obviously, but if you ask me”—she lowered her voice and cupped a hand around her mouth—“water is so much neater, and I bet it’s more complicated too, so I was wondering—”
“The barn is too far from the central well to work like the other faucets in Heck,” the demon admitted once he’d been worn down. “The rune you want fixed is special. And there’s the corruption too.”
“Corruption?” She barely squeezed herself between a stall and Felgon, sucking in her stomach and hopping over a wheel.
Felgon shrugged. “Happens sometimes. That place is too close to the Dreadmoor. It gets messy.”
“Oh, dear. I wish there was something I could do to help.”
“You’d be the first to want to help that gray bastard.”
Brioni swallowed down the desire to use some of those curses she’d heard Ragnar mumbling.
She was good at doing that, at hiding the worst of how she felt to keep everyone else happy, but it was a little harder when it came to Ragnar.
She imagined kicking Felgon in the shin, and that made the feeling pass.
It didn’t, however, inspire her high-pitched, happy-go-lucky voice to come back.
“Look, just tell me what needs to be done, and I’ll do it. ”
Felgon finally stopped his incessant march through the market when they reached its end, and he pulled the stone out of his bag. A crack ran down its middle. “This is no simple fix for the rudiments department. This needs to go to the Scholar’s Hall, and those fusspots make you fill out paperwork.”
“I can fill out paperwork,” she chirped and held out her hands. What she meant was, I can find someone to fill out paperwork for me, but he didn’t need to know that.
“They won’t let a—” Felgon looked her up and down, his disdain shifting to amusement. “You know what? Fine.” He dropped the stone into her hand, and its surprising weight almost took her right to the ground.
She was all “thank yous” as she picked herself back up despite it seemed she was doing him the favor and ran off in the opposite direction, back through the market because that was the quickest way to the Scholar’s Hall.
Stephan would be all right with the cart for an hour or so hanging out by the Lovable Loaf since this was just a cracked stone: How long could fixing it really take?
Heroines who are painfully optimistic often run into trouble at the halfway point. Brioni wasn’t quite there yet, but she was dashing toward danger at an alarming rate with that kind of question.
Brioni arrived at the Scholar’s Hall out of breath but dazzled by the building’s beauty as always.
She’d only seen inside when its double doors were left open, but as she stood on its threshold, the interior glass walls shimmered in a new way under the magical lights all along the massive entry.
She stared unblinking upward as she wandered inside, her footsteps silent in the empty space, the noise of Aldgate Square falling away and replaced with the pleasantly hollow sounds that hovered overhead.
Brioni clutched the rune to her chest as she marveled at reflecting lights of every color, coming to a stop at the end of the hall and a stone wall there.
She glanced about for a door, but there was nothing, and turned back the way she came.
“When they say Scholar’s Hall they really mean it, I guess. ”
Voices suddenly sounded from her side where there hadn’t been anyone a moment prior.
When she looked, two demons stepped right out of the wall: an elder she had never seen before and another demon she most definitely had.
It was just her luck that the orange demon she’d been running back and forth to the cottage for could finally return the favor.
“Oh, hello!” she lilted and held up the stone. “I’m looking for—”
“What in Rohash’s name is a human doing in here?”
Brioni’s grin faltered. It had been harder to maintain with every increasingly disdainful mention of her nature. “The door was open, so I—”
“So you just walked in?” The orange demon whose name she still didn’t know but who surely recognized her face stared utter daggers at her.
“Um…yes?”
“This is sacred ground,” the elder barked, stepping forward as she matched him and stepped back. “Only those worthy are welcome.”
Brioni’s stomach twisted as she blindly approached the glass wall behind her.
“So sorry. I didn’t know. Silly mistake, I just thought I could—oh!
” The wall never hit her back. Instead, the world around her changed, and it was like stepping through water, only she didn’t end up wet.
Suddenly, she found herself stumbling into another hall, this one with a soft rug beneath her feet and a corridor of arched doorways snaking behind her.
The elder demon’s voice was muffled until he appeared to magically step through the stone wall of the new corridor’s end. “…ridiculous since they arrived.”
The much more narrow hall made Brioni clutch the rune tighter. “I get the feeling I’m even less supposed to be here than I was out there, but I was told that if I came, you could help me with—”
“You were not told to come here,” the orange demon hissed, and she got a second dreadful feeling, one that said she better not divulge the secret they shared.
But yes, she had been told to go there, hadn’t she? Brioni screwed up her face, thinking hard as she took yet another step backward.
“Ah, there you are!”
It was funny how the same words said in a different voice could instill the exact opposite feelings. Instead of dread, this time Brioni was so relieved to hear them, she almost laughed. See? Funny. But not that funny, since she kept the chuckle inside.
A lavender-colored demon stuck his head through one of the arched doorways.
He crooked a finger at Brioni, and despite that he was a total stranger, she was smart enough to accept the invitation without question.
“Deepest apologies, my esteemed fellows,” he waved at the two, the arm of his robe billowing as he flashed them a grin almost as good as one of Brioni’s.
“Meant to meet the deliveryhuman at the door but alas, I am so completely rapt in my work, I overlooked the time. Farewell!” With the simple flick of his hand, the door shut, leaving the two inside alone.
Brioni’s gaze darted around the office then landed on the demon as she breathed out stuttered words of gratitude.
“No need to thank me. I mean, what kind of mate would I be if I didn’t rush to the rescue of another human in distress, hmm?”
She wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but the distraction of floating baubles on shelves and soft music playing from somewhere unseen made her forget immediately. Plus, he hadn’t stopped talking.
“Ignore Elder Itcheran. He’s, well, an elder, and he’s very stuck in his ways.
He doesn’t represent the rest of us.” The lavender demon dropped down into the room’s only chair and slung his boots up on the desk right atop the papers strewn across it.
“Well, I suppose he does represent us in a very literal sense, which is a real shame considering what a blowhard he is. Sacred ground my left ear.” He flicked at said pointed appendage and the delicate gold jewelry hanging from it tinkled.
“Usually the orange one is nice to me.” She cocked her head, taken by a book with poisonously green pages.