Book Two Chapter 8: On the Record

Book Two Chapter 8

On the Record

The inn was filled with the smell of fried dough as Roen made breakfast. It was a simple recipe from his hometown that his mother used to make when he was little, though he had added his own touches, such as the kind of yoghurt used here. He kneaded the dough until it was soft, let it rise under a cloth, then tore off pieces, stretched them thin, and dropped them into oil that had to be just the right temperature. They puffed up and turned golden. He set them on paper and couldn’t resist eating two too quickly, burning his mouth. They were simple, just flour, water, oil, and a bit of yoghurt, but on a cold morning, nothing was better.

He had the first batch draining when Milo came down a bit early, drawn by the smell.

“Those are fried,” Milo said, as if confirming a miracle.

“They are.”

“For everyone?”

“Yes, Milo, for everyone. Now sit, before you fall down. You’re still half asleep.”

Milo sat on the bar stool, grabbed one from the paper, and dropped it right away because it was as hot as lava. He picked it up again, this time more carefully, using just his fingertips and moving them around to dodge the heat, then ate it. His face lit up with pure happiness. At that moment, Brick poked his head through the open back door, and Milo, without being told, tore off a piece and tossed it outside, where it landed straight in Brick’s mouth.

“You’ll make him rotund,” Roen said.

“He’s already…round.”

“You’ll make him rounder.”

“Then, the good thing is, he’ll be easier to catch when he sneaks into the inn again.”

There was no arguing with that, so Roen didn’t.

Bess came in next and paused as the smell reached her at the door. She stood there and looked around the inn: the kitchen, the oil, the growing pile of golden dough on the paper, and the boy with grease on his chin. She gave a single approving nod, like a general seeing everything in order, and headed to the stove. She left her basket and stopped in her tracks when she noticed the second pan.

“What,” she said almost with a look of disgust on her face, “are those?”

The mushrooms were in a bowl by the cutting board, waiting. Long, thin, pale as candle wax, a hundred slender stalks bound at the root in a single cluster, caps no bigger than a fingernail. Roen had bought them around a week ago, along with the knife and honey.

“Mushrooms,” Roen said.

“Those aren’t mushrooms. They don’t even look like mushrooms. They look like wet pale worms that fell on your plate.”

“They might look like whatever you just said, but trust me, they’re mushrooms.”

“They look like noodles,” Milo offered, leaning over. “White noodles that grew heads.”

“Mm, they’re better than they look.” Roen pulled the cluster apart, cut the woody root away, and dropped the strands into a pan where the butter had gone past foaming and was starting to brown. They shrieked and shrank and tangled, then the aroma rose, deep and savoury and mildly of the woods they were picked from, nothing like their pale looks promised. He let them crisp at the edges, hit them with a little garlic and a few leaves of thyme from the windowsill pot, and turned them out next to a heap of the fried dough.

Bess looked at the plate with suspicion of the highest order and then looked at him, with the same face. She then picked up a fork as if to prove her point, ate a tangle of the browned strands, and stopped chewing.

“Hm,” she said.

A standing ovation from her.

“Hm,” Roen agreed.

She took a second forkful, then a third, then carried the rest of the pan’s worth toward the wash basin where she could guard it, murmuring something about how mushroom worms had no business tasting like that.

• • •

The common room slowly filled as people arrived, cold on their faces, finding comfort in it and deciding to stay.

One of these people was Garren, who came in, lowered himself onto his stool, and accepted a plate without comment. He ate the fried dough first, methodically, then he tried the strange mushrooms, and then, after a pause that Roen pretended not to watch, he held the empty plate up a half-inch off the bar, which was Garren for more.

Brenner, who had just brought some firewood without being asked, sat at his spot and started eating his breakfast slowly, watching the room with part of his attention. He was used to watching rooms for a living, but this was the only one he watched just because he wanted to. He and Roen exchanged a glance over the rim of his mug. They didn’t say anything, as there was nothing that needed saying, and that was its own comfort.

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Velan had been gone for a few days now, and Roen realised he had counted them without ever deciding to. She’d be far enough now, writing up about a ghost of a mage, sending the Tower’s attention to said ghost down the wrong road. The thought of that ran through his mind, but he quickly decided that today the fried dough was the thing to focus on, so he let himself have the morning. He’d learned, the long way around, that a man who spent every good day bracing for the bad one had simply chosen to live the bad one twice.

• • •

It was while he was on the wards that he felt it again. On his way back from the yard, he checked the wards as another man checked a lock at night, running his attention down the working like a thumb down a blade, feeling for nicks. The ward answered too quickly, too vividly, almost like an instrument string would half-step too tightly, and when he steadied it the steadying took less of him than it should have, far less, and what was left over sat in his chest with nowhere to go.

He stood in place with his hand at the doorframe and made himself acknowledge it again.

The power was still climbing, and he was lucky that his suppression held tight while Velan was there.

He knew it had been climbing since the first fights with the Wisps and Hollow. His reserves of Aether filled faster each time he spent them, and the channels that carried it ran wider than they had any business running in a body this young. He admitted that he didn’t understand it. The ledger of his measurements sat tucked away in the drawer as he hadn’t bothered with it after the fight. That was the part he disliked most. He had spent the whole of his first life understanding what he was and how to control it, and now the very thing he was holding was growing in him, and his attempts at pressing it down, the discipline that had kept him hidden for a year, were beginning to feel less like controlled suppression and more like sitting on a lid waiting to tip over.

He took his hand off the frame.

Later. I will deal with it later.

He put it on the shelf with the word, the entity and the white room. He noticed, though, that the shelf was getting desperately crowded.

• • •