Chapter 14: One Quiet Day

Chapter 14

One Quiet Day

He woke up before her.

This was actually the norm. Roen had been waking at four for longer than any living creature in Millhaven had been alive, but for the first time in over a week, him waking up didn’t feel like an emergency. He lay in the dark for a moment, listening, taking it all in – the silence.

The inn was quiet.

Across the hall, Sera’s door was closed, but the bolt had stayed open. He’d known it would be, because she had crossed the line from “unbolted because I’m undecided” to “unbolted because I’ve decided ” somewhere, he thought yesterday afternoon, and the bolt was, blessedly so, a settled matter now.

He got up, and put his clothes on, his linen shirt and work pants – the usual uniform, and went down the stairs in the dark in the way that he always did in the war camps – silently, without waking anyone. His body hadn’t forgotten that feeling.

The kitchen was chilly that morning, the sky had just shown the first signs of waking, but the wind was still that of the deep night. He stoked the hearth, banked the new logs, and set the kettle to boil. He started the bread by pressing his knuckles into the dough and feeling it give way, lively and springy, with the sweet yet tangy smell of yeast, which meant it had risen properly overnight. He shaped the loaves in a particularly elongated manner, an experiment in shape and slid them into the oven. He tied the linen back over the proofing bowl and placed it in the coldest corner of the kitchen to keep the rise low and prevent overproofing, just in case anyone wanted more later.

Then, because he had a few minutes and the body remembered habits the mind hadn’t asked for, he made coffee.

Coffee was new to the inn. He’d found beans a week ago at a coastal trader’s stall and bought a small overpriced sack on a whim. The Crimson Tower, in his first life, had served coffee in copper pots imported from a kingdom that wouldn’t exist for about fifty years. He hadn’t drunk a decent cup since the regression and had been quietly missing it. He ground a small handful of beans in the stone mortar, the smell rising strong, sharp, dark and, at the same time, bright, the simple smell of a good morning, if you were lucky enough to have one. He set the pot to brew on a corner of the stove.

The first rays of light came through the window, painting the cherry bar a strong orange shade. Outside, the market square was empty, and a stray that lived in the alleys behind the inn was crossing the cobblestones with the silent patience of a night hunter returning to slumber after a good dinner.

The smell of fresh bread filled the kitchen as the coffee began to bubble.

The day, somehow, was already going well, amazingly well. He hoped, thinking that it would not force it to go sour.

• • •

Sera came down at her usual time and paused at the bottom of the stairs, sniffing the air. Her eyes narrowed.

“What’s that smell?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s the bread,” Roen answered.

“Not the bread, that other smell.”

“Coffee.”

“…You have coffee?” Her eyes changed shape and widened, and she quickened her step down the stairs.

“I bought beans a week ago from the coastal trader. The one whose cardamom you put in the ledger under questionable.”

“You spent more money…”

“That…I did.”

She came to the bar and sat on a stool. Her hair was unbraided this morning, falling loose past her shoulders, and she had not yet pinned it back from her face, over her ears, which were almost, almost visible. She seemed to have forgotten about them or simply stopped caring when around him. Roen did not point it out, because pointing it out would have been the wrong answer to whatever question she had quietly answered for herself overnight. But he noticed, again.

He poured her a cup of coffee and set it in front of her along with a small jug of cream and a small pot of honey beside it, because he had no idea how she took her coffee, or more like if she took her coffee at all, she’d never had it in front of him, and he wanted her to have options.

She picked up the cup, breathing in the deep aroma of the concentrated drink, and took a small, deliberate and careful sip.

She froze.

“Roen…”

“Hm?”

“What? Is? This?”

“Just…coffee.” He was sort of perplexed at the reaction, but quickly remembered that coffee is not the most common thing, and most had not tasted it so condensed, so full of flavour.

“This is not the coffee I’ve had before.”

“Where have you had coffee before?”

“In Ashenmoor, once a long time ago, it tasted like burnt rope.”

“That was probably stale beans, badly roasted, brewed in a copper pot that nobody had cleaned in a year. And I say brewed, but mostly they probably just boiled a badly ground version of it.”

“You sound like you have your opinions about coffee.”

“I have opinions about everything. Coffee is one of the more defensible ones.”

She took another sip, closed her eyes, and made a small sound that, in any other context, would have been deeply concerning.

“How much of this can you make?”

“A pot a day, maybe ten more days.”

“And then?”

“Then I find another trader.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Find one fast…please”

She drank her coffee, black, no honey, no cream, which Roen had not expected from her, judging by the three spoons of honey in her tea, but apparently, coffee was a different category of beverage and demanded different treatment. She drank it the way a person drank water on a hot day, with focused appreciation, as if the drinking were the entire point of the morning.

He set the elongated bread in front of her. To that he added a small plate of softened butter and a small dish of preserves that Hilde had brought over last week – pear and ginger, made from her own pears with a touch of ginger she had traded a neighbour for.

“Why is the bread…long?” she asked.

“The crust is stronger that way.”

She accepted the explanation and ate slowly, the way she did when she was happy and had no problems on her mind.

He started his own breakfast,a slice of the long bread, the same butter, and a smaller cup of coffee for himself. He sat across the bar from her, the way he had in the mornings before this one. The light through the window was gold and rising. Outside, the first merchant cart of the day finally rumbled across the cobblestones, and somewhere on the east side, a door slammed, and a man’s voice yelled a cheerful greeting at someone Roen couldn’t see.

Sera was watching him. He realised this only when he looked up to take a bite and found her beautiful eyes already on him, calm, considering.

“What?” He asked.

“Nothing.” She said, her cheeks turning slightly pink immediately.

“You’re staring…”

“You’re allowed to stare too, in fact, today, I am encouraging it.”

“I’m eating bread.”

“Can stare while eating bread. That’s allowed by a decree of mine.”

They both kept staring at each other, but only when they thought the other one wasn’t going to notice.