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It all starts with Olruggio making chicken wings.
It’s supposed to be a simple, quiet evening in. Qifrey has gone to borrow butter, the carapace yams are baked, and the girls are drawing at the kitchen table. Olruggio has a bowl of wings in a honeytree glaze, a dish of sliced horncaps, and four children who have been suspiciously agreeable for nearly ten minutes. He should probably be concerned about that last part, but he hasn’t slept properly in six days, and optimism is considerably less work.
Six days ago, those children were considerably older, until a forbidden spell hidden among a merchant’s wares reduced all four apprentices to approximately three, leaving their memories patchy and their teachers responsible for finding a counterspell while explaining why charcoal doesn’t belong in anyone’s mouth. Somehow, the girls still recognized the atelier and its occupants, which apparently meant knowing precisely whom to wake whenever a blanket falls off a bed. Olruggio.
Fortunately, Coco’s mother has been a blessing during the day. Restored months before this latest disaster, she knows her daughter is learning to be a witch now, though she still believes that means possessing a gift discovered unusually late. The ink, circles, and mere fact that anyone could do it remain carefully guarded secrets, however. Olruggio has become scarily good at putting his work away before she arrives and considerably worse at remembering anything after she leaves.
Tonight, for example, he forgets that a child who remembers where he keeps the honeytree syrup might not remember where meat comes from.
“What’s that?” Coco asks, appearing at his elbow and dragging the kitchen stool behind her. Olruggio catches its edge with his foot before it can collide with his ankle, then steadies it while she climbs.
“Dinner. Mind your fingers.” He moves the bowl beyond her reach and picks up another wing. “You can look without puttin’ your hands in.”
Coco plants both palms on the counter, apparently willing to accept these terms. Tetia abandons her drawing to join them, while Agott remains bent over hers, painstakingly correcting a line. “What kind of dinner?” Coco asks.
“Chicken wings. Yams. Mushrooms, if there’s any left by the time you lot have finished pickin’.” He looks pointedly at Tetia, who has acquired a slice of horncap on her way past the table. She offers it to him with an obliging smile.
Coco isn’t watching either of them anymore. Her attention has settled on the wing between his fingers, her brows drawing together. “Wings?” she repeats. “Like a bird?”
“Chicken, specifically.” Olruggio turns it briefly to show her before placing it in the roasting dish. “See? There’s the joint.”
Her fingers curl against the counter. “Like… a bock-bock chicken?”
He glances at her. “Well, aye. What other sort’ve we got?”
Coco looks at the bowl, then at the dish. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Olruggio is wiping his hands when the first tear lands beside her thumb.
“But they need those,” she whispers.
Olruggio freezes with the cloth between his fingers. Beside the stool, Tetia lowers her mushroom.
“Coco?” He leans down a little, trying to see her face. “What’s the matter, lass?”
“Their wings.” She points at the dish, her lower lip beginning to tremble. “How do they get up on things?”
Oh.
Olruggio puts the cloth down. There are questions he’s prepared to answer tonight. Why the roasting dish gets hot, for instance, or why Richeh can’t put a pebble in the bread dough simply because she likes it. He hadn’t exactly prepared for questions about chickens attempting to navigate their lives without essential parts.
“Well… they’re not out there walkin’ round without wings,” he assures her. “Don’t fret about that.”
Coco looks up, and for one promising instant, her face clears. “They grow new ones?”
Olruggio glances toward the door. Qifrey cannot possibly be much longer. Unfortunately, Coco is waiting, and Olruggio has never yet improved a difficult conversation by leaving a child to fill in the gaps.
“No, sweetheart,” he says plainly. “They’re already dead.”
Coco goes very still, then draws in a breath that catches. “Dead?”
Olruggio reaches for her. “Here, come down a minute. Let’s have ya.”
She lets him lift her, but twists against his chest to keep the dish in sight. Her eyes are filling rapidly now. “What happened?”
“The butcher—” He stops, considers, and somehow selects the worst possible continuation. “They’re raised for food. Someone called a butcher kills them, and then—”
“Kills them?!” Tetia’s voice rises sharply. Richeh looks up from her paper scraps.
“It’s done quickly,” Olruggio scrambles to add. “They don’t just pull the wings off a live chicken. They kill it first, then pluck its feathers and take the insides out, and—”
Coco promptly wails and Olruggio jerks, one hand spreading across her back. The sound is honestly extraordinary. He’s heard collapsing masonry make less alarming noises, and now Tetia’s face is crumpling too.
“But they were nice!” Coco gasps, both fists closing in his shirt. “They were nice to me!”
Olruggio closes his eyes and exhales sharply, the pieces clicking together too late. Right. The neighbor’s chickens. Yesterday, Coco’s mother took the girls to feed the neighbor’s chickens so he and Qifrey could have a moment’s peace to themselves. Olruggio listened to the entire account once they returned. He knows about the brown hen, the white hen, and the one Tetia insists wears trousers. He even helped get straw out of Richeh’s sleeve.
“Not those chickens,” he says quickly. “Those chickens are fine. These came from somewhere else.”
Agott lifts her head from her drawing. “They still killed them.”
Olruggio looks at her. She looks back, dry-eyed and faintly puzzled that this apparently requires clarification, before returning to her charcoal.
Tetia starts crying properly.
“Right. Come here, you an’ all.” He crouches and draws her against his free side. “Nobody’s makin’ you eat them. We’ve plenty else.”
Coco buries her face in his shoulder. Tetia presses both hands into his sleeve, asking whether the chickens were frightened, and Olruggio finds himself lowering all the way to the floor because his knees have begun to object. Richeh leaves her chair and comes to stand beside him, looking from his face to the bowl.
“I don’t want chicken,” she says, with careful finality.
“Then you shan’t have chicken.” He reaches for her hand, grateful for a problem with a straightforward answer. “Tha’s settled. Bread and yams. How’s that?”
Richeh lets him take her hand. Coco’s sobbing begins to ease, though she remains attached to his collar, and Tetia accepts the cloth he offers for her face. He can fix this. He can feed them something else, put the wings aside, and never again discuss butchery with anyone shorter than his workbench. For a few precious seconds, sitting on the kitchen floor with two children in his lap and another holding his hand, Olruggio allows himself to believe that the worst is over.
Then… he thinks of the meat pies.
They’ll ask for those as soon as they calm down. Tetia loves them. Coco ate the filling out of hers two nights ago, and if he allows them to think those are different, then sooner or later they’ll find out. Worse, they’ll find out halfway through a mouthful, after recounting the chicken-wing conversation to Qifrey and prompting some well-meaning clarification. They’ll become upset all over again. They’ll ask why Olruggio didn’t tell them, and he’ll have to explain that he knowingly let them eat a cow because he couldn’t bear another conversation about dinner.
Better to get it over with, then. Olruggio braces himself, shifting his hand against Coco’s back. His mouth feels dry. His palms are sweaty. Fuck. Just say it!
“Ya remember meat pies?” he blurts out, much less eloquently than he’d meant.
Tetia blinks once. “Meat pies aren’t chickens!” she shouts, horrified that he might try to take those from her too. Which, by all technicalities, is exactly what he’s about to do. Just not in the way she expects.
“You’re right. They’re not.” Olruggio hesitates, watching her clutch the damp cloth beneath her chin. “...They’re cows.”
Tetia freezes. Her hands remain raised, caught halfway back to her cheeks, and her mouth hangs open around the beginning of a question. Olruggio hears his own explanation in the silence and realizes, belatedly, that he’s made it sound as though Qifrey folds an entire cow into each pastry.
“The fillin’, I mean,” he adds quickly. “Tha’s beef. Comes from cows.”
Coco pulls away from his shoulder. Her cheeks are wet, her fringe stuck to her forehead, and the look she gives him makes his stomach drop. “Moo cows?”
“Well… yes.” He rubs her back, already wishing he could retrieve the entire subject. “But you needn’t have those either. There’s nowt says you’ve got to—”
Tetia starts sobbing again, harder this time. Coco follows, and Richeh’s fingers slip out of his hand. When he looks toward her, she’s pressing her lips together, her eyes bright, and Oh, good. He’s made it worse. He knew he was making it worse while he was doing it, which ought to count for something but apparently doesn’t.
Agott puts down her charcoal. “Can I have some bread?”
Olruggio nods toward the plate on the table, unable to trust himself with another explanation. She takes a piece and sits down again while Tetia clutches his sleeve, pulling until he turns back toward her.
“Can… can I…” Tetia swallows, struggling to get the words past her tears. “C-can I have some b-b-bacon?”
Of course she wants bacon. She always wants bacon. Given the choice, she would have it for breakfast, supper, and whatever meal she believes ought to happen between the two. There’s still some in the pantry. He doesn’t have to tell her about bacon if it’ll make her feel better. Whatever reasoning led him to disclose the cows has thoroughly abandoned him. He could fry a little, put it beside the yams, let her—
“Bacon is pigs.”
Olruggio closes his eyes. By the Compact, Agott. She just had to say it, didn’t she? All right. Fine. He can deal with this. It can’t get much worse than this, can it?
When he reopens his eyes, Tetia is staring at Agott. The cloth lies forgotten in her lap, and her fingers have gone slack against his sleeve. “No,” she says.
Agott swallows her bread. “It is.”
Tetia turns toward Olruggio, and he would rather face the Knights Moralis. Every last one of them. In a room without windows. On his own.
“Is it really?” she asks in a wobbly voice, catching the front of his apron in both hands.
“Ah, love.” His hand hovers uselessly over her hair before settling against it. “I’m sorry. It is.”
Coco’s lip begins trembling again. Richeh backs into the table, wiping at her eyes with one small fist, and Olruggio feels sweat gather beneath his collar.
“Like oink-oink pigs?” Coco asks, with desperate hope.
Olruggio sighs. “Yes. There’s only the one sort. Unless ya mean the Knights Moralis, but tha’s an insult, not an actual— You know what? Don’t call them that. You shouldn’t call them that.” He shifts Coco higher before she can slide off him, catches Tetia’s elbow, and keeps talking because nobody has stopped looking at him. “Tha’s different. Means someone’s a greedy, officious— Sometimes people say things when they’re angry over someone throwin’ their weight about, but that doesn’t mean— Look, actual pigs have done nowt wrong. Neither have cows, nor chickens. Tha’s not why we—”
“I’ll eat Tetia’s bacon,” Agott offers, with what can only be described as generosity.
Tetia, honest to the heavens, shrieks at that.
Olruggio’s arms tighten around her before he can think. Coco starts crying into his neck again, Richeh’s breath catches in a little hiccup, and Agott looks genuinely taken aback by the response.
“What?” she asks. “She doesn’t want it.”
“Agott.” His voice comes out strangled. “Do us a favour, lass. Just eat your bread.”
Tetia is trying to say something, but the words dissolve against his apron. He bends closer, strokes her hair, asks her to take a breath, and only succeeds in making Coco cling harder. Richeh reaches for his sleeve again, and he gives her his hand.
Qifrey would know what to do.
The thought arrives with such miserable certainty that Olruggio looks toward the doorway. Qifrey would find the right words, and there would be no unsolicited explanations about butchery or why the animals hadn’t deserved it. Olruggio needs him here. He needs that calm voice, someone to take even one distraught, tiny human while he remembers how to think.
Instead, he gets the smell of burning.
Something spits behind him. His gaze snaps toward the counter, where smoke curls over the chicken dish. The warming plate. He left the wings there to clear space beside the stool, and now the glaze is catching against the hot ceramic.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no.”
He loosens Tetia’s grip on his apron and tries to stand; neither of the girls clinging to him are happy about it. Tetia catches his wrist, Coco makes a desperate noise into his neck, and Richeh asks where he’s going in a voice that threatens to undo him completely.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.” He gets one foot beneath himself, keeping Coco against his chest. “Let me stand, love. There we are.”
Tetia rises with him, still holding his apron. On the counter, the glaze hisses, and a small flame catches along the rim of the dish.
For fuck’s sake, he specializes in fire. He’s built heating spells delicate enough to warm a pair of gloves without singeing the lining. There are witches using his work in their homes at this very moment, presumably with the expectation that he knows what he’s doing, and here he is, standing in his kitchen with a child pulling his hair while dinner catches alight.
“All right! Everyone calm down!” he shouts. Olruggio gets Coco onto his hip and reaches for the plate, but Tetia is between him and the counter. He guides her behind his leg, stretches over the dish, and snatches his fingers back from the heat.
The flame climbs. Coco sees it and screams directly into his ear.
“I know.” He fumbles for a cloth, pulling a spoon off the counter with it. “It’s all right. Just give me a—”
It isn’t all right. The room is filling with smoke. Richeh is crying openly now, Tetia is asking whether he’s burning the pigs too, and Coco won’t let go. His eyes sting. His throat tightens. Tears spill down his cheeks, and he cannot honestly blame all of them on the smoke.
Finally, blessedly, the front door opens.
Qifrey steps inside carrying the butter. His gaze moves from the dark layer beneath the ceiling to the children and Olruggio standing in the middle of it all with tears running down his face.
“Ollie?”
Olruggio gestures helplessly at the room. “Take them. Please. I am begging you.”
Qifrey puts the butter down and moves immediately, lifting Tetia while Olruggio sets Coco on her feet. Taking her hand, Qifrey coaxes Richeh toward the door. Agott follows with her bread.
“I still want bacon,” she tells him as she passes.
Olruggio looks at the ceiling and takes a very careful breath.
Later that night, when the atelier is quiet and the girls are asleep, Olruggio sits beside Qifrey on the sofa with his head against the cushion and his eyes closed.
Qifrey laughs so hard he has to put down his tea. “You called the Knights Moralis pigs?”
Olruggio opens one eye. “Not intentionally.”
“How did that even come up?” Qifrey leans forward, shoulders shaking, one hand pressed to his forehead.
“Agott told Tetia about bacon. Coco asked if I meant oink-oink pigs, and I said there wasn’t another sort.” He rubs his face. “Then I thought of another sort.”
Qifrey makes a strangled sound. “Ollie.”
“I panicked! It wasn’t my best moment.” Olruggio drops his hand into his lap. “I’ve probably put three of them off meat for life.”
“Ollie.” Qifrey turns toward him, folding one leg beneath himself. “Coco asked for chicken fritters when I tucked her in.”
Olruggio stares at him for a long moment. “You’re havin’ me on.”
“I’m not.” Qifrey reaches over to smooth a damp strand of hair away from Olruggio’s forehead. “I reminded them where both came from. Coco said she still likes fritters, and Tetia wanted to know whether liking pigs meant she couldn’t like bacon.”
Olruggio’s expression falters. “What did ya tell her?”
“That it was entirely up to her.” Qifrey’s fingers settle against the back of his neck.
Of course Qifrey manages it in one simple sentence.
Olruggio lets his head drop back against the cushion and covers his face with one hand. “Did a grand job today, didn’t I?”
Qifrey leans in and presses a kiss to his damp hair. “You did your best.” His thumb moves gently beneath his hairline. “Though, perhaps a little more thorough than the situation called for.”
Olruggio lets out a long, muffled groan behind his hand. Qifrey laughs again, quietly this time, and slips an arm around his shoulders to draw him closer. Too tired to object, Olruggio lets himself settle against him, his cheek finding the familiar warmth beneath Qifrey’s jaw.
“Next time,” he mutters into his collar, “you can stay here. I’ll fetch the butter.”
Qifrey kisses his hair once more. “All right.”
Olruggio closes his eyes. For several comfortable seconds, neither of them moves. Then Qifrey’s chest gives one small, unmistakable shake beneath his cheek.
“But the Knights Moralis, Ollie? Really?”
“Oh, give over.” Olruggio catches a handful of his shirt but makes no attempt to move away, and Qifrey holds him a little closer while he laughs.