Thou shalt feed thine infant no nightshades, and other tales

Egg toast was made from slices of stale bread, which made a certain amount of sense, since toast was right there in the name. While I stirred the egg bowl, happy to have a task of my own, Curry sliced up the remainder of a bread heel wrapped in a tea towel on the table. After a moment he looked at the eggs, made an approving sound, and poured some milk into the bowl, along with a little honey and some of the brandy. Then he pulled a flat metal griddle from a hook on the wall and placed it on the stove, putting a little butter on it to melt. I watched in contented silence while he sopped the bread slices in the egg and milk, then placed them on the heated griddle to cook.

“What were you going to say to me, before?” he asked after a little bit, using a spatula to flip the pieces of bread over. “Just before you deftly managed not to spill your brandy.”

“Oh,” I recalled. “Well. I was a little drunker then so I was going to offer, if there was anything you wanted to ask me about… that, I wouldn’t mind telling you.”

“But then you sobered up a bit and that kind of openness started to sound less appealing?” He didn’t sound offended by that, which was nice.

“No. I trust you,” I said. “I just don’t always like to think about that stuff. But… I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Or your nan. Just, not other people. Most people act funny about it if they know. I haven’t told anybody apart from people at the temple for a really long time.”

He shifted his gaze from the stove to me, studying me for a moment. “I won’t mind knowing anything you feel like telling,” he said, turning back to the stove and checking on the sizzling slices of toast. “I’m plenty interested. I just didn’t want to be a nosy prick about it. And I will never tell anybody anything you don’t want known around. I promise.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And, um, should you ever entrust to me a dark secret of your own, same goes for you.”

Curry smiled at me as he took the pieces of toast off the griddle and divided them between two plates before drizzling all of it with honey and topping that with some walnuts from a little crock next to the stove. “Let’s go back to the settee,” he said, handing me a fork.

I followed him to the sitting room.

“I just thought of something,” he said when were settled back into our chosen spots with our plates.

“What?” I cut off a piece of the toast, but stopped to pay better attention to what he was saying.

“Having a mysterious secret to guard between us—that has to mean we’ll make Inspector someday. Right?” He grinned. “Right?”

I laughed again and took a bite of my toast. “Oh, shit—” I said in surprise. “Curry, gods, this is really good!” I cut off another piece and ate this one more slowly.

He shrugged and finished chewing his own bite before offering his generous reply: “You helped.”

“Right. I helped fill the bowl with broken egg shells you had to pick out.”

“Shut up,” he said cheerfully. “And if Nan makes egg toast sometime, you can pretend you knew all along how it works.”

“If we don’t stop adding to the stack of terrible secrets you have to keep for me, I’m going to be in your debt.” But I couldn’t help returning his infectious grin.

“Your nan was surprised earlier,” I said after I finished about half of my egg toast, “that my Csoglaran is so good. That story isn’t sad. I’ll tell you a little about it, if you want to hear.”

“Mm,” he agreed with his mouth full, nodding vigorously.

“A Csoglaran lady two houses down from us passed, I think right around the time I was learning to say my first words. She hadn’t died in any upsetting way, so she wasn’t scary-looking unlike some shades, and just how a lot of dead people like to at first, she went and had a look around everybody’s house in the neighborhood. The only person who noticed or cared was me, so after she figured out I could see her, she came around a lot and played peek-a-boo games with me in my cot.”

I cut off another piece of egg toast, but I was starting to get a bit too full now, so instead of eating it I pushed it idly around my plate to give myself something to look at while I talked. “My parents had a lot of kids. I don’t remember it so well, but I think there were maybe six before me, and three after—Mivia is Arvinter’s country—some areas more than others, I guess,” I explained, when Curry’s brows lifted in surprise. “Big families are common. At the time I was only sharing my cot with one little sister, but that’s still plenty of kids so nobody was paying very close attention yet to what I did.” I set the plate down. “So that’s how it worked out that the only adult to spend real, individual time and attention on me when I was very little was a dead, retired Cassian nun. She only spoke Csoglaran to me.”

Curry finished his egg toast and set his fork down, then eyed my unfinished portion, as if unsure whether I’d be offended if he asked. “Go ahead,” I said, and he pulled my plate over to him, looking at me with interest while he stabbed at the piece of toast I’d been shoving around the plate.

“Did you learn Tetran at the same time?” he asked before taking a bite.

“Probably? I don’t remember that, but I must have done,” I said. “From the big kids, maybe. My oldest brother was tall, probably grew up big like you. The only name I remember is somebody was called Vinnie. Probably one of the older girls. I bet her name was something like Lavinia and that was a pet name. It’s strange to me that I had all those brothers and sisters and I can’t remember a single face, for them or my parents,” I mused. “But I remember Sister Basia’s face exactly. She was really nice to me.”

Curry studied me. “How… did you wind up not being with them anymore?”

“Well…” I said. “I guess first they thought it was pretty bizarre when their small kid started talking in full sentences of a strange language they didn’t know, instead of the normal ‘mama’ type stuff the others did. I remember a little bit, them taking me to see a priest. It had to be Arvinter, I remember the white and gold vestments. That guy was pretty helpful, let me tell you. So helpful. He was full of advice on ways to get their little girl to stop speaking demon tongues.” I rolled my eyes.

“Personally I don’t even want to look at a baby who can’t speak demon tongues,” Curry said with ample disdain, then shoved another bite of my egg toast into his mouth. “What’s even the point?” he asked me with his mouth full.

“I’m still a long way from sober,” I said after a minute. “The part after the priest sometimes gets me pretty gloomy to think about—so I usually don’t. But I’m going to tell you now, since I don’t mind you knowing, and I might not feel like it later. If you still want to hear.”

Curry nodded, then used the knife to cut off another piece. “If it makes you feel gloomy, I will cheer you up again,” he told me solemnly. He topped the bit of toast with a walnut and a dab of honey before sliding it over to me, which was a funny, kind little gesture that made me smile. I took it, crunching the walnut between my teeth while he took another bite himself.

“I don’t remember that much. I think they started feeding me differently, after that, probably because of some dumb Arvinterite bullshit a la thou shalt feed thine infant no nightshades if thou wish not to raise demon’s spawn,” I said. “I remember being hungry all the time after that, probably some starve the demons out shit. There was a lady who cried a lot—she must have been my mother. At some point something must have happened to make them decide I couldn’t be fixed. I don’t even know, really, if they knew about the dead people thing. I was just a creepy little kid who talked in unrecognizable languages to people who weren’t there.”

I paused while Curry straightened up and set to the other slice of egg toast on my plate.

“One day Sister Basia came and explained to me that my father was going to take me for a journey, and that I would stay with some new people after that, and I shouldn’t be afraid, because I was a good girl. I didn’t really understand. I thought it would be nice to go with him, because I’d never gotten to have Father all to myself before. It was a couple days walk, maybe, and he carried me on his shoulders a lot of it. I liked that part.”

I took another bite of Curry’s egg toast from my plate. He pushed over a broken piece of walnut for me. I took it.

“Maybe three villages away there was an Arvinterite church, and that was where my father took me. He told me I had to go in on my own, because I was a big girl now, and he would come in right after and see that I’d explained things properly. I didn’t understand why, but I did like he said.” I shrugged. “I was a little afraid of the nun who came up to see what I was doing there. She wasn’t mean, but she wasn’t friendly like Sister Basia, either. I explained something nonsensical and wrong, like my father brought me for Arvinter, because I was a big girl now, and then I got confused and wanted him to explain it better, except of course, he had left.”

“Fucking hells,” Curry muttered.

“It's not so uncommon,” I said. “That’s just how central Mivia is. If I had to guess, he didn’t want to talk to anyone who might want names or to know literally anything at all about the kid he was leaving on their doorstep, didn’t want the shame of having it known around that one of their children had to be given up. They probably told everybody their little one died and got a lot of sympathy for it.”

Curry made a disgusted face, but didn’t cut in.

“I don’t know what would have happened if the Arvinterites had gotten stuck with me. They sent people out to find my father, but they didn’t, so they were going to take me to some home for lost children in a town. At first I didn’t want to go somewhere else, because one of the nuns there was nice and babied me and gave me little sweets, except after a few days they figured out something was pretty wrong with me and then instead of sweets and kind words there was talk about whether the other children at the home would be safe with me there.” I waved my hand a little. “I’m surmising some of this, because I didn’t understand all of it at the time. Anyway, to everyone’s surprise a man from the Order of Rava came to get me. They were pretty keen to get me off their hands, so once somebody turned up and said the Rook willed that I should be someone else’s problem, they all but threw me at this guy.”

Curry was a really, really good listener. I would make absolutely certain, I resolved, to also be a good listener, if he ever needed that.

“What?” he asked, this time cutting the entire remainder of the egg toast into bites and shoving some over to the side nearest me.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” I picked up one of the bites with my fingers and popped it into my mouth. “I just think you were right that we’ll be good at this.”

“Of course I’m right. The commander also left his grading ledger out, just on his desk where anybody could see. Idiot. I took a quick peek so I could see if you’re as smart on paper as you seemed in person. You are.”

“Curry!” I shook my head, unable to muster any genuine irritation for him.

“I’m just saying. I’m very grateful your parents weren’t equal to the task of raising their clever devil-baby. If they had tried to tough it out, you might be a sad, self-hating Arvinterite, instead of here now. Plus, if you hadn’t been in our class the commander was absolutely going to pair me with Markus Lydell.”

“Ew,” I said, and took another bite from the plate. “Ew,” I said again. “But why? You two literally don’t have a single thing in common.”

“Sure we do,” he said with his mouth full again.

“Well, nothing apart from—he’s the only other orcish person in our class?”

“Yep.” Curry put a walnut on top of another piece and slid it over to me. “The world is very annoying sometimes,” he said around the bite he’d just taken. “I went all the way through school with every schoolmaster’s first instinct being to lump me with other orcish kids, instead of considering how that demographic might be a cross section with other subsets like: smart kids. So once something actually important was on the line, I wasn’t about to leave anything to chance, or risk getting stuck with some halfwitted dipshit like Lydell.” He smiled at me. “But I have to admit, it made me feel really good that your careers form was already almost the same as mine. I tweaked a couple of my answers just to make sure it would be impossible for anybody not to match us. But I knew a career with you would actually go somewhere. We would accomplish real stuff.”

“Did you see Lydell’s careers form while you were in there?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Yeah.”

“Was it exactly what you expected?”

“If he were smart enough to put a full sentence together in writing, it would have said, ‘I joined the watch because I want an excuse to act like a mean thug and beat on whatever social class is currently least popular if they go into nice parts of town.’”

“Gross.”

“Yeah. That’s why the watch desperately needs people like us, who aren’t meanspirited dumbshits who only even got through the academy because their mum’s a magistrate for life. How’s the world ever going to get any better otherwise?” Curry shoved me over another piece of egg toast, and I ate it while I considered everything he’d said, and the pleasant optimism of his outlook.

“Was that priest of Rava the one who brought you here?” he asked me after a little while.

“Yeah. That man’s probably the only reason I’m a halfway functional person and not some feral sideshow freak. He rode five weeks from Semprisport to get me. He said, because Rava sent him. Something delayed him and he was irritated that he got there late, because he’d meant to get me from my family instead so the order would know some basic things about me. The Arvinterites spent weeks calling me just “girl” and—this is kind of embarrassing—by the time he got there I didn’t know my name anymore to tell him. He was very annoyed with them for not trying harder to find out more about me.”

Curry took that in. “Really? So he’s the one who named you Fauzia?”

I felt my cheeks flush hot at the question. “Sort of,” I hedged.

“What’s that mean?’” When I made a face, Curry said, “Oh, come on! Please?”

I eyed him. “If I tell you, you can’t make fun of me or ever mention it again. Promise.”

“I promise,” he said immediately.

I wrinkled my nose in embarrassment, then admitted, “The priest of Rava had a donkey called Fauzia. I thought that was the most beautiful name I’d ever heard, so he told me to try it on for size and if I still felt that way in a few weeks when we got to Semprisport then I could take it for my legal name when I became a Tetran. But till then I had to be Little Fauzia and let the donkey be plain Fauzia, because he said that as soon as he had two Fauzias to mind, the big one was too ornery not to pretend she didn’t know which he meant.”

“You’re named after a donkey,” Curry said with indecently fervent delight. “You named yourself after a donkey. I retract my promise,” he said. “It was very rude of you to ask me to blindly agree to that. I won’t make fun or tell anybody but I make no promises that this amazing fact will not be celebrated, frequently.”

There was a short silence while we stared at each other, and then we both began to giggle again at the same time.

Oh, I really liked my new partner, I thought gratefully, grinning at him like a fool from where I rested my head on the settee, and not even caring how stupid I probably looked.

“Thanks for listening to my shitty sadsack story about foundling children,” I said after we settled ourselves down. “It was nice to tell somebody and them not make a big thing about it, poor little orphan, blah, ugh.” I leaned my head on the back of the settee and looked over at him, pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging my arms around them. I was starting to get sleepy, but I didn’t want to quit talking, when I had never had such a good night.

“You mean that story about the unapologetic hero who took what she wanted—” He paused significantly. “—from a donkey?”

“Shut up,” I said, stretching my leg out and realizing too late that I couldn’t reach him to kick him.

Curry laughed, moved obligingly closer for a moment so I could administer the token kick, and then settled back into his spot.

“Seriously, though,” I said. “This was such a good night, right?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, then after a moment said, “Since we’re on that break from duty for a while… would you want to do this again… tomorrow?” he asked, almost a little hesitantly, I thought.

“Yeah,” I said, a little blearily through my fatigue. “In fact, I would rather do this again than literally anything else in the world. And you taught me how to break an egg,” I added. “So now… I guess I can buy brandy again while you cook because… I still can’t do anything else but stir?” We both laughed again.

“You’re falling asleep. I’m going to get you a blanket,” he said, and I sat there sleepily watching him while he went to a chest on the other side of the room and got out a worn quilt pieced from all kinds of different materials, which he brought to me.

“This was my mum’s crazy quilt,” he said, unfolding it and draping it over me.

“‘Cause I’m crazy?” I asked him drowsily, then pulled it around myself and immediately fell in love with how soft it was.

He laughed quietly. “Sure. ‘Cause of that.”

“Curry?” I asked, and then became distracted, because ohh—near the edge of the quilt someone had embroidered a tiny, simplified chaunceyhorse character, from the stories. I discovered with great satisfaction that the chaunceyhorse’s body was exactly the same size and shape as the pad of my right thumb. “The chaunceyhorse is my favorite,” I informed him happily.

“Yeah? My mum too.”

I nodded. “Your turn tomorrow. You should tell me about her. If you want,” I said. “Anything you want.”

I heard rather than saw the smile in his voice. “I will. Night, Fuzzy.”

My initial distaste for the name was beginning to give way to a growing sense of confident warmth, that someone of such quality had chosen me—cared enough to hang a stupid name on me. I decided not to tell him this, right away. It wouldn’t be prudent, to encourage him to call me something so undignified.

I was a little bit aware of Curry, tucking the blanket under my feet to keep them warm, before he doused the lights and left me to my brandy-soaked slumber.