Work Text:
She’s only doing it to prove a point.
Nestor’s offer to let her work at the tavern he and Fevronia plan to open is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard, followed in close second by Fev’s enthusiastic agreement. She would be in a foreign country, out of her depth, responsible for feeding and appeasing the filthy, rotting masses of people she wanted to see dead in the first place. Killing her on the spot would be more merciful—and not just to her. Once her employers snap out of this fit of temporary insanity, they’ll wish they had never asked. That’s why she has to go along with it—so they can see how wrong they were. So they can finally be the ones to admit that they don’t want her. So she can at least, with her last scrap of dignity, go out vindicated.
But they’re halfway through the two-week carriage ride to northern Sargas, and she doesn’t feel any more vindicated yet.
“Here!” says Fev, offering a large knife handle-first. “Your first job will be cutting ingredients for me.”
Aurelia blinks at the polished blade. It’s long and sharp and generally… stabby. And it is being offered to her by a very smiling Fev. “Is this a joke?”
Fev frowns. “Why would I be joking? You have to do work to work here, silly.”
Aurelia, dumbfounded, takes the knife. Not for the first time, she wonders if her new “friends” are actually trying to get murdered. But knifing isn’t really her style, so she settles on glowering at Fev over the cutting board as she cuts the fresh fruit a little too aggressively.
“…And that’s it!” The tankard of ale in Nestor’s hand shakes, but he holds steady. “There really isn’t that much to it.”
Aurelia stares at the bar. Somehow, the idea of serving drinks feels even more demeaning than being Fev’s personal errand girl. Knife girl. Whatever.
“Honestly,” Nestor continues, with the nervous air of someone who’s only talking to fill the silence, “the hardest part is pretending to be nice to customers you don’t like. But you probably won’t have a problem with that, because you’re great at—I mean—Um—” He laughs uncomfortably. “I just think you’ll be good at it! No particular reason!”
She smiles at him, sickly sweet. “You want me at the front counter because I know how to be nice to people even when I’m thinking about killing them in my sleep.”
Nestor gulps. “Yep! That’s… That’s basically it. Did you get everything I said about serving?”
“I know how to pour a drink,” she snaps.
Three spills later, it is painfully evident that she does not.
“Rey, look!” Fev spins around from her station, hands cupped in front of her. The movement twirls her skirt elegantly; it rustles against the close-set cabinets. “This little friend came in with the grapes. Look at her go!”
The snail certainly is going, as evidenced by the slimy trail it’s leaving across Fev’s open palm. Rey gapes at it. She wants to take it apart, to find out where and how its slimy insides connect to its hard outer shell, to test how those connections might be undone. Would it hurt the snail? Kill it? Would the little snot-splatter of an animal even exist without its hard outer walls?
“It’s ugly,” she says instead.
Fev’s face drops, and for a split second, Aurelia wonders if she’s actually going to cry. But she only shakes her head and says, “Every snail is beautiful in its own way. Maybe you just need to take a closer look to see it.”
Aurelia squints at the snail. It looks exactly the same.
At the end of the first week, she resorts to drastic measures. Nestor is her target, because she’s still half-convinced Fev would go smiling to her own death if there were friends to be made there.
She walks up to him as he’s wiping down the counters, the doors already shut and the floor empty of what few customers they had during the day.
“Rey?” He turns to face her. “What—”
She lunges forward—not far, because he’s already let her walk right up to him like an idiot—and grabs him by the collar. Digs her fingers into the coarse fabric until she knows it’s tight against his neck, her knuckles pressing into his windpipe, activating every survival instinct that tells a human body it’s about to be a dead body. And she stays there.
“Um—” Nestor says, squirming. His breathing is strained, his voice wavering. He’s afraid. “We—We have opening shift tomorrow. Y-you should get some rest.”
She stares, dumbfounded, until her grip goes slack from sheer confusion.
Nestor gives her a hasty nod and scurries off.
“Rey, can you help me in the kitchen?”
Rey jolts up from the customer table she’s been using as a vantage point to glare solemnly out the window. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to go in the quiet hours before they open for business, after all. Especially not when the seasons are starting to change and the bitter wind chases anyone who dares to step outside.
The cold air has, unfortunately, brought more patrons to the Snail & Ale, which is probably why Fev is standing over a ridiculously large sheet of dough when Aurelia joins her in the kitchen. She rolls her eyes. “What do you want?”
Fev’s cheerful smile doesn’t drop. “Help me cut and roll the cinnamon snails! We have so many to make.”
Cutting is easy—Fev marks the lines, and Rey does the rest. They both know what happens if they try this the other way around, and of all the menial tasks required to keep the tavern afloat, Aurelia finds it one of the most tolerable.
Shaping the pastries is harder.
Fev demonstrates it a few times: how to pull a strip of dough from the sheet without deforming it, how to roll it up into a neat little spiral, how to shape the trailing end of the dough into a crude approximation of a snail head. It all looks embarrassingly easy. But then Fev pats her shoulder and returns to flitting around the kitchen, and Rey is suddenly standing before the most difficult thing in the world.
She picks up the first strip of pastry, and it sticks to her fingers, stretching out of shape as she struggles free. She dusts her fingers with flour and tries again. The second pastry cooperates, but her fingers leave pockmarks in it as she rolls it up. The third slumps to the side, collapsing under its own weight. The fourth she coils too tight; the fifth, too loose. In the end, she’s left staring at a full sheet of tragic, misshapen cinnamon snails.
Fev materializes behind her like a peppy pastry sprite. “Oh! Are you all done?”
Aurelia cannot dignify that with an answer. She shrugs away from the workstation, miserably presenting the product of all her hard work. “They’re ugly.”
Fev shakes her head and smiles, genuinely, because Fev always has something to smile about. “Every snail is beautiful in its own way.”
“So—” Rey says stupidly. “Do you want these in the oven, then?”
It’s insidious, the way they get busier.
Rey used to spend her days idling behind the counter, waiting for her inevitable firing and rolling her eyes at empty tables. Now, suddenly, it is November, and she is surely setting some kind of record for how long a terrible employee can go without getting fired, and her days are dissolving into blurs of constant motion.
It’s one of these days that catches her dashing across the floor, tray of ales in hand. She’s turning a sharp corner when she hits something—hard.
The impact throws the tray of drinks into her face, and she stands there, twitching, feeling warm ale trickle through her hair and soak into her clothes.
“Rey—”
Nestor is standing in front of her, rubbing a spot on his arm where the serving tray must have hit him. It’s his fault, then. She can—it’s been a while since she plotted a murder, hasn’t it?—she can kill him. Later. He’ll regret this. That will fix how she’s feeling right now.
“Rey, come on.” He puts a hand on her shoulder, urgent, trying to accomplish something she doesn’t understand.
She slaps his hand away. “I’m fine.”
Her feet carry her off the floor and down the back stairs with hardly a thought as to where she’s going. The cellar is cool and dark and some kind of blessing, cavernous around her as she tucks herself between two barrels.
She doesn’t care. Not about any of this. She doesn’t care if the customers think she’s stupid or if her coworkers think she’s useless. It’s their own fault for thinking that she would ever fit into this mold of friendship and domesticity, and she doesn’t care what that means for them. Or her. And she certainly isn’t going to cry about it.
Above her, at the top of the stairs, the door swings open.
The rattle of the knob throws the room into breathless silence, quickly followed by footsteps down the stairs. Nestor appears in her vision, standing over her in the lanternlight.
She glares up at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Um,” he says, “I mean—I noticed you come down here sometimes after a customer gets mad, or—you know. Sorry. Was I not supposed to—um—”
Rey huffs. “Go away.”
“Okay!” Nestor yelps. “Just, before I go—” He offers forth the item in his hand, something she hadn’t noticed until this moment. A towel. “I brought you this. And this,”—a muffin, which he leaves atop the barrel next to her—“just in case you wanted something to eat. So—uh—” He lasts another few moments before he finally cracks and scrambles away. “Feel better!”
Rey stares, blinking into the darkness. She notices, a little too late, that she’s crying.
She emerges an hour later, drier and calmer, wearing her best customer service smile. They don’t talk about it. Maybe they don’t have to.
Rey lingers outside the kitchen, feeling unfathomably stupid.
It had been a simple thing—an accident—to notice the problem in the first place. She had been cleaning dishes near the back of the kitchen while Fev rolled new dough in the front. She looked up from her station, as anyone would, when she heard the clatter, and she kept looking as Fev tried to pick pieces of bread dough out of her clothes and off one of her bracelets.
In the end, Fev had run upstairs to change, leaving the dough-clotted bracelet festering on the counter, and Rey approached it curiously. It was one of those friendship bracelets—the ones Fev used to give out to anyone she liked. She had worn one, once, toting it around like a ball and chain just so she could show everyone how friendly she was. She burned it when she left them behind.
It had been a simple thing to see the beads of the abandoned bracelet showing through clumps of dough and recognize the wooden butterfly that marked it as Fev’s favorite. It had been equally simple to realize that the quickly-drying bread dough was never going to come out of that cheap twine, that Fev was undoubtedly going to be devastated by the loss, and that one of the sellers at the local market often carried cheap wooden beads.
Most importantly, it had been a simple thing to make the bracelets, because there were no witnesses to prove otherwise. No one—she had made certain of this—no one would be able to claim how many times she had retied the knots in that twine. For all intents and purposes, the whole endeavor had been nothing more than an afterthought; something she would hardly even remember doing.
As it turns out, that does not make her feel any less ridiculous. Neither does the plan of quietly leaving the thing at Fev’s workstation, really, but she’s out of better ideas. She’s just barely reached the countertop when the door creaks open.
“Rey?”
She drops the bracelet like a hot iron. “What do you want?”
“Nothing! I’m here to bake.” Fev breezes over to her station—unbothered by Rey’s own presence there—and gasps. “Rey! Did you make this for me?”
“No! I—” She falters. The bracelet, in all of its brightly-colored glory, is practically burning a hole in her vision. There’s no point in arguing this with hard evidence literally on the table. “Yes. Alright? I saw you had to throw out your last one, so I just…figured I’d replace it.” She looks away, losing her resolve, threatening to burn up in her own embarrassment. “I guess… I didn’t want to see you so sad.”
“Oh,” says Fev, soft and sweet, like the oh of someone who just found a snail where she wasn’t expecting one. And then she moves forward, wraps her arms around Rey, tucking in for a hug so warm it makes the Sargas winter feel suffocating. “Thank you.”
Rey doesn’t know what to say to that. Fev keeps hugging her anyway.
She’s bussing tables on a late winter morning when she hears the slam on the wooden bar top.
“You call this ale?” an unfamiliar voice follows, shouting. “This is half water! I can taste it!”
“Um—Sir—” Nestor looks ready to dive under the bar for cover. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t—”
“I certainly don’t!” Other patrons in the bar start to stare as the belligerent man leans further across the counter. “You may be able to swindle your other customers with this slop, but I’m not having it. I want my money back.”
“Sir, if you’re going to yell, I’m—I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
The customer spits on the bar. “I’m not going anywhere until I get my money back.”
Maybe it’s the smug way the man crosses his arms over his own vile mess, or maybe it’s the way Nestor’s eyes widen in fear. Maybe—definitely—it’s the impotent knowledge that Nestor is skilled enough with a sword, and Fev enough with magic, to kill this pathetic excuse for a man three times over, and that neither of them ever will. Whatever it is, Rey sees red.
She stalks across the floor, crossing out murder methods in her mind. The problem, really, is that killing a customer is simply impractical. Sargas’ foremost idiot is lucky for that.
“Excuse me, sir,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder in hopes of bothering him more. “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. You’re not welcome here.”
“Excuse me?” He scoffs. “I am a paying customer!”
“Oh, of course.” She smiles. “You’re well within your rights to order as many drinks as you please. But if you drink them…” She leans in closer. “You’ll go home happy, sure. Maybe a little more tired than usual. And then you’ll wake up in the middle of the night feeling like someone’s hands are wrapped around your throat. Every muscle in your body is going to lock up, one by one. If you’re lucky, you’ll even get out a cry for help before your lungs finally give out. But, you know… a human body can’t survive that long without air to breathe.”
The man pales. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, but who’s to say I haven’t already?” She blinks at him sweetly. “Have you kept an eye on that drink this whole time?”
She can see the moment he breaks. He glances at the drink in his hand—back at her—back at the drink—then shoves it at her and dashes out the door.
Rey retrieves her tray with a huff and sweeps around the corner to toss it lazily into the dish bin. Nestor, now beside her, takes a long, shaky sigh and leans his head on her shoulder.
“Thanks,” he says, voice barely audible over the now-resuming din of the tavern. “I didn’t know what to do with him.”
She frowns. “How about not letting him push you around like that?”
“Yeah,”—he gives a quavering laugh—“I know. But it’s easier when you’re around.”
Lyall shivers, tucking further into the fur lining of their new winter coat. Even in spring, the north of Sargas is bitterly cold. It’s nothing less than a miracle that Nestor and Fev can put up with it so casually.
“You didn’t have to come get me, you know.” Their voice puffs white clouds in the cold air. “I’m sure any of the locals could have given me directions to the Snail & Ale.”
“No way!” Fev says, brimming with determination. “You’re our friend.”
Nestor laughs. “She’s right. If we left you out here, you might have frozen to death before you made it to us.”
“Hey!” Lyall complains, though it’s muffled by the fur of their coat. “Anyway, how has business been? You get a lot of customers?”
“Oh, yes! More than we expected!”
“By a lot. The rush gets kind of scary.”
Lyall smiles. There’s something here that they can’t put to words, something beautiful about seeing people whose lives were consumed by the war move on and build something new. As they pad down snow-covered streets, it’s easy to imagine how many other people have walked this path, seeking warm pastries on a cold day, finding solace and shelter.
They turn a corner, and the bright Snail & Ale sign comes into view, its door swinging merrily as people walk in and out. Lyall squints.
“Wait, you’re open for business right now? Who’s manning the counter?”
Fev smiles—“Come see!”—and pushes open the door.
The Snail & Ale is cluttered and warm, its low ceilings illuminated by flickering lanternlight. Low-set tables and chairs crowd the floor, half of them filled with groups of customers leaning in to talk over food and drinks. It’s small and messy and cozy, and situated perfectly in the middle of all of it is Rey. She stands behind the counter, intent on her work, her face showing a soft kind of focus. When she reaches out to hand a plate of steaming pastries to a customer, Lyall glimpses a colorful bracelet on her wrist.
She looks up after a moment and catches Lyall approaching, but she doesn’t move from the counter.
“Welcome to the Snail & Ale,” she says. Not sickly-sweet, not lashing out. Just… plain. Authentic. “What do you want?”
Lyall shrugs. “What do you recommend?”