Chapter 707: Coffin Beds and Grave Cake

Loccy pushed open the guesthouse door with her hip, a basket of ember fruit balanced against her chest. The beds inside stood in two neat rows, long boxes with lids propped wide open on brass hooks.

"The beds are shaped like boxes," she announced, delighted, "they even come with lids."

Juna shoved past her with a bag over one shoulder, "They are coffins, you rabbit."

"Coffins are a kind of box," Loccy said, setting the basket down with care.

'A box is still a bed if you sleep in it.'

The guesthouse sat deep in the Thorn District, its windows all looking out across the Bright Dark below. Vines of black roses climbed the ceiling beams, dropping petals onto the lids whenever someone laughed too loudly.

"Two to a coffin," Cessy said from the doorway, counting heads with one red nail, "the house only sent eight."

"I'm not sharing with anybody."

Vella dropped her bag into the coffin nearest the window, "Then you'll sleep on the floor, darling, this one is mine."

Cessy claimed the box by the door for herself alone, flicking her tail at anyone who argued. Eirwen read the lid's carved inscription aloud before lying down, then declared it an acceptable binding contract.

Didi sat on her coffin lid with both arms folded, saying nothing about the tea, which told Loccy plenty.

Juna climbed into the same coffin out of pure spite, the two of them wedged shoulder to shoulder at once. Within three breaths they were already fighting over elbows, Juna's tail slapping the lid while Vella calmly pinched her ear.

"Your elbow is in my ribs."

"Your ribs are in my elbow, there is a difference," she said sweetly, tapping the lid.

"Move it or lose it," came the snarl, one fang bared at the ceiling.

Across the room Ferra held Hajin by the wrist, winding a knotted cord slowly around his own bare forearm twice. Miri sat on the next lid with a small book open, writing down every number Ferra muttered at the cord.

"What's the surprise, Ferra?" he asked, grinning down at the cord.

"If I told you, it would be a plan," Ferra grunted, not looking up, "now hold still, I've nearly got the—"

"Is it a sleeve?" he asked, wiggling his fingers.

"It is not a sleeve, stop guessing."

"Eleven and a half," Ferra said over her shoulder, ignoring him, "he fidgets, write that down too."

"Fidgets, noted," Miri murmured, smiling into the page, "good, he can be taught."

Rumi sprawled across the foot of the nearest coffin, propping her chin on both fists to watch him. Nari stood behind her sister with a pillow pressed over her whole face, ears poking out the top.

"If it's two to a box, I volunteer for his," Rumi purred, "purely for warmth."

"Left, you'd steal the whole blanket," he said.

"I would steal a great deal more than the blanket."

Nari made a small dying noise into the pillow, her ears flattening until they vanished entirely.

Then Nari lowered the pillow an inch, her voice coming out dry and perfectly steady for once.

"You talk very big for a girl who blushed at a bow this morning," Nari said.

"I-I did not blush, it was the light," Rumi squeaked, sliding off the lid.

"Hahaha, she got you, Left," Hajin wheezed, nearly losing his arm to Ferra's cord.

'Everyone is loud again, that means the tea room is over for tonight.'

Nyra stood alone at the corridor's end with a long blanket over one shoulder and Halfmoon over the other. She looked at the row of open boxes the way a cat looks at a bath run for it.

"I am not sleeping in a box," she said, "I did a year in a glass one."

"Kid, there's a side room at the end with a real bed," he said, "take it, nobody will fight you for it."

"Hmph, nobody would dare," Juna muttered from under Vella's elbow.

Dinner came up on a long cart pushed by a maid who wept the whole way from the door. The dishes wore little cards written in silver ink, naming each one as if introducing a guest at court.

"Unborn-name pie," Loccy read aloud, "mourning custard, ember fruit, funeral cake for tomorrow's memorial."

"Whose memorial?" Eirwen asked, pausing with her fork raised.

"The master's, my lady," the maid sobbed, "he holds one every year, for himself, in advance."

The pie tasted of warm bread and something that made Loccy's eyes sting, like a name she nearly remembered.

Taking a second slice anyway, she said, "This is very good and very sad."

"Everything down here is sad, Bun, it's the house style," Hajin said, scraping custard off Ash's chin.

A loud, happy crunch came from the far end of the cart, where Ash sat inside the cake stand itself. The funeral cake was gone to the last black crumb, its silver card stuck to his cheek like a medal.

"Dada, I ate the sad one," Ash announced, patting his belly.

"Buddy, that was for a funeral," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

The maid looked at the empty stand, drew one enormous breath, then burst into a wail that rattled the lids.

"The master will have me unmade," she sobbed, "I was meant to guard it... I only looked away for the custard."

"What's your name?" Loccy asked, already on her feet.

"Pippa, my lady... for three more hours at least."

Loccy crossed the whole room in four long strides, folding both arms around the trembling maid, tray, apron and all. Pippa went stiff as a broom handle, then sagged all at once, weeping into the soft fluff at Loccy's collar.

"Nobody is unmaking you, I decided," she said into her hair, "you belong to our house now."

"You can't just adopt the staff, Bun," Hajin said, though he was already smiling.

"I adopted you first, you were a much bigger mess."

"She's not wrong, darling," Vella called from the coffin.

She reached under the cart for the smaller guest cake, pressing the whole thing into Pippa's shaking hands.

"Eat that one, it is yours, nobody is allowed to mourn it," she said.

Pippa ate it in tiny bites between hiccups, each one of them watched by eleven interested faces. Ferra pushed a cup at her, Miri found her a stool, Eirwen offered a short formal welcome.

She set the last slice on a saucer beside Hajin's coffin, the way she always kept something back for him.

The lamps burned down one by one until only the black roses glowed, faintly red along the ceiling beams. Loccy lay in her coffin with Ash snoring against her ribs, counting the petals that fell onto the lid.

'He has not laughed properly since the tea room, not once.'

She climbed out without waking Ash, padding along the corridor toward the side room at the far end. Hajin sat on the floor beside its door, his back to the wall, legs stretched across the boards.

"Your coffin is empty, I checked," she whispered.

"Can't sleep, Bun, the lid creaks."

Loccy lowered herself onto the boards beside him, the long blanket trailing behind her like a cape. He shifted over without being asked, making room on the wall the way he made room everywhere.

"You used to sit outside her door at the keep too," she said, "when she still bit."

"She still bites, she just aims better now."

Loccy pulled her knees up and looked at him sideways, the way she looked at a bun before eating it.

"Do you love me the same as the others, or just differently?"

He did not laugh, which she liked, nor did he answer fast, which she liked even more.

"Differently," he said at last, "the same amount... but not the same shape."

"What shape is mine?"

"Bread shape," he said, then winced, "no, wait, let me try that again."

"I like bread shape," Loccy said seriously, "bread is warm and it does not lie."

He rubbed the back of his neck, "Yours is the one I never have to be brave for."

"Good," she said, nodding twice as if filing it away, "different is good."

'He did not make it complicated, that is how I know it is true.'

The door beside them opened a finger's width, one gold-edged horn catching the rose light through the gap.

"You're doing the thing," Nyra said through the crack, her voice thick with almost-sleep.

"I know," he said, not moving.

"Stay," she said, before the door clicked shut again.

He tipped his head back against the wall with his eyes shut, a small, real grin finally showing through again. Loccy tucked half her blanket over his legs, deciding the floor was a bed too if two people used it.

"Go back to Ash, Bun, he'll wake up soon and eat the pillow."

"He already ate the pillow," she said, "I let him, it was a sad pillow."

She padded quietly back along the row, counting sleepers by the ears poking out from under each blanket. Juna's tail hung over one side, Vella's hand over the other, the two of them finally asleep mid-argument.

The last coffin by the door stood open with its blanket folded square, nobody lying inside it at all.

'Cessy sleeps like a cat, she would never fold anything.'

Something red glistened on the outer door at eye height, pressed into the wood while they all slept. Loccy leaned close and found a wax seal, still warm, marked with three small dots in a row.

"Hajin," she called down the corridor, not whispering anymore, "Cessy's box is empty."

Lucan stepped out of the dark by the stair, fully dressed, his candle lit as if he never slept.

"Three dots," he said quietly, "that is my mother's seal, my sister has gone home."