Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 37: The Briefing [1]

Ezra woke up with a tongue under his chin.

Had the healer come back to finish the job?

He opened one eye and saw fur, followed by a long pink tongue and two yellow eyes attached to the snout.

’Why does this shit keep happening?’

"Ossa," Patches barked, which sounded less like a greeting and more like annoyance that its meal was still breathing.

"See? Gross." The girl was already awake, pointing.

Ezra kicked Patches off the counter and got teeth for it.

"Good morning to you too," Ezra said to the girl. "Patches, do that again and I’ll cook you."

He stood up and braced for the pain but there was nothing. His back was better. Still tender when he twisted, but the bruise had gone from purple to nearly the normal shade of his skin.

The potion had done its work.

’Not a surprise, given it healed my mangled arm.’

The briefing was this morning, but Neve hadn’t told him when or where.

Typical of her.

In fact, typical of every woman he’d met here so far.

A guard showed up at the kitchen entrance before he’d even finished yawning.

"The Emerald Avian requests your presence. Commander’s quarters, eastern corridor."

"Requests?"

The guard straightened his back, and the spear snapped upright. "Her word, not mine."

’Sure it was.’

"Stay here," Ezra said to the girl.

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

"That’s not a reason."

"It’s the only one you’re getting."

She crossed her arms. He’d already left before she could argue—only way to win with her.

The eastern corridor was quieter in the morning. Most of the guards were on the walls and a lone fossil digger hauled tools toward the south gate.

His hands were cooler by the time he passed Leyla’s office. Something about the air had thinned out, though he couldn’t pin down what had changed.

The commander’s quarters were past Leyla’s, deeper into the rock. Even the door was open.

Neve was seated when Ezra walked in, which meant she’d been there long enough to pick her spot.

She’d pulled her ivory hair back. The pendant sat in the hollow of her throat and her green eyes tracked him from the door to the table without so much as a blink.

Theron stood against the far wall in full armor with his arms crossed, looking at a point somewhere above Ezra’s head. Worse than eye contact. Theron even found himself a new helmet, only this time it had the shape of a demon’s frown and Ezra was almost certain he wore that shit on purpose.

Leyla was beside her mother with the ledger open and the quill scratching. She glanced at Ezra once and went back to writing.

’Don’t worry Leyla, we have shit to settle.’

The commander sat at the head of a stone table with a map scratched into its surface. Bones hung on the wall behind her, too big to be decorative and too clean to be old.

"You called this briefing," she said to the Emerald Avian. "Brief us."

Neve stood and the room got quieter even though nobody had been talking.

"Three weeks ago I took a contract from a village west of here. A Gynoscylla was nesting near their settlement and their men were going missing." She wasn’t looking at anyone. "I tracked it to a summit above the river valley and killed it. When I opened the stomach I found human remains. Multiple bodies, men and boys from the contracting village."

Leyla’s quill stopped.

"The bones were my proof of contract completion. I was extracting them when a nine-star wyvern appeared on the summit." Neve’s hand went to the pendant. "It had been there before I arrived. It consumed the Gynoscylla corpse, the remains, and everything I needed to close the contract."

Nobody asked for clarification.

"It also put a beam through my left shoulder."

The commander leaned back in her chair. Not much, just an inch, but it was the first time Ezra had seen her shift her weight since he walked in. "You survived a nine-star engagement?"

"He pulled me off a cliff." Her eyes went to Ezra for half a second. "The fall saved us. Can you confirm, chef?"

Ezra looked at the Harkenians, then at Neve.

"It was quiet, blending in with the rocks. Its wings even covered the fucking sky." He brought his left arm up and flexed it under the dim torchlights. "It didn’t even register us as threats. We were an inconvenience at best."

Theron’s arms uncrossed and recrossed against the wall. It could’ve meant something. Or could’ve just been the full plate shifting.

"The wyvern is still on that summit. It blocks the direct western route between here and the contracting village." Neve put a finger on the map where the ridge would be, west of center. "I sent a courier south around the range by drake. He should return within the week."

The commander’s finger traced the same route. "Recommendation, Honored Slayer?"

"Wait for the courier. But the wyvern was clearing the summit before we fell, and nine-stars don’t make room without settling. Harken needs to treat it as a permanent obstruction or figure out how to remove it."

"Remove a nine-star." Theron pushed off the wall. First words out of him since Ezra walked in. "We’d need a fucking army, and most of our men are helping the infestations in—"

Theron met his mother’s eyes and he shut his mouth.

"I didn’t say it would be easy," Neve said, quieter now.

"You didn’t say it was possible," Leyla chirped. "A nine-star wyvern, given your account from yesterday, can only be one monster." She flipped through her ledger and stopped at a half-ripped page.

Leyla looked at the commander and waited for permission.

Which she got with the wave of a gauntlet.

"Harrow-wing," Leyla said.

The commander’s shoulders released, and she exhaled a breathy sigh. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"Harrow-wing, the Silent Devil. Something like that doesn’t show up unless the ecosystems have gone to fuck-all," the commander said, "and that’s not including the fish under the sand stirring every waking hour."

CLICK.

CLICK.

The sound of a lighter echoed through the stone. It was just his imagination. His eyes stayed on Neve because what else could he do?

Ezra bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood. It was the only way to stop the shaking in his legs.

’Anyway, that nickname makes sense.’

Ezra raised his hand because he didn’t know Harkenian formalities or if there was even one to begin with.

He swallowed the blood and cleared his throat. "There’s a water problem."

Every head turned and he regretted the hand. He kept going regardless.

"The east well’s dry. South well’s dropping. Your guards are using settlement water to cool their armor and you’ve got maybe a month before Harken runs out."

"We’re aware," the commander said, shoulders back up and sharp enough to cut.

Ezra met Neve’s eyes and didn’t stop.

"I found water yesterday. Under the volcanic road between the south gate and the eastern corridor, right where three steam vents cluster together. Your elders called it the Sunken Vein." Ezra paused for a moment, wiping sweat off his forehead. "Something about Pontia’s beast and a ravine that filled with rain. I’m not going to pretend I understood all of it but a fossil digger put his hands on the ground and confirmed the steam readings."

"You spoke with the elders?" Leyla asked. Her quill hovered above the page.

"They came to me. I was standing over the spot with a pendulum and they started talking about ancient rainforests." He heard it as it came out of his mouth. Didn’t sound better the second time around. "Point is, there’s water. But it’s under solid volcanic rock and the digger said twenty men, one week, at least."

"We don’t have twenty men," Theron said.

"Good point, spear demon. But I know someone who digs through stone with bone tools and bare paws."

Neve’s chin lifted, just barely.

"The Ossalaka," she said.

"They carved a whole settlement out of rock." Ezra spread his hands on the table. "And they think I’m a fire deity, which is embarrassing but useful."

"You want to negotiate with desert jackals," the commander said. "It’s enough to have one of them here and an even bigger miracle it has not been executed along with your head for even mentioning a negotiation between animals."

"I want to ask them for help. But I don’t speak Jackalyn beyond ’ossa,’ and even that’s generous." He pointed at Neve. "She does."

Neve held his gaze for a beat too long, then turned to the commander.

"He’s right. The Ossalaka are capable diggers and they have an existing alliance with him through shared meals and a cultural misunderstanding about fire. I can translate. Did it before."

"This is fucking absurd," Theron said, slamming his spear on the table. "The Ossalaka have eaten Harkenian children before. Now we want to recruit them?"

Neve closed her eyes. He’d heard this argument before.

"Why were children out in the desert?" Ezra’s eyes traced the etching on Theron’s spear, then back at Theron’s demon helm. "Ossalaka are scavengers to a fault, right? So why would children be out there?"

Theron grabbed the hilt of his spear and raised it up at Ezra. The air started buzzing with metallic vibrations. "I’ll put a hole through your jaw. Then you’ll see how the Ossalaka pick bones dry."

"You sure? Your new helmet is pretty, wouldn’t want to break that one too," Ezra said.

The door slammed open and the little girl stepped through.

She walked right past Theron’s spear, close enough that the vibrations moved her hair, and found a seat at the far end of the table.

She sat, put her hands flat on the stone, and looked at every person in the room one by one.

When she got to Neve, she stayed there a second longer. Neither of them had ever been in the same room before.

Then she looked at Ezra, and raised her hand.

"He kissed a woman!"