Page 50 of Tusks, Tails & Teacakes
“Such a nice boy,” Pip said more to himself than to the two friends.
“The orc?” Cali asked Lira in a whisper, clearly confused by Pip referring to the massive, full-grown guardsman as a boy.
Lira nodded, an unwanted flush warming her cheeks as she thought about Korl. “The orc.”
Cali licked her other sticky paw as she eyed Lira. “Interesting.”
Lira ignored the comment and lifted the basket hanging on one arm. “I’d better get these back to the tavern. I promised Sass some breakfast that wasn’t scones.”
Cali motioned to the lemon sweet rolls. “If she finds out about these and that you didn’t bring her any…well, I wouldn’t want to be on the bad end of an angry dwarf.”
“How would she find…?” Lira stopped herself at the Tabaxi’s smug smile that curved her whiskers. “You’d tell her, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t think there’s going to be a person Idon’ttell about these rolls.”
Lira laughed as she stepped closer to the counter and tipped her head at the domed stand. “I’ll take three of these to go.”
Cali cleared her throat. “What dwarf would only eat three of these in a sitting?”
Pip took out a paper bag and nodded his agreement. “They wouldn’t last past second breakfast in a halfling house, and our ample appetites can’t hold a candle to those of dwarves.”
Lira thought that they were making a lot of assumptions about Sassbased on her being a dwarf, but she also knew that Sass loved pastries. “Fine. Make it six.”
“I might have at least one more,” Cali said.
“You’re coming back to the tavern with me?” Lira kept the surprise from her voice.
“I was on my way to you when I was waylaid by this smell.” Cali’s ears twitched. “We didn’t get much time to catch up yesterday.”
Lira hoped that catching up and telling her about Pirrin were the only reasons Cali had come, but she had a growing feeling that they weren’t.
Cali slapped a handful of copper bits on the counter. “Make it a dozen, and it’s on me.”
Twenty-Nine
The morning breezecarried the mingled scents of fresh-baked bread and wood smoke as Lira and Cali made their way back to The Tusk & Tail. Lira breathed deeply, savoring the warm, sugary aroma wafting from the paper-wrapped bundle of lemon sweet rolls tucked against her chest.
She still couldn't believe Pip had created these overnight, and she marveled at his talent for whipping up something new that was so incredible. Her baking experiments had been a bit bumpier.
“I’ve missed halfling bakers,” Cali said, her tail swishing as she walked. “If I’d known you had baking skills, I wouldn’t have had to take so manydetours to Elmshire.”
“Me keeping you in pastries wouldn’t have done much for bringing in coin,” Lira said. “Besides, you didn’t need my help to obtain baked goods.”
"That was one time!" Cali’s ears flattened in mock outrage. "And if she didn't want someone to eat those fruit tarts, that lady shouldn't have left them cooling by an open window."
"The window was on the second floor, Cal.”
"Please. As if height has ever been an obstacle for me." Cali's golden eyes flashed. "Besides, you and the rest of the crew were only upset because the tarts didn’t survive the jump back down.”
Lira laughed at the memory of Cali landing in a crouch with gooey fruit filling crushed under her paws and a red-faced woman shrieking from above. That had been one of their more rapid departures from a village.
"That's hardly—” Lira started, but stopped short as the tavern came into view. The steady rhythm of hammer strikes from the blacksmith rang out across the village, but there was another sound mixing with the metallic ring from the forge—a different kind of pounding, and it was coming from The Tusk & Tail.
Cali followed her gaze, putting her paws on her hips. “Well, that’s something you don’t see everyday.”
There were two figures on the tavern’s roof, one orc and one human, and Lira knew them both. Val's blonde hair caught the morning sun as she straightened and swiped her forearm across her brow, but it was Korl’s dusky green arms that made the breath hitch in Lira’s chest. He wasn’t wearing his usual quilted chest plate, and his thin white tunic showed every ripple of his shoulder muscles as he heaved up rotten thatch.
"Well, well," Cali murmured, dropping her voice to a whisper that only Lira's half-elven ears could catch. "If it isn't your strong, silent admirer."
