Steep Consequences
Some teas are just... morally complicated.
In the uppermost room of The Four Forty-Four, where the ceiling dipped low and the window hadn’t opened in over a century, Orrin sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by stacks of yellowed newsprint and cracked leather albums. A half-burnt candle sputtered on the desk and the flame leaned toward the wall, where a dozen paintings watched him in silence.
The room reeked faintly of lavender, crisp winter night air, and old fire—Grant’s scent— preserved in a shawl folded atop the armrest of a threadbare chair. Orrin hadn’t moved it in years. The dust around it was untouched, a shrine left undisturbed even when the rest of the room knew no such grace.
Orrin leafed through a newspaper article with a smile as his face stared back from the grainy photo, caught mid-glare, hands blurred in what the caption called a threatening gesture. The headline above it screamed: He Who Deals With the Broken Path—A Danger to Our Kind.
Orrin’s grin widened.
“‘Danger to our kind.’” He read it aloud, savoring each word like a prayer. “That’s new. I was just a stain last month.”
A chuckle sounded from the wall. A voice, cold and dry. “Still are.”
Orrin turned his head lazily to the painting that had spoken—a tall, gaunt immortal frozen in a pose of faded glory, silver laurels on his brow and eyes narrowed in fury. His name had been Velvain, once. Now, he was paint.
And property.
Orrin tilted his head and studied his brushwork. “You’re cracking,” he said, voice absent of pity. “You’ll peel soon, and I won’t retouch you again. Your magic has become useless to the shop.”
Another painting hissed through pursed lips. A woman cloaked in blue flame glared at him, her likeness perfect even in motion.
“This is madness. You were one of us—”
“I still am.” Orrin stood, folding the article carefully. “You just never understood what that meant.”
He slipped the article into a drawer crammed full of similar clippings—slanders, condemnations, threats, articles about Grant, their love—the latter two he had snuffed and terminated; for Grant’s safety. His future.
The drawer groaned under the weight, but Orrin gave it a gentle pat before turning back to the wall of paintings.
Velvain muttered something obscene, but Orrin ignored him. His eyes had already moved on to a painting near the floor. The immortal inside was smaller, younger—his features still boyish, locked in an expression of panic.
“Hello, Marael,” Orrin murmured, crouching before the portrait. “We have to talk, I suppose.”
The boy flinched. “Please… I can still help. You need fire in the east room, don’t you? O-Or to make the gate squeak, or or—the human! H-He might need things I can do! Like light when he wakes up in a daze, or or when he misses—”
“Ah,” Orrin interrupted, soft. “But you see, I’ve taught the gate to squeak on command now. It learned from you. That’s the beauty of this place. It remembers.” He traced a lazy fingertip along the edge of the frame, then stood. “And Fenner does not need you. I’ll keep him content and safe. I no longer need your source of magic.”
From the shadows, the blue-flamed woman snarled, “Parasite.”
“I prefer archivist,” Orrin said coolly, turning to face her again. “It’s your own fault. Flaunting your talents. Bragging about what you can do. I simply… catalogued it. Made it available.”
“You stole them.”
“Of course I did.” He smiled. “And you would’ve done the same to me, if you weren’t all so absurdly sentimental. You buried your knowledge in bloodlines and dynasties. I decided to share mine.”
Another voice rang out—one of the oldest. A deep baritone from a portrait that hung directly opposite the door, covered by a heavy curtain. Even now, Orrin didn’t look at it.
“This place is a prison, Orrin. What our kind fears most.”
For the first time, Orrin paused. Then he waved his hand.
The room rippled, giving way to what happened in the apartment below this room: Fenner moving through the front room, glaring at the cupboards as he swept the floor while Little Sir Menace poked his lance at the dust flying around, both of them utterly unaware.
“It’s what you fear most, perhaps. I’m quite delighted,” Orrin said finally. His voice was low now, nearly fond. “All those quiet, little journeys I get to take, the places I see, the people I meet. Humankind is delightfully versatile. You have the ones who deserve what I do, and then you have the ones who deserve what I do.”
He snapped his fingers and Fenner and Little Sir Menace fizzled away; the vision of the downstairs gone. The same moment, the curtain across the door twitched open and behind it, empty canvases waited. Stretched, primed, brushed with anchoring spells. Just waiting for the next piece to be added to the collection.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Velvain said. “The shop will turn on you. One day, it’ll devour your magic just as it eats away at ours.”
Orrin stopped in his lazy steps.
“That’s the difference between you and me,” he said, not looking back. “You fed yourself with magic because you believed you are divine. I fed something else with it because I knew I wasn’t.”
He crossed the room, boots silent on the worn floorboards, and reached for a shelf tucked in the shadows. It held a small box. Nothing ornate—plain wood, clasped in brass. He opened it, his hands trembling slightly. Inside were ticket stubs. Handwritten notes. A cracked watch. Pictures. Letters. Gift wrappings.
All of it Grant’s things.
Orrin’s grin faded, gentled by something too soft for the painted prisoners to recognize. He picked up a note—creases nearly worn through, corners gone—and ran his thumb across the familiar ink.
I love you.
Orrin sat down beside the shelf, box in lap, note in hand. His fingers moved as if from muscle memory, smoothing the worn edges without reading the words again—he’d memorized them long ago. Every loop of Grant’s handwriting was etched behind his eyelids.
Smiling, he carefully put the note back and settled the box into the shadows once more. The portraits behind him hissed and muttered but Orrin was used to it.
“You know,” Orrin grinned, almost too softly for how dark and deep the shadows stretched across the room. “I built this place with the memory of him woven into the walls,” he said. “Each stone set so no one would ever look at him the way you all did when his name was on the list to inherit the duty of a shopkeeper. You poisoned his mind, thinking it is the worst of it all. The dirtiest of things. He works himself to the bone, full of hate and rage, for nothing but your twisted perspectives. My husband and his love for small moments—gone. Because you couldn’t be bothered to change. To be more less and less more.”
The portraits didn’t dare to speak.
Orrin’s expression shifted—less sorrow, more steel.
“So no,” he continued, “this is not a prison. And if the shop ever turns on me; if it ever devours what’s left of my magic, then I’ll gladly let it do so. Because it’s him in every stone, every floorboard. It’ll be him who will be my ruin, and I will not mind to find my end through him. Even if it is my own shop delivering it. But you—”
He turned a slow circle, looking each portrait dead in the eyes.
“You will rot inside these frames, until the shop grows tired of your taste, your flavor of magic. Until it has no need for you left and spits you out like the leftover core of a snack that is not worth having between ones teeth.”
Then, as if nothing had happened, Orrin dusted off his sleeves, rolled his shoulders, and glanced toward the stairs, a pack of tea bags appearing in his outstretched hand. He made his way downstairs, avoided a particularly daring lunge of Little Sir Menace, and placed the little box of tea from his younger years on the table.
“Look, I found some more tea in the attic. We forgot to get some at the store but if I ask you to go back and fetch some, you’ll probably beat me with the broom until I perish.” Orrin laughed, his eyes crinkling softly.
Fenner, as assumed, turned on his heels. “Go back there? Never! You can do your shopping alone.”
Orrin chuckled. “Oh but I can’t. As a shopkeeper, I’m not allowed to go alone.”
Fenner huffed. “Then how did you even get by for so long? That makes no sense! You’re lying.”
Orrin shook his head. “I was more of an immortal a while ago. Until— well it does not matter much. Illo and Beau deserved it. And I am glad they have it. I did not need a regular intake of food or water back then, but I do now. And the few days before you arrived, someone was so kind to leave it on my doorstep.”
Fenner gripped the broom harder. “I don’t want to go back there. Either I suffer a stroke, or a psychosis.”
Orrin tilted his head thoughtfully. “Hm. What if I promise it’ll only be a very targeted existential crisis? Just a little one.”
Fenner narrowed his eyes. “No.”
From the corner, Little Sir Menace jabbed his tiny clay lance into the toe of Orrin’s boot, clearly taking Fenner’s side.
“Oh, the betrayal,” Orrin laughed as Little Sir Menace readied another attack, but Orrin distracted him by flicking a stray crumb off the table. The knight charged after it.
“I don’t want to go there again,” Fenner muttered. “It’s creepy and stressful and…worse.”
Orrin clicked his tongue sympathetically. “You’re creepy and stressful and worse, too. To someone. Maybe even to the shop. Does it avoid you? No.”
“I hate you.”
“Also not true,” Orrin said, turning to the tea. “You left the last biscuit for me yesterday. That’s the universal language of affection.”
Fenner scowled. “I thought it had gone stale.”
“Still counts.”
There was a clatter from the floor as Little Sir Menace valiantly impaled a dust bunny, then immediately began to duel its shredded remains.
“Are you sulking?” Orrin asked cheerfully when Fenner fell silent for longer than usual.
“I’m processing having to go back there.” Fenner snapped.
There was a high-pitched clack from under the table as Little Sir Menace discovered a discarded spoon and immediately declared it his arch-nemesis. The miniature knight flung himself into battle.
Orrin shrugged. “Well it is the main task you were hired for.”
“You mean kidnapped.”
Little Sir Menace let out a warlike tap-tap-tap as he finally subdued the spoon. He planted his lance in its handle and stood victorious, hollow eyes gleaming with smug silence.
“Great,” Fenner muttered. “Even the clay goblin has more victories than me.”
Orrin chuckled. “I suppose it was a lot to take in. I can go with you again, if you want me to. Until you’re used to it.”
Orrin said it lightly, without weight or insistence, but as the words left his mouth, his gaze lingered on Fenner just a breath longer than necessary. The boy didn’t notice—he was too busy glaring at the spoon like it owed him rent.
Just once should’ve been enough, Orrin thought, keeping his face pleasantly neutral. A walk through that place with me at your side. One time to show them all.
Fenner huffed and stood up, heading toward the pantry, muttering something about needing food that didn’t come with a side of cosmic dread.
He’d be safe out there, even on his own. Because no one would touch what Orrin so clearly marked as part of his life.
Orrin reached down and gently retrieved Little Sir Menace, who had tripped over his own spoon-victory and now lay dramatically face-down on the floor. He set the tiny knight upright on the table, where he promptly attempted to charge at a sugar cube.
From the pantry came the sound of Fenner knocking over something heavy, followed by a string of very creative swearing. Little Sir Menace poked the sugar cube off the table and watched it fall.
From the pantry, Fenner shouted, “If this jam is older than me, I’m setting it on fire!”
Orrin smiled to himself, just a touch too fond and brushed a crumb off Little Sir Menace’s helmet.
“Please don’t burn the jam, Fenner,” he called, voice warm as tea and sunlight. “It has feelings.”
Fenner groaned. “Everything in this goddamn place has feelings!”
He looked at the sugar cube on the floor and at the little shadow from underneath the table leg who was about to snatch it, then at Little Sir Menace standing tall with his lance, and finally toward the pantry door where Fenner kept yapping about condiments.
May the gods help those who ever try to harm those under my care, Orrin thought, his smile not reaching his eyes.
Because I will not.