Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 11: Bird Girl

She looked dead.

That was Ezra’s first thought, standing ten feet away with leech guts between his toes and the river at his back. Her skin was pale where it wasn’t bruised, and most of it was bruised.

The river had taken everything.

Her plumage armor, the layered greens and greys that made her blend into the canopy.

The breastplate she kept vials clipped under. Boots, belt, whatever she’d had strapped to her thighs. All of it downstream or at the bottom.

The bird-of-prey helmet was gone too.

He had never seen her face.

Without the helmet she looked his age, maybe younger. He hadn’t expected that. Pale skin with a pink flush from sun or cold. Ivory-colored hair fanned out on the wet rock, tangled with river debris. One strand stuck to her cheek.

He didn’t look further than that.

If Ezra didn’t know any better, he’d mistake her for some poor, drowned girl.

But she had used him as bait.

He’d need at least another day to accept her apology.

The hole from the wyvern’s beam was still a gaping wound on her shoulder, the skin around it puckered white and red. Her left arm was lifeless, nerves shot out where it mattered.

Then his eyes went to her stomach and he stopped thinking about anything else.

An arm-width branch was through her lower abdomen. In through the front, out through her side, the bark still wet with river water.

The entry point was below her navel, below the red gem still set in her belly button. The gem caught the early light. Still there when everything else was gone.

His mouth opened before he could regret it.

"Appraisal."

[ Keepsake — Ruby ★★★★★★★ ]

> Soul-bound.

> Slayer Grade: Ruby.

> Clearance: Threat-class monsters and below. Reforged seven times.

’You’re fucking drunk. No way she’s a seven-star.’

Her mouth moved, muttering something, her eyes moving under her lids.

’Seven stars and she needed me as bait. I don’t believe it.’

He dismissed the result.

Ezra walked up the bank. Gravel under his bare feet, dawn light warming the air.

He crouched beside her.

The branch was bad. Not the worst he’d seen in the last day, but bad. He’d bet his arm was worse off than this. Anyway, it had gone through clean, no splinters fanning out from the entry, no jagged edges catching on meat. Small mercy if anything.

The river current had probably driven it through while they were unconscious in the water.

Ezra felt around his body, praying there wasn’t any stray branch sticking up his ass at the least.

There wasn’t.

The red gem in her belly button was three inches above the wound. If the branch had hit higher, it would have gone through the gem, through whatever that meant for a soul-bound Keepsake.

A thin chain hung around her neck, resting in the hollow of her collarbone. He hadn’t noticed it before. Must have been under the breastplate.

It was a small pendant, dark and smooth. Not metal, though. Metal would’ve caught the light. It was carved from something organic, bone or tooth or horn. Worn down at the edges from years of skin contact.

He couldn’t make out the shape in the low light. Looked like wings.

Or talons.

Her eyes opened, diluted green, pupils fighting the dawn light. She threw up river water, her body seizing with every cough. Ezra swore he saw a fish exit her lips.

"Who are..." She trailed off. Air pushed through a throat that didn’t want to work. Her gaze found his face and her eyebrows straightened. "Brute."

"Good morning, bird girl."

Her eyes found the branch and the exhale followed. She looked at it the way someone looks at a parking ticket, anger first, then resignation.

"How deep is it?"

"Clean through. Out the side. Missed anything important, I think. You’ve been breathing fine."

Her eyes moved to his left arm. Both of them. Flexing, functional, no dangling meat or exposed bone.

She didn’t look surprised, just glanced at her own left shoulder. Didn’t say anything at all.

The line between her brows said enough.

"There’s a settlement," she said. Her voice came in short pulls. "Follow the river east. Half a day, maybe less."

"What’s it called?"

"Harken."

She closed her eyes.

’She’s dead?’

And opened them again. The green half focused on Ezra, half at nowhere in particular.

’Oh.’

"I can seal the wound," Ezra said. "Same way I burned the cord."

She watched the heat build in his right hand, just enough for his palm to glow faint orange, warping the air above his skin. The same hand she’d seen hissing with residual Ember discharge back in the jungle.

She knew what he was.

She’d known since she saw his knuckles.

That, or her consciousness was already at wit’s end.

"Pull it out first."

"I got it."

"Fast."

"I said I got it."

"Pull out fast."

"Damn, lady. At least say please."

He gripped the branch with his right hand. It was slick with water and blood that had gone brown overnight.

His fingers found purchase against the bark—

"Wait."

She held her right arm up, and their fingers intertwined with one another without a word.

He pulled it.

She made a sound and cut it off before it became a scream. Her back heels dug into the gravel and she squeezed until Ezra was sure he’d lose his arm again after getting it back in the same morning.

The branch came free but not without payment. The blood trailed out her gaping wound, a steady warm spread across her stomach.

It pooled in her navel around the ruby gem and clung to the pale skin.

He pressed his palm to the wound.

’Keep the dial steady, not too hot... not too cool either.

This isn’t meat. Don’t fuck it up. Don’t char it either.’

Ember Arts went hot. Not cooking hot but not combat hot either, it was somewhere in between.

Palate Arts told him the rest.

It came the way it always came, not words nor text. His hand knew before he did. The tissue under his palm was alive and damaged, and if he pushed the heat past a certain point he’d cook the muscle underneath. She’d lose the use of her core, and she would surely want to cut his throat. Too low and the surface would pink up but the deeper layers would keep bleeding.

The skill didn’t know this wasn’t food. It guided him the same way it had guided the crab sear on the beach.

Not like he could complain—the alternative being he disfigured a girl he met not two days ago.

Her skin sealed under his hand and the blood stopped.

The aroma of burnt meat filled the cool river air.

"Brute," she muttered, prying her fingers away from his. Her eyes were half-closed again, then completely. "Bring me... to Harken."

"Say again?"

"Harken," she said, or tried to.

The second syllable didn’t finish.

She went limp.

Ezra sat on the gravel beside her for a minute. Dawn was fully up now, sky going from orange to pale blue. The river didn’t give a shit.

He checked her breathing. Still breathing, though it was shallow. She was alive, and that meant one less thing to sit in his baggage.

The burn scar on her stomach was ugly.

Pink and raised, the skin pulled tight where it had fused. It would hold. Palate Arts had been sure of that, even if Ezra wasn’t.

He stood up and tested his legs. Stiff, but manageable. His fingers still ached from her tight grip.

’Seven-stars. I’ll believe it when I see it.’

Ezra grabbed her by the ankle and started pulling the body behind him.

"This is for dragging me across the ground for an entire day."