Aja lunged to her feet and winced. She spoke thickly through her bloody nose and swollen lips. “It’ll cure us?”
The Chef didn’t answer. He motioned for the djinn to serve drinks.
Aja’s legs wobbled as she walked back to her plate.
The empress flipped her arms up in delight. “Aja! Oh, no. Your face is bleeding. Ew! Make it stop.”
What a terrible time for a bloody nose. Aja scrubbed her lips clean on a sailcloth napkin, then turned back to the empress. She was already chatting with the swordsman again.
“I won’t eat a monster, I couldn’t.” The empress made a face. “Unless you will.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is it even dead now? How could we tell?”
“I’ll eat the kraken,” Aja said.
She would show them she wasn’t just a little girl with a bloody nose. Maybe she hadn’t been too bold when the kraken arm had crawled out, but she could have courage in her eating. First she would have to wash out the taste of blood. She reached for her glass.
Something black darted to the front of her drink. This wasn’t the musical tonic. She stared face to face with a fish in her glass. Its serpentine tail splashed as it lunged toward her gaping mouth.
Falling back, she dropped the drink. The crystal vessel floated down to the carpet, the fish a dark streak inside.
“My drink tried to eat me,” Aja said.
“Nonsense,” the Chef said. “The tickler eel merely wishes to swim down your throat.”
Aja crossed her hands over her neck, staring at her glassware with its fish. A fin on the eel’s underside fluttered. Rainbow colors shimmered down its side in a glaze of greens and pinks.
“That sounds fair,” the lord said. He lounged on the pillows beside Aja. “After the main course tries to kill us, the side order should want to be eaten.”
The Chef sprinkled parsley over a plate of what looked like green and black pearls. “The side item is avocado caviar. Once in your stomach, the tickler eel will nibble the caviar and release a pleasing shock.”
Aja grimaced at the eel in her glass. “We’re supposed to swallow it whole?”
“It swims into your stomach. I already explained this.”
At least the eel was small. Not that Aja would ever swallow it live. A wriggler inside her? No thanks. She could be courageous in her eating, but she wasn’t crazy. She puffed out her cheeks. “Could I just drink more of that music tonic?”
“Tickler eel is a delicacy of the Archipelago Kingdoms,” the Chef said and turned back to the kitchen, “and you’d do well to treat their traditions with respect.”
“Doubt live kraken is traditional,” the swordsman said. He stood in the Chef’s way and nodded to the empress. “You know who your meal tried to kill?”
The swordsman was a big man. The Chef made him look scrawny. “I know only,” the Chef said, “that I serve men and women at this Banquet. They become great by finishing.”
“And you serve kraken at every one?” the swordsman asked.
“Many.”
“And never more’n one dies a night? One man, I mean.”
“Never.”
“That’s the part I don’t see.” The swordsman balanced his blade on his shoulder. “Why can’t two have died there? Or all of us by the end?”
“The first death at a dinner,” the Chef said, “leads to thoughtful dining. If there’s one crime in this world it’s mindless eating.”
He cupped the swordsman’s shoulder with a palm and lumbered around him.
The next sound in the Banquet was the rumble of Aja’s stomach. If this kraken was medicine, she would gobble it down. The Chef had told them the magical seafood would return them to health, and snake fingers weren’t healthy.
She cupped the jiggling meat in her palms. The sleeves of her robes stopped at her elbows. Any longer and they would’ve draped in the sesame-seed oil. She buried her face in food.
It tasted of sea spray and storm. The kraken had a bouncy texture. The freshness of the meat gave each mouthful a crunch. The sound was like biting into a roasted cricket. The kraken tasted so much better than bugs. Aja cried a little. After the first bite, her heart thumped. It sped faster with every gulp. Her blood sang through her, and it dribbled from her nose onto her dish. Red dotted the porcelain.
“I admire your appetite, my young truffle,” the lord said. He whipped a black silk kerchief from his coat pocket and lifted it toward her bleeding nose. “Allow me.”
By reflex, she reached to slap away his hand. Wait, my snakes!
Too late. The lord could never pull back his arm in time before her asps struck.
Fourth Course, Part II:
A Tickling
The snakes cowered from the lord. Instead of biting him they kept their fangs to themselves and hid their arrow-shaped heads beneath Aja’s palms. Goose pimples crept along her arms and down her back as he closed in.
The lord smothered her nose with the kerchief. He tilted her head. His finger prickled the nape of her neck.
She flinched. Was he beginning to strangle her? Or worse? In her visions after eating the oracle truffle, the lord’s fingers had appeared sharp and jagged, like teeth. They felt like points of coldness. Her head, cradled between jaws.
The lord said, “In a minute it’ll be over, my sweetling.”
Ah! He would kill her. She knew he would. She had to push away. Her arms, why weren’t they shoving? Her legs lay dead on the carpet. She couldn’t move. His touch had more venom than any asp.
Aja gasped. She could still breathe. He hadn’t clamped his kerchief over her mouth, only pressed it to her nose. His needle fingers hadn’t sliced into her throat, only held her trapped. Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her.
She forced herself to look up, to meet his stare. Except the lord’s curiously pale eyes gazed past her, to Solin sitting on her other side. Crutches were propped against his chest. The lord spoke to him.
“My honey crumpet, you didn’t hex the tentacle.”
If Solin took offense at being called a “honey crumpet,” he hid it behind his curtain of hair.
“Could it be,” the lord said, “you can only curse something that resembles yourself?”
Solin grunted. He hunched over his plate of kraken, and its oil coated his fingers.
“I thought so.” The lord lifted Aja upright. “There, now you may resume your feast without any more sanguine dressing.”
He had released her. She was free, no longer trapped by his touch. Aja brushed the back of her hand against her nose. It no longer bled. The lord had stopped it. She thought she better be polite to him, so she spoke as if he were family. “Thank you, Uncle.”
Still, Aja wouldn’t let him so close again. If he reached toward her while she was eating, she would throw the food in his eyes.
She crunched on more kraken meat, juices flowing into her mouth. The sesame oil tasted like bread smoked over a cedar fire. She would impress the guests by eating a lot. She might not be as tall as the others, or as old, or as glittering, but she could be the hungriest.
Colors brightened as she ate. The richness of the carpet caressed her legs. The flame of the lamp warmed her forehead, distant though the light was.
The crimson of the lord’s coat kept catching her eye. Rose red. Sunset red. Blood red. How strange that he didn’t touch his meal. Seafood was costly, a rarity, but perhaps not to pashas and other such lords.
“You’re not hungry, Uncle?”
“Not for seafood, and never again. A voyage took me across the Dream Storm Sea. I sailed with Janny’s mistress, as it happened. There we had more than our fill of kraken.”
She couldn’t tell if he joked. His tone was too even, his face too calm. Only desperate men fished the sea, and boats never crossed it. Aja snuck another glance at the lord. He had none of a fisherman’s swarthiness. His skin gleamed an inhuman white, the hue of polished alabaster.
“The sea did wonders for my health,” he said, “The miracl
e being that I’m still alive.”
The lord raised his voice to speak to all the guests.
“Of course, too much good health will only get a man killed. He begins thinking himself impervious, might start picking up knives or swords. And there’s nothing more dangerous a man can do than arm himself.”
He did not gesture as he spoke. His hands clenched at his sides, fingers flicking together. One glove swarmed with embroidery of sea serpents.
Warmth pulsed down Aja’s own fingers. They were soft, and they didn’t hiss anymore. Scales twinkled as they fell off her hands. She had her own fingers back, and the stiffness had cleared from the petrified ones. Eating the kraken had cured her.
Aja flexed her fingers one by one, then fluttered them in a row. Hands were amazing. She hopped to her feet, to dance with the empress. Ryn’s face was flush and sparkling. Feathers molted down her arms, and she skipped in to hug Aja. Aja returned the embrace, twining her fingers together.
Had Aja ever resented the empress? Aja couldn’t do that to a friend, a sister.
The empress moved clumsily, and there was something stunted about her fingers. Maybe they had always been that way, but her smile was all joy. She and Aja pressed their oily hands together and laughed. The other guests cheered.
They were seeing her. She was with them, part of their family. Aja had wanted this.
When Aja whirled back to her place on the carpet, she tripped over Solin’s crutch.
“Sorry, Uncle.”
He had cleaned the kraken grease from his hands. He sat straighter, his shoulders wide and relaxed.
“Ryn got her arms back. And look!” Aja swooshed her human fingers upward. “All there again. Did the kraken make your leg right?”
Solin lifted the corner of a pillow covering his leg. He let it fall back. “Didn’t expect it to.”
Aja’s heart sank. With two healed legs he probably could dance like none other. He moved better than most with only one. She had to say something to take his mind off it.
“When the kraken first came, I didn’t know what it was. And I couldn’t move. But something pushed me away, your crutch. So I guess what I’m saying is thanks.”
Aja had heard the guests call him other things, bad things, but he had been all quickness in helping. He didn’t limp or teeter. He did acrobatics. Crippled or not, he was a master of crutches.
“You’re great.” Aja hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She wouldn’t speak another word. Her lips were locked and bricked over. “I’ll protect you from the others.”
“Huh,” he said. “Aja, how old are you?”
“Fifteen,” she said because he might tell her to leave if he knew she was only thirteen. “Definitely fifteen.”
On the other side of her, the lord laughed. “My dumpling, if you haven’t learned to lie yet you may have to resort to telling the truth.”
Solin said, “You’re too young for such a gathering.”
Aja’s face and neck burned. Sweat dribbled down her back. No one was telling the empress she’s too young.
“Be careful, Aja.” Solin angled himself on one crutch, bringing his cheek within inches of hers. “It’s you or I who dies tonight.”
Aja flinched, and her gaze darted to his. The one amber eye within his drapes of hair wasn’t looking at her but at the carpet in front of her knees.
“The lord has a stake in protecting the other three.” Solin nodded once to the swordsman, to Old Janny, to the empress. “We won’t be missed.”
Aja rubbed her arms. The warehouse air chilled her.
“May Purity forgive me for asking this….” Solin pinched his eyes closed and tilted his chin away from Aja. He was still close. He smelled of sweat and wood resin.
“What?” Aja asked.
“You shouldn’t throw in your lot with a hexer,” he said, “but you’d be a hero in my land, one of the Purest. If you bring me a hair of the empress.”
Aja’s eyes bulged. Had any of the other guests heard that? They were watching the empress lift a glass to her lips. The shimmering colors of the eel jumped into her mouth. A lump traveled down her throat. Strange. That didn’t look so bad.
“Her man would stop me,” Solin said. “And the lord might, too. You could manage.”
A shawl covered the empress’s hair. A stray strand wasn’t likely to drop in her food. She placed a dab of caviar in her mouth, swallowed. Her brows shot up. Her lips spread in astonishment, and she hugged her belly.
“What would you do with her hair?” Aja asked. Hold on, what was she saying?
Solin’s jaw tightened. He pushed himself away from her.
Aja floated in a bubbling wash of unreality. A hexer didn’t just ask me to betray the Oasis Empire, did he? She wouldn’t, but she could imagine herself being called a hero. Dresses of jewels, she would wear those every day, and she would eat nothing but coconut-date delicacies. Everyone would welcome a hero.
She blinked. Her glass wobbled and twinkled. A rainbow spun inside, the eel. It was almost as small as a tadpole. She could swallow it without trouble. Not that she ever would.
She held the glass. Had she just picked it up? It trembled. The swimming eel spun a whirlpool. Bringing the glass to her lips seemed most natural.
Only when the fish hit the back of her throat did she understand. The kraken. Its magic had done more than cure her. She wasn’t herself.
Aja gagged, but the eel had already stretched its way down her neck. Its fins brushed against her insides like a feathering.
She clinked empty glasses with someone. The empress handed Aja flatbread with caviar. The black beads tasted like gems of salt. So delicious, Aja didn’t bother to chew.
In an embrace with the empress, Aja’s fingers strayed to Ryn’s shawl, then beneath it. Could Aja really be a hero for something so easy as stealing a hair? The empress flitted away before anything could be done.
The eel fluttered in Aja’s belly. Something popped, a jolt, a spark, and a zinging ripple passed through her. The next time felt even better. She had to wiggle her shoulders with the thrill of it.
She stuffed all the caviar she could into her mouth. Then it was gone. Sprawling on the carpet, she held her stomach and giggled. Each time the eel tickled her, colors spread from the hanging lamps like spilled paint. Azure and saffron and auburn and vermillion.
A lifting sensation, and the carpet swayed beneath her. Maybe she was floating. Then the lamps slid away, and she sat up to see it was true. The carpet had risen from the floor. It carried the guests into the darkness.
“To the next course!” Someone shouted it.
Aja threw her hands up. “Faster! Faster!”
She could see nothing. Maybe she should be afraid. Aja had never liked running blind. But this was all movement and freedom. The carpet whisked her forward.
Light split vertically from an opening door. Not the sliding, screeching door of a warehouse but the vaulted doors of a palace. The djinn threw them open. The carpet flew the guests inside a ballroom.
The moon was huge in the waterfall windows. Each star shone close, as if just outside, with four spines of light. Inside, hundreds of lamps dangled from the ceiling on a web of gold chains. A fire of amber coated the walls. Gilt and gemstone sculptures depicted gods eating. Some had animal heads, others six or more arms with which to hold food.
“Hahaha!” Aja cried out. This was everything she had hoped.
The carpet settled down beside a table. There waited the Chef.
Side Dish:
SOLIN’S TALE
Don’t know any stories. None fit for a kingly meal like this. If I must speak, I’ll tell of where I was born. Hoathas, the City of Gold.
Every morning the first to wake are the bees. The sky brightens with their yellow bands. You can feel their buzz in the stones under your feet. The air throbs with their wings as they fly from rooftop to rooftop, from garden to garden.
Each home in Hoathas blooms with color. Flowers cover the roofs. Women sing
while gardening. Their voices match pitch with the bees, then harmonize. No other city is as full of sound and color.
Men balance jugs on their heads. They pour water on the garden blooms, return to refill at the Gargantuan River. The river is so wide that some call it a sea. Boats flock the piers, and cold coin is traded for our honey gold.
Everyone in the city has their place, their task. The Purests sing in their walled-off garden and remember the time before. In these evil days, some women must carry weapons. They are the stingers. They protect the city.
Men are not allowed to walk the streets unaccompanied. It would not be right. They carry their jugs through the undercity, the filthways. There it is cool and wet. After a day of work, mud cakes up to your chest.
At night, the city turns green from the light of fireflies. They glow in the street lamps. They twinkle inside every window. Night is a rich time. To celebrate life. Women wear their best feather dresses and dance. Laughter tinkles from the towers. All is peace.
I may never return to Hoathas. My city would no longer welcome me.
Fifth Course:
FORBIDDEN FRUIT
SERVED WITH LOTUS TEA
“You can choose but one.”
The Chef flourished a hand down the table. Glass canopies enclosed individual fruits in shrines. Aja touched the glass protecting a melon. The rind had tiger stripes in shades of green.
She asked, “What are they?”
The Chef wiped off a finger smudge she had left on the glass. “That is the Melon of Ferocity.”
He introduced each caged fruit in turn. The guests crowded around him to see, though Aja stayed well clear of his column legs.
“The Pear of Love.
“The Cherries of Happiness.
“The Plum of Beauty.”
Was this fruit her answer? Everyone welcomed the beautiful. Aja leaned so close to the plum she fogged the glass with a burst of breath. The richness of the fruit’s color made it dark with a shine of purple satin. Its shapely flesh curved around its stem to meet at a crease. Aja stretched her fingers around its crystal cage. She ached, not in her stomach but her heart.
Magic Banquet Page 6
