by Greg Keyes
“That’s a big word,” Wemreddle said.
“Yes, but—”
“I don’t know,” Wemreddle said. “I’ve never thought about it. You fall in water, you get wet. Stray from Umbriel, you lose substance. It’s just how things are.”
Annaïg digested that for a moment.
“Very well. But how does it start? I mean, if larvae can’t kill anything unless they have a soulless body to steal, how do the first ones get bodies?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“And what becomes of the souls?”
“Most go to the ingenium, which keeps Umbriel aloft and moving. Some go to the vehrumasas.”
“I don’t know that word,” she said. “What does it mean?”
“The place where they prepare food. Where the furnaces are.”
“Kitchens? You people eat souls?”
“Not all of us. I don’t—I’m not that elevated. But them at the top, and Umbriel himself, or course—well, they like their delicacies. We don’t see that in the Middens, do we?”
“And yet you were licking the cable,” she said.
He blushed. “It’s not against nature to want a taste, is it? Just a little taste?”
Annaïg had a sudden, unpleasant thought.
“Are the lords—are you—daedra?”
“What’s a daedra?” Wemreddle asked.
“You’ve never heard of daedra?” she asked. “But didn’t this city come from Oblivion?”
Wemreddle just looked blankly at her.
“There are sixteen daedric princes,” Annaïg explained. “Some are just—well, evil. Mehrunes Dagon, for instance—he tried to destroy our world, back before I was born. Others—like Azura—aren’t supposed to be so bad. Some people worship them, especially the Dunmer. But besides the princes, there are all sorts of minor daedra. Some people can conjure them and make them do their bidding.”
“We do the bidding of the lords,” Wemreddle said. “If I were a daedra, would I know it?”
“Maybe not,” Annaïg realized. “What is the name of your highest lord?”
“Umbriel, of course.”
“There’s no prince that goes by that name,” she mused, “although I suppose a daedric prince could be known by any number of names.”
Wemreddle seemed entirely disinterested in the conversation, so she let it drop. She had so many new questions now, she didn’t know what to ask next, so instead of questioning him further, she filled Glim in on what Wemreddle had been telling her.
“It’s horrible,” she said. “What if it’s really aimless? If our world is being destroyed just so this thing can keep in the air? What if there is no other agenda?”
“There must be more to it than that,” Glim responded. “There has to be. Otherwise why would Umbriel ally with the city tree? Why would it spare anyone?”
“Maybe it didn’t. If the tree is insane, as you think, it might have just imagined an alliance.”
“It’s possible.” He snicked his teeth together. “You were right, in a way,” he said. “It sounds as if we were to stop the flow of souls to this ingenium of theirs, then this would turn into just another rock.”
“Maybe. Could it be that simple?”
“I doubt it will be simple,” the Argonian replied.
They walked in silence for a bit, while Annaïg turned it all over in her head.
When they finally reached the Bolster Midden, she was sure of her earlier impression, for she could think of nothing to compare it to other than the gorged, bloated stomach of a giant.
And the smell—well, it was bad. Glim’s nictating membranes kept shutting, and Glim could wade through the most noisome fen without really noticing.
But this wasn’t a noisome fen, and she was, in fact, beginning to understand Wemreddle’s bizarre assertion. Animal was here, sweetly, sulfurously rotten, but there was also blood still so fresh she could taste the iron in the middle of her tongue. She made out rancid oil, buttery cream, old wine-braising liquid, fermenting again with strange yeasts and making pungent vinegars. Fresh herbs mingled with the cloying molder of tubers and onions gone to liquid.
Best of all were the thousand things she didn’t recognize, some deeply revolting and some like a welcome home to a place she’d never been. Some smells were more than that, not only engaging the taste buds and nostrils, but sending weird tingles across her skin and shimmering colors when she closed her eyes.
“You see?”
She nodded dumbly and looked around more carefully.
If this was the belly of a giant, he had many esophagi; more stuff fell periodically from five different openings in the vaulted stone ceiling.
In places, the trash moved.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The worms,” Wemreddle replied. “They keep the Midden turning, make it all pure to siphon into the Marrow Sump.”
“Marrow Sump?”
“It’s where everything goes, and where everything comes from.”
That seemed like it would take a longer explanation, so she let it go for more immediate concerns.
“What’s up there?” she asked, indicating the apertures above.
“The kitchens, of course. What else?” He pointed at each of the holes in turn. “Aghey, Qijne, Lodenpie, and Fexxel.”
“And what do you do down here?”
“Hide. Try not to be noticed. They sent us down here a long time ago to tend the worms, but the worms pretty much tend themselves.”
“So where is everyone else?”
“In the rock. I’ll fetch them. But first let me find you a safe place, yes?”
“That sounds good,” Annaïg said.
A narrow ledge went around the Midden like a collar, albeit one whose dog had outgrown it a bit; here and there they found themselves trudging through offal and pools of putrescence. Light came dimly from no obvious source, but she didn’t try to make out what they were stepping through.
At last they came to a small cave, rudely furnished with a sleeping mat and not much else.
“You wait here,” he said. “Try not to make much sound.”
And with that Wemreddle was gone.
“I can’t breathe this forever,” Glim muttered. Their guide had been gone for a long time, although without the sun, moon, or stars, it was hard to tell exactly how long. Annaïg figured it was hours, though.
“At least we’re breathing,” she pointed out.
“Well, as long as we’re settling for the least,” he replied.
“Glim …” She put a hand on his shoulder.
He snapped his teeth. “I need to eat something,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said. The wait had given the shock and adrenaline time to wear off, and now she was ravenous. “I can go out there, see what I can sort out.”
He shook his head. “That’s disgusting.”
“Some of it is still food.”
“Stay here. You’ve no idea what those worms might do, or what else might be out there.”
“What, then?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“Not your strong suit.”
“Yes. But I’ve been doing it, nonetheless. Four kitchens above us, and four other Middens. Do you know how much refuse that suggests, if this is even close to typical?”
“A lot.”
“Yes. Which suggests that somewhere up there, a lot of people or—something—are doing a lot of eating.”
“I did see what looked like a city along the rim.”
“I think we’re still far below the rim,” he said. “Still, I’m thinking there must be thousands on this island, at least.”
“Okay.”
“And Wemreddle, the trash keeper, wants you to help with some sort of revolution. Against who knows what and who knows how many? There’s a daedra prince up there, for all we know. I’m not sure we want to be a part of this.”
“So you think we should leave before he gets back.”
�
�I think we should go looking for food. In the kitchens. See what we’re up against. We can always come back here if the trash-tender still seems like a good bet.”
“How will we know that until we meet the rest of them?”
“Of whom?”
“Whoever he went to get. The underground. The resistance.”
“You and your books,” Glim muttered. “Resistance.”
“Look around you, Glim. When people are forced to live in places like this, there’s usually a resistance.”
“Lots of people lived like this in Lilmoth,” Glim replied. “They didn’t resist anything.”
“Well, maybe they should have,” she retorted. “Maybe then the An-Xileel couldn’t have—”
“It was the tree, Nn, not the An-Xileel. The Hist decide.”
“The city tree is psychotic.”
“Maybe.”
“You said it’s happened before, one Hist breaking with the others.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Fine. We might as well have some options. Do you know how to get to these kitchens?”
“Of course not. But we know where they are.” He pointed up.
“Fair enough,” she conceded. Her hand still on his shoulder, she pushed up to standing. Then she noticed some figures approaching along the path that had brought them there. “Oops. Too late. Wemreddle’s back.”
“That’s not much of a resistance,” Glim noted. “Six besides him.”
“At least they’re armed.”
Like Wemreddle, they all appeared to be human or mer. They wore uniforms—yellow shirts, aprons, black pants—and they carried an assortment of large knives and cleavers. The only one who was dressed differently was a fellow with thick, curly red hair and beard. His shirt was a black-and-yellow tartan pattern.
Wemreddle was trailing the lot. The red-beard spoke.
“It’s true, you’re really from the world beyond?”
“Yes,” Annaïg said.
“And you have knowledge of its plants, animals, herbs, minerals, essences, and so on?”
“Some,” she replied. “I have studied the art of alchemy—”
“Come with us, then.”
“To where?”
“To my kitchen. Fexxel’s kitchen.”
“Wemreddle,” Annaïg exploded. “You piece of—”
“They’ll let me come up,” the man simpered. “They’ll let me work up there. This is for the best. You’ll be protected. You need that.”
“Protection from whom?”
“Me, for one,” another voice shouted.
A second group was approaching, twice as large as Fexxel’s, and just as heavily armed.
Fexxel spun. “You worm,” he roared at Wemreddle. “I bargained in good faith with you!”
“I didn’t tell her! I swear it!”
Annaïg could make out the newcomer now. She wore a checked indigo-and-lapis shirt, apron, and indigo pants. Her face was angular, drawn, hard, and her teeth gleamed like opals in the dim light.
“He didn’t, actually,” the woman said. “One of your own betrayed you. More’s the pity for the poor worm, because I don’t owe him anything.”
Wemreddle began a sort of soft wailing.
“I’ll have them, Fexxel.”
“I have right, Qijne. I have claim.”
“The Midden is neutral territory.”
“I found them first.”
“Well, you can take it up with someone next time you come out of the sump,” she replied. “Or you can walk back to your kitchen in the meat you’re wearing.”
Annaïg could see Fexxel was trembling, whether with fear or fury, it was hard to say.
“It might be worth it,” he said. “You outnumber us, but I’ll kill you before I go down.”
“Ah, determination,” Qijne said, stepping forward, away from her companions. “Passion. Do you really have such passions, Fexxel? Or is this all superficial, like your cooking?”
Her arm whipped out and a bright, bloody line appeared on Fexxel’s cheek. His eyes widened and his mouth worked, but for the moment no sound came out.
Annaïg was still trying to understand what had happened. Qijne’s hand had been about a foot from Fexxel’s face, and she hadn’t seen a weapon in it. Nor did she now.
Fexxel found his voice. “You crazy bitch!” he screeched, blood pouring through the fingers he had pressed to his face.
“See?” Qijne said. “Just blood under there, nothing else. Go home, Fexxel, or I’ll make a pie of you.”
Fexxel heaved several great breaths, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead he left, as instructed, and his followers went with him, glancing back often.
Qijne turned her gaze on Annaïg. Her eyes were as black as holes in the night.
“And you, my dear, are the cook?”
“I—I can cook.”
“And what is this?” she asked, stabbing a finger toward Glim.
“Mere-Glim. He’s an Argonian. He doesn’t speak Mer.”
Qijne cocked her head. “Mer,” she said experimentally, then seemed to dismiss the word—and Glim—with a shake of her head. “Well,” she said. “Come, then. We’ll go to my kitchen.”
Annaïg lifted her chin. “Why should I?” she asked.
Qijne blinked again, then leaned in close and spoke in a casual, confidential manner. “I don’t need all of you, you know. Your legs, for instance—not very useful to me. More of a problem, really, if I imagined you were prone to running off.”
Each word was like an icicle driven in her back. There was no doubt that the woman was serious.
Qijne patted her on the shoulder. “Come along,” she said.
And she came, telling herself that this was what she needed to be doing, trying to learn something about the enemy, trying to find out how to stop this unholy thing.
But it was hard to keep that in her head, because she had never in her life been more afraid of anyone than she was of Qijne.
EIGHT
“This isn’t a kitchen,” Annaïg whispered to Glim. “This is …”
But she had no word for it.
Her first impression was of a forge, or furnace, because enormous rectangular pits of almost white-hot stone lined up down the center of a vast chamber carved and polished from the living rock. Above the pits innumerable metal grates, boxes, cages, and baskets depended from chains, and vast sooty hoods sucked most of the heat and fumes up higher still into Umbriel. Left and right, red maws gaped from the walls—ovens, obviously, but really more like furnaces. Between them, beings strange and familiar crowded and hurried about long counters and cabinets, wielding knives, cleavers, pots, pans, saws, awls, and hundreds of unidentifiable implements.
Though the smells here were generally cleaner than those of the Midden, they were just as varied, and decidedly more alien.
So was the staff; many of them resembled the peoples she knew—there were in particular many who looked like mer; there were others for which—like the place itself—she had no name. She saw thick figures with brick-red skin, fierce faces, and small horns on their heads, working next to ghostly pale blue-haired beings, spherical mouselike creatures with stripes, and a veritable horde of monkeylike creatures with goblinesque faces. These last scrambled along the shelves and cabinets, tossing bottles and tins from shelves in the stone that rose sixty feet along the walls, although in most of the room the ceiling crushed down almost to the level of the tallest head.
But Qijne led her through all of this, past searing chunks of meat, huge snakelike creatures battering against the bars of their cages as the heat killed them, cauldrons that smelled of leek and licorice, boiling blood, molasses.
After a hundred paces the cooking pits were replaced by tables crowded with more delicate equipment of glass and bright metal. Some were clearly made for distillation, this made obvious by the coils that rose above; others resembled retorts, parsers, and fermentation vats. Along the walls were what amounted to vaster versi
ons of these things, distilling, parsing, and fermenting tons of material.
It was breathtaking, and for a moment Annaïg forgot her situation in wonder of it.
But then something caught her eye that brought it all back: a cable, the thickest she had seen yet, pulsing with the pearly light of soul stuff and, more specifically, the life force of the people of Lil-moth. It passed through various glass collars filled with liquid and colored gases, and insectile filaments and extremely fine tubing coiled and wound into what might be condensation chambers.
She felt tears forming, and trembled with the effort to keep them back.
For the first time since entering the kitchens, Qijne spoke.
“You like my kitchen,” she said. “I see it.”
Her throat caught, but then breath came, and something seemed to rise up through her, inflating her. She focused her gaze on Qijne’s eyes.
“It’s amazing,” she admitted. “I don’t understand most of it.”
“You really know nothing of Umbriel, do you?”
“Only that it is murdering people.”
“Murdering? That’s a strange word.”
“It’s the right word. Why? Why is Umbriel doing this?”
“What a meaningless question,” Qijne said. “And how unknowable.” She took Annaïg’s chin between thumb and forefinger. “I’ll let you know what questions are worth asking, little thing. Give me all the attention and love you possess, and you will thrive here. Otherwise, it’s the sump. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. My kitchen.” She opened her arms as if to take it all in. “There are many appetites in Umbriel. Some are coarse—meat and tubers, offal and grain. Other habitants have more spiritual appetites, subsisting on distilled essences, pure elements, tenebrous vapors. The loftiest of our lords require the most refined cuisine, that which has as its basis the very stuff of souls. And above all, they crave novelty. And that, my dear, is where you come in.”
“So that’s why you want me? To help you invent new dishes?”
“There are many sorts of dishes, dear. Umbriel needs more than raw energy to run. The sump needs tending; the Fringe Gyre needs feeding. Raw materials must be found or created. Poisons, balms, salves, entertainments, are all in great demand. Drugs to numb, to please, to bring fantastic visions. All of these things and more are done in the kitchens. And we must stay ahead of others, you see? Stay in favor. And that means new, better, more powerful, deadlier, more interesting.”
