The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  She snaps her fingers at another chef. “Yo. Bodard. That duck stew was amazing, but let’s talk improvements.”

  The kitchen returns to work.

  21

  Three Weeks Until the Wisdom Ceremony

  “This is mint.” Benzo plucks a dark green leaf from the orchard’s herb garden and swallows it as though he’s disposing of evidence. “Yeah. Chocolate mint. It creeps all over the garden if we don’t watch it. If Paulius is mad at you, he’ll send you out to weed it out, you gotta dig up every last tendril…”

  Benzo never stops moving as he works his way down the herbs’ hydroponics trays—plucking at a stray vine, wiping moisture off on the towel at his waist, absent-mindedly checking the stasis cube filled with this morning’s broth that hangs off his shoulder.

  Benzo’s never-ending commentary might seem friendly to an outsider, but to Kenna the words feel like a barrier—a steady monologuing flow like a river around a castle, never giving Kenna an opportunity to say anything meaningful.

  They used to be so good with silence. But as The Sol Majestic has tensed itself to plan out the Wisdom Ceremony, Benzo’s picked up on the kitchen’s panicky energy, has begun filling every spare moment with words.

  “Benzo,” Kenna whispers; Benzo works in noisy pantries where raised voices don’t even register as rebuke.

  Yet Kenna’s patient silence evokes guilty twitches; he notes Benzo’s shoulders tensing, before pulling the stasis cube’s strap over his shoulder.

  “… what’d I do now?” Benzo asks.

  Benzo’s shy grin is like a sun-rim peeking over an eclipse—a bright reminder of the friendship they’d once shared. Kenna could forgive anything as long as Benzo gave him that grin.

  Kenna chuckles—not because he wants to laugh, but because he should set Benzo at ease. Yet the laugh is as fake as nutricrackers; Benzo’s pale face squinches up.

  He squeezes Benzo’s shoulder. “… You—you forgot to give me a taste of the mint, is all.”

  Benzo’s tremors calm at Kenna’s touch. But not in a good way. Like an engine shutting down.

  “I mean, you know,” Kenna says, and he can hear himself babbling, hear himself throwing up walls of words against this weird disharmony that’s seeped into their relationship, “You’re supposed to be educating me in high cuisine, and I know you’re quite eager to return to making a new batch of broth, which is why I said perhaps you shouldn’t cook for me today, we’ll consume raw ingredients in the orchard…”

  … and maybe you’ll be inspired by the warmth of the sun and the chlorophyll-scented breeze and you’ll hold me and we’ll kiss away this weird tension …

  “… but I hold a deep longing to, you know, actually taste the foods. If that’s acceptable.”

  “Of course it’s acceptable.” Benzo lurches free, but unconsciously strokes the place on his shoulder where Kenna grabbed him. He hauls out a piece of mint, holds it out between thumb and forefinger toward Kenna.

  Can he get away with cupping Benzo’s hands in his, like he did with the spoonful of broth once? He doesn’t dare. Instead, he pulls the mint leaf from between Benzo’s fingers, closes his eyes, places it in his mouth. He chews slowly, tasting the wet leaf’s peppery bite, thinking, slow down, Benzo. Stop obsessing over the Wisdom Ceremony and the broth and stay with me …

  He doesn’t open his eyes until he has licked the last shred of mint off his teeth.

  Benzo has walked away, rooting up a bouquet of herbs, sampling several at once.

  “Benzo.”

  To his horror, he speaks Benzo’s name with Mother’s stiff disappointment.

  Benzo had been plucking plants with a frantic energy, but at Kenna’s sharp tone he draws himself up straight, all gratuitous motion extinguished. He pulls the herb bouquet to his chest, elbows tucked in …

  Benzo’s blue eyes have grown hooded, his friend replaced by a servant.

  He’s a slave, leased to The Sol Majestic, Kenna realizes. Snapping at him reminds him of Her orders—

  “I’m sorry,” Kenna says. “I just—something’s wrong, and I don’t fathom its depths.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” He rolls the herbs between his fingers until they turn to pulp. “We have the Wisdom Ceremony in three weeks, is all.”

  “I know. And how shall I appreciate it when I don’t know what I’m eating?” He takes the herbs from Benzo, sets them aside. “I’ve—I’ve already rusted too many eggs. I need you to teach me, to be here for me…”

  Because this is all the time we’ll ever have together. But Kenna can’t bring himself to admit that, because saying it would make it too real to bear.

  Benzo knows what he means, though. He licks his lips, finally tasting the mint. Then he cups his fingers under the broth stasis cube, stroking it with the tenderness with which he used to touch Kenna, his gaze drifting over toward the entryway to the Majestic’s kitchen.

  “I gotta…” Benzo grips his forehead. “I gotta get the broth right.”

  “Except you don’t.” Kenna’s watched Benzo snort drugs to stay up until five in the morning, making two broths after dinner service and one broth before. He wishes he could understand why Benzo has become so obsessed—more obsessed—with perfecting the broth all of a sudden. Then again, the entire kitchen’s on edge as the Wisdom Ceremony draws closer, with Montgomery shouting orders and Scrimshaw stalking the halls berating people for wasting ingredients and chefs getting into screaming matches. Perhaps Benzo is hoping to contribute what little he can to Kenna’s exultation …

  “It’d be lovely to sup your broth as the climax to my ceremony,” Kenna says carefully, “but … I’m not even certain they’ll utilize broth in the final dishes. The courses seem absurdly complex, and I haven’t witnessed the kitchen using much broth in the course of the normal service…”

  “What in the void do you know?” Benzo’s cheeks prickle in a flushed sweat. “You’ve been here three weeks and you think you know the kitchen!? Sweet void, that’s why Paulius made me teach you! You, the lost Prince!”

  Benzo is as taut as a mooring cable, his sneering mouth half-open and ready to unleash another round of insults …

  Then he frowns as he finds nothing within Kenna but sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” Kenna says. “You’re correct; I don’t have the measure of how this works. I’m not trying to insult or demean you. You’re my friend, and I…”

  I don’t have many friends, Kenna wants to say.

  Of course Benzo knows that anyway. The thought seems to still him, biting those luscious lips as he swallows back words. Then he shakes his head, a dazed alcoholic shaking off a regretted bender.

  “I just saw Montgomery.” He pushes past Kenna toward the kitchen door. “She hasn’t tasted today’s broth.”

  Which one? Kenna wonders, knowing Benzo’s made at least two batches today.

  He trails behind as Benzo stumbles toward the Majestic’s frosted glass door. His gut twists around a scant bellyful of herbs as he nears the kitchen’s frantic labor.

  I took you out to the sun-warmed loam because I wanted you to relax, he thinks. Nobody is relaxing in there.

  The door swings open and The Sol Majestic exudes its sweet scent of broiled snakefruit and the oily heat of seared pterodactyl, but now there’s a sour sweaty note laced through the air. Knives have always chopped, yet now the cutting holds a flat machine-gun anger; pots have always rattled, but now they’re slammed into stoves like criminals flung into the backs of police cars.

  Time is running out, and it’s taken the kitchen’s laughter with it.

  Kenna threads his way through the kitchen’s clockwork chaos; before, he’d had to dodge red-hot pans because the chefs were so busy they barely noticed his presence. Now they’re on the defensive, treating any intrusion as an incursion, and they whip pots of boiling pho across Kenna’s path as if daring him to reap the blistered rewards.

  Their chefs’ outfits are immaculate; that much Scrimshaw demands of them. But gre
asy tangles rest beneath their hairnets, and the chefs wobble on their thick-soled boots, blanching vegetables in a daze as they contemplate ways to perfect the Wisdom Ceremony.

  Montgomery stomps back to her station at the kitchen’s rear, back near the Escargone’s bulky black hatch. Her arms are heaped high with squirming starfish and jars of grainy red paste. She slams them down into the station, blinking her eyes twice as she refocuses on a recipe flashing across her biometrics, then snatches a fresh pan and drizzles citrus oil across its face.

  Benzo slows as Montgomery grabs a jar and twists it open as though she was wringing a bird’s neck. He had held the stasis cube out before him like he’d brought a gift to royalty—but as he watches her flick the paste into the pan, he holds it protectively against his chest.

  Montgomery’s head tilts a fraction in his direction.

  Benzo bobs his head in apology. “I’m sorry, Montgomery—I just wanted to know if you, you know, might—”

  “Taste your fucking broth?”

  Benzo looks so stricken, Kenna’s arms itch to hug him. “… yeah. If it’s not…”

  “Sure, sure.” She snatches the stasis cube. “Maybe something will surprise me in a good way.”

  Benzo cracks his knuckles as Montgomery withdraws a steaming cup of fresh broth. She swirls it, staring into its depths like a fortune teller reading tea leaves, her brass goggles whirring as they refocus. She holds the cup pinky-out, sips noisily.

  She bends over convulsively and spits it into a nearby sink. The Bitch makes a keening noise as Montgomery wipes the broth off the cask in the sink as though Benzo’s broth were a toxin.

  “Sorry, baby,” she whispers, before whirling on Benzo. “What the fuck was that?”

  “My broth.” Benzo breathes in carefully, trying to calm his hitching chest. “Paulius isn’t here, so I thought maybe you’d judge it for me…”

  “I’m not your fucking backstop, Benzo. You have to judge first.” She shakes the cup at him, spattering golden broth across Benzo’s black-striped vest. “Are you telling me this is Majestic-quality broth?”

  He smears broth across his chest like he is trying to claw off his skin. “I … I wasn’t sure…”

  “Like fuck you weren’t. You’re hoping if you hand us enough cups of crappy dishwater, eventually someone will tell you you’re a chef. You’re not. You’re moving backwards, you little twerp. This is worse broth than you were making a month ago, and you know it.”

  The chefs flinch at Montgomery’s accusations, attesting to their accuracy; each raises a hand from their cutting boards in a half-hearted attempt to interrupt, but their hands lower as they realize no one can defend Benzo’s cooking skills.

  Worst of all, Benzo sees them coming to his defense and backing off. They like having you around, Kenna thinks, but they can’t justify you as a chef. Which, to a boy who’s here to win a bet with his master that he is a worthy cook, is a damning sin.

  Benzo studies his shoes, gulping back sobs.

  “Now, Montgomery,” Kenna snaps. “There’s no need to humiliate anyone in the course of duty—”

  He barely dodges the broth she flings at him.

  “I’m not humiliating him!” she screams, clamping her arms against her side lest she start flinging knives. “I’m pointing out the bleeding fucking obvious—he’s not good enough! They’re all staring because they’re not good enough! The Wisdom Ceremony’s in three goddamned weeks, and the dishes we have are not good enough, the concepts we have are not good enough, the chefs are not good enough!”

  She swivels her head around, glaring at the chefs. Daring them to contradict her. The best they can muster is a muttered gripe: “What do you want of us, Montgomery?”

  With a growl, she storms over to the Escargone’s hatch, grabs it with both hands, slams that black maw open with a bang. She aims one hand at the cramped kitchen:

  “I want you to get in this goddamned machine and buy us more time!”

  As Kenna looks back over the kitchen, he realizes almost no one stands near him—everyone has switched stations so they’re as far away from that ugly machine as possible. Only the lowliest prep cooks work beneath the Escargone’s shadow.

  That jagged hatchway is a mortal wound, Kenna realizes. He doubts the chefs even realize they’ve rejiggered their workflow to avoid going near it—yet that hulking pile of circuitry is a reminder of their lost invulnerability.

  Locking themselves into this stoop-shouldered torture chamber for months on end had destroyed The Sol Majestic’s best chefs. But Paulius had entered this time-mangling device and come out smiling—proof they were blessed.

  Now Paulius had gone back in for more corrective surgeries, and the Wisdom Ceremony was imploding, and the Escargone had come to symbolize all their failures.

  Paulius could dispel this sour fog in minutes. He’d walk into the kitchen, smile, and tell them every service looks this bad three weeks before its debut. He’d sample their dishes, garnish the chefs with bright advice, challenge them in ways that kept their heads buzzing with new ideas.

  Montgomery can’t do that. She knows what’s riding on this next Wisdom Ceremony—and though Benzo snuffles back tears, Kenna cannot blame her for hurting him. She’s like a feral cat backed into a corner.

  The longer Kenna stays, the more he realizes how carefully Paulius’s delusions have been cultivated. Yet he also realizes how this kitchen runs on delusions. They’ve only achieved the impossible because Paulius, and therefore they, are shielded from knowing the consequences of failure.

  Kenna misses Paulius so fiercely his chest hitches. Not the drugged patient in the docbot bed: the real Paulius, the Inevitable Paulius.

  Montgomery slams the door again, a hollow boom; the chefs’ knees flex as though they might dive for cover. “Who?” she bellows. “Who’ll get in this fucking thing?”

  One wrings her chef’s cap in her hands. “It’s not safe in there, Montgomery…”

  “It’s perfectly safe!”

  “It mangled Paulius,” another chef says with horror.

  “You can’t trust tech like that,” a third chef interjects; her friends nod in agreement. “Paulius made some hefty bargains to get Captain Lizzie to allow that thing on her station, most sane empires have banned time-tech…”

  Kenna almost corrects them—the machine didn’t fail, Paulius teleported out—then remembers: Paulius doesn’t want anyone to know about his Niffeneger syndrome.

  So what if Paulius is embarrassed? he thinks, ready to spill the truth, then remembers: no one will invest in The Sol Majestic if they know Paulius could disappear forever. People have committed to years’ worth of slow travel to taste his food—would they do so, knowing the head chef could evaporate overnight?

  Telling the staff what really happened that night would condemn The Sol Majestic to a slow death.

  How have lies held this shivering wreck together for this long?

  Rage boils up inside. All his choices involve deciding when The Sol Majestic will die, and he needs to find a way to make his beloved home survive—not for a few weeks, not for a few years, but forever.

  Montgomery slaps the hatch. “We can’t do this in three weeks. You need to slip in there and squeeze out a few months to nail your courses down…”

  “If it’s so safe, why don’t you do it?” Bosworth snaps.

  “Because I’m a fucking Sensate!” Sensing distress, the Bitch squirts green puffs of air. “The same room every day? That gastronomic jail cell would fucking kill me, you assholes!”

  “If you won’t risk your life for the meal,” Bosworth replies, “then why should we?”

  “When moral courage runs thin,” Scrimshaw says, “perhaps financial incentives can purchase backbone.”

  Kenna shouldn’t be surprised to find that Scrimshaw, towering as she is, can move with such deathly silence that even Montgomery hasn’t noticed her creeping into the kitchen.

  She carries a robe—an Inevitable robe, butterfly-bright ag
ainst her dull black coat—spread wide in her clawlike hands. The fabric hangs down like a burial shroud. When she sweeps that horn-rimmed, merciless gaze across the kitchen, it is though she is a detective, wondering who murdered this place’s future.

  She rubs the thin fabric between her gaunt fingers, affecting an air of calculation. Then she jerks her chin toward the Escargone’s interior.

  “Relative time,” she says.

  Kenna does not know what that means, yet judging from the way the staff exhales in a low whistle, everyone else does.

  Scrimshaw paces slowly around the kitchen, slinging the Inevitable robe jauntily over her shoulder. “I do not misspeak. Traditionally, laboring in the Escargone paid you according to our time-flow’s rates: if a month spent inside took four hours out here, then you got paid half a day. And when Paulius was well enough to teach you, that was sufficient: you were getting an extended master class, so why should we pay you for the privilege?”

  She weaves her way around the aisles, encouraging someone to speak out as she passes. But as she glides by, each of the chefs holds their breath, examines their ingredients, terrified she might make a direct request.

  “Yet with the … changes…” she continues, “mayhap we must offer fiduciary gain. So now. Spend a month in there, you’ll be paid a month’s wages, no matter how little time passes on the outside. I know many owe debts to your culinary arts schools, spent yourself to ruin to purchase a trip out to this distant outpost. With proper discipline, you could earn a year’s salary in a week.”

  Mouths open as if to speak, then shut when people stare into the Escargone’s shadowy maw. Bad enough when Paulius locked his employees in that cramped hole until the relentless cycle of cook, sleep, cook, sleep, cook, sleep drove them gibbering with claustrophobia—but to do that and think it might malfunction? To be sealed away in there like a pharaoh in his tomb, clawing at the walls, your bones drying to dust as aeons passed inside, yet mere minutes passed on the outside?