Magic Banquet (24 page)

The lord’s expression didn’t change, but he
grew fierce. The black of his pupils filled his eyes like spilled
ink. “The Chef built this delicious city out of terror and the
dying screams of guests from Banquets past.”

The swordsman tugged the empress behind him.
He squared his shoulders with the lord. No one stood between Aja
and the lord’s gaze, and each of his words pinched her.

“You’ve tasted the fruits of his power, and
one of you will have to pay. Your death will give the Chef the
magic to prepare another Banquet.”

“But the Banquet’s over,” Aja said.

“Is it?” The lord beckoned for her to walk
out the palace archway. “Then try to leave.”

Thirteenth Course,
Part III:

Confectionary Catastrophe

“We need to reach the warehouse.” Aja dashed
from the palace. “It’s got to be our way out.”

“Does it?” The swordsman jogged beside
her.

“We came in that way. Maybe the magic carpet
will carry us back.”

The guests ran behind her. With a glance
back, Aja saw they left a pattern of foot indentations in the
chocolate street. Puddles of pink and orange gelato covered the
boulevard. They mixed together into the colors of vomit. Aja jumped
over them all.

The heat of dragon blood burned in their
hearts, and Aja leaped onto a rooftop for a straighter path. She
landed with a cutting pain in her belly. The cramping of her
stomach slowed her to a jog.

“Isn’t it that way?” The swordsman pointed
toward a dome.

“No, past the glass spiral.” Aja guided them
to the left of a workshop tower. The rooftop stuck to their feet
with squishing noises, and it stank of dates.

“Have a care.” Solin’s crutch hooked over
her shoulder.

Aja stopped in front of a sagging rooftop.
The supporting beams of toffee had stretched, and the date treat
bowed downward in a pit. The roofs sweated sugar above the glaring
sun.

“Must be melting.” Aja jumped over the dip.
She landed with a gasp. Her stomach felt made of jagged glass.

“The Chef didn’t think of the sun? Oof!” The
swordsman clutched his belly and puffed out his cheeks.

The guests huffed their way over the
rooftops in the rising heat. Aja took the stairs instead of hopping
down. The drop would only upset her stomach more. The chocolate
road squished between her toes.

“Ah,” the swordsman said, “here we
aren’t.”

Aja had hoped to see the sliding warehouse
door as it had been, of wood and brass. The one before them was of
pecan tart and honeycomb. It oozed. The swordsman lifted a foot to
kick it down.

“Don’t do it.” Aja hopped in front of the
door. “We’ll need to close it behind us. Then it’ll open on the
right city.”

“Think that’ll work?” The swordsman braced
himself against the side of the door.

Aja prayed it would. Please, merciful gods
and pitiless maths. Let it be possible. She watched as the
swordsman shoved, and the door stuck, then stretched outward. The
honeycomb broke. The planks of pecan tart bent and crumbled in a
mess. How nasty and terrible!

“So,” the swordsman said, “what else will
work?”

Aja scrambled over the broken door. The
pecans clung to her legs with their sugars. The inside of the
warehouse had changed, too. She could see no sign of the Chef or
the djinn’s fire. Balls of dough were stacked to the ceiling, the
mounds greasy with syrup.

“The carpet might be buried in there,” she
said.

“I might be able to clear it.” The swordsman
held her back, sucked in breath, then heaved out a swirling orange
and red gust of dragon fire.

Dough balls shrank in the flames to black
sludge. It reeked of candy. More stacks of pastries sloughed
downward to fill the opening.

“How’d you do that?” Aja could not feel any
heat inside her now.

“Comes naturally.” The swordsman filled his
lungs again. He breathed out, but instead of dragon fire this time
he only wheezed smoke. He held his belly. “Knew I shouldn’t have
eaten that third bucket of ice cream.”

Aja waded into the wall of dough, scooping
her way forward. “We have to dig through.”

The other guests helped, except for the
lord. He stood in the street with his back to them. Janny did the
work of two by squashing the balls and shoving them into her mouth.
Between slurpy bites, she said, “Why am I still eating? I’m far too
sober for this to be a good idea.”

The swordsman plowed forward with sweeps of
his arms. He chomped down the pastries at head level. “There’s
nowhere else to put these snot balls.”

Aja plunged her head into the treats and
scrounged for the carpet. Her nails scraped grooves in the
chocolate floor. When she floundered back to her feet, the treats
pulled at her hair and clung.

“I don’t think the carpet is here.”
Breathing hurt Aja. Her stomach clubbed her, and fright clamped
down on her chest.

“Whoa!” The swordsman dipped out of sight.
Sugary glop tumbled over him. The mound heaved, and he struggled
back into view. He pointed a finger to his feet. “Found the stair
down.”

“The cellar door will lead to the kitchen.”
Aja dug at the dough balls. Her fingers stuck together with syrup.
“It has to.”

All five of the guests excavated the stairs,
one dark-chocolate step at a time. The pastry balls tumbled down
after them, threatening to bury them. Aja and the others attacked
the treats, smashing them and scarfing them down.

“I’ve struck door,” the swordsman said.

“Is it metal or candy?” Aja could not see
through the gloom.

“Won’t break this one,” he said. “Gotta
clear the base.”

Aja scrabbled beside the empress. They pawed
the rubble of sweets aside. Aja tossed sugar globs over her
shoulder.

“Found the handle,” the swordsman said.
“Step back.”

Aja heard a slurping of syrup. “Did you open
it?”

“Afraid so.”

There was no kitchen light. Aja shoved a
hand forward, past the doorway. She touched a wall of something
cool and soft like mud. She pawed at it, and clumps fell on her
that smelled of moist chocolate.

“Fudge,” the swordsman said.

“This shouldn’t be here.” Aja felt sticky on
the outside and gross on the inside. “This can’t be—”

The ground rumbled, and dough blobs rained
onto their heads.

“Earthquake.” The swordsman hoisted up Aja.
He carried her outside into the light. “Oh, you’re not the
empress.”

“Cake quake!” The empress said. She stumbled
out after them with Janny and Solin.

The sixth guest faced them. The lord cast
three shadows, each with its own hideous head. “The Chef baked a
perfect city. Perfection must always be fleeting.”

He pointed, and Aja followed the red streak
of his sleeve to the palace. Its dome caved inward with a wet sound
of sucking mud. Slender towers folded down after it with
splattering booms.

The sun blazed destruction on the candy
city.

Rooftops swayed over the guests. Aja choked
on a dust of coconut shavings. The quivering ground turned the
white chocolate to liquid. It trapped Aja’s feet, and she fell.

“We need high ground.” The swordsman scooped
up the empress.

Another tower crumpled.

“Make that clear ground,” he said.

The lord glided above the white swamp. “If
there’s a safe spot in this city, it’ll be a trap.”

Solin helped Janny, leaving Aja to slog for
herself. She could have managed better, but her stomach was a dead
weight. A building’s wall tipped over her. The pressure of date
sweets slammed her into the muck. She inhaled chocolate. It tasted
of death.

Slapping, flopping, pushing, Aja escaped.
Her robes clung to her. The morass of street was too narrow, with
the walls swaying on either side. The ground was too gloppy.

“Wait!”

The guests must not have heard her over the
smacking crash of another palace crumbling. Aja fell further
behind. The sugar miasma in the air gagged her. She bent over to
vomit, but nothing came up. Everything inside her felt too tightly
packed.

The others disappeared around a street
corner. Aja knew she would have to climb over these buildings to
meet the guests on the next lane. She dug handholds into a wall. A
windowsill sagged under her feet. She should be able to jump over
this block of homes. Where had her dragon powers gone? She was
helpless as a bug. Again. Sugar glass folded inward, and the
building buckled. Aja fell into an oozing cavern, with the ceiling
lowering to crush her. She swam-paddled her way out of the sticky
rubble and back onto the street.

She couldn’t draw breath. She was too
full.

Aja feared she would never catch up. The
others needed to wait for her. They should notice she was gone.
Friends would see she wasn’t there. A family watched out for each
other.

The guests never looked back. They had
abandoned her.

Ahead of them a spire fall. The
glassblower’s tower was a twisting pinnacle like a long seashell.
Its spiral teal and pink design had to be made of crystal sugar. It
still shattered like glass. The explosion gusted outward with
glittering haze.

The guests had stopped at a crossroads and
covered their faces with their arms. A storm of sugar shards rushed
past them and dug into Aja’s skin, piercing her robes. Crystal
spears slurped into the chocolate. She slipped and stumbled up to
the other people. She was with them again, but she couldn’t say if
they were with her. Sugar cracked underfoot as they headed toward
the city wall.

“After the Chef told us to relax, I knew
this would be a cataclysm,” the lord said, his coat still
unstained. “There’s nothing so scary as reassurances.”

Ahead of them the city wall convulsed.
Cracks opened in its marzipan.

The swordsman stopped, swaying in time with
the wall. “It’s coming down.”

Aja searched for another possibility of
escape. No, no—Wait, who was that beside her? The guest had long
hair of grey. The woman’s double chins bounced with each stride. A
muck of dessert splattered her paisley dress. Janny now looked as
old as when she had she arrived at the Banquet. She had worn a
turban then.

“Your hair is grey.”

Aja had not meant to say it aloud, but she
must have. Old Janny clutched at her locks, pulled at them, and
started to scream. Her voice fell to a groan. Her fingers dented
the bulge of her belly. “What’ve they done to me?”

“Watch out!” The swordsman pulled the
empress back.

The wall convulsed and toppled. Marzipan
avalanched. The flood of sugary almond sludge funneled between
buckling buildings toward the guests.

They wallowed away as fast as they
could.

“Ah! I shouldn’t have eaten so much,” the
lord said. He flickered and became a stooped man with a grimy coat.
The next moment he again floated above the wreckage of dessert. “I
shouldn’t have eaten anything.”

The tide of marzipan slammed Aja into the
chocolate street. The hot goo washed over her. She kicked and
swatted and fought against it. She battled to the surface and
gasped in air slightly less thick with sugar.

She floundered but could not pull herself
free of the marzipan. It thickened around her into rock candy. Her
stomach felt twice as large as it should be, and trying to move it
was an agony.

Aja scraped her eyes clear to see the day
dark, the sun gone. The moon passed in front in an eclipse, leaving
no more than a smoldering ring of fire.

The other guests moaned around her. From
what she could see, they were all trapped. The lord’s sleeve was
caked brown. He had lost his hair. He must’ve worn a wig that had
been torn off. Scars lined his scalp, and his ears were mangled
stubs of skin. The sound of his wheezing terrified Aja.

Then came the Chef.

He rode through the sky in a bowl of stone,
rowing with a thick grinding club. Everything was wrong. Nothing
was right. Both the mortar he sat in and the pestle oar were etched
with spidery symbols.

“If you feel ready to burst,” the Chef said,
“it’s because sugar corroded the magic of the nine-tailed fox. All
the food you ate tonight is expanding to its true size.”

One guest objected with a croak. Aja panted.
Her guts were stretching. Ow! Ow!

“You were warned of the dangers of sweets.”
The Chef paddled overhead with his pestle. “You ignored.”

Aja couldn’t remember when they had been
warned. Not in any recent course. It hurt too much to think.

The djinn flew up behind him. She glanced at
Aja, and sparks dripped from the djinn’s eyes.

“Tonight’s will be a Banquet like no other,”
the Chef said. “This night, five die, and one lives.”

Aja’s body throbbed with food and disbelief.
She had to get away. She could only move one arm, and it flopped
forward. From somewhere nearby came a high whining sound.

The Chef handed the djinn a vial and nodded.
She swooped down to Aja. Flame-warm fingers lifted Aja’s chin and
pressed the vial to her lips. Aja twisted her head away.

“It’ll save you,” the djinn said. “It’s more
essence of the nine-tailed fox.”

Aja stopped resisting. Gel dribbled from the
vial down her throat, and her stomach contracted in a relief of
numbness.

The djinn lifted Aja from the muck. The
djinn cradled her in front of the Chef in his floating mortar.

Aja’s nerves shivered, but she took hold of
herself enough to speak. “I—I’m going to live?”

“Consuming you would bestow nothing on me.”
The Chef pressed a hand against his chest, fingers spread in a star
pattern. His eyes fell to the five guests encased below. A fat slug
of a tongue stuck out from his mouth and slimed his upper lip.
“Their greatness is mine.”

“No! You—”

“Take her back to the city,” the Chef said
without looking at the djinn. He reached down, then pulled up the
limp and swollen empress. Dropping her beside him in the mortar, he
stripped off her bird necklace and tossed it to the djinn. “Clean
Aja. Give her a few knickknacks to wear. She’ll have a future, if
she eats well.”