Magic Banquet (6 page)

The Chef’s broad chin dimpled twice when he
frowned. It sort of looked like a snout. “Lesser chefs may resort
to distractions. My entrées are all the entertainment you’ll
require.”

He gave Aja a fan. She could not open it.
Her fingers had minds of their own, serpentine ones with no
interest in slipping the latches of an ivory case. She glanced to
the one in Old Janny’s hand.

It unfolded with gilt trim. The fan had a
painting of an eight-legged lizard in an orchard. Old Janny flung
the fan away and pressed both her shaking hands against her
paisley-dressed bosom. Her turban was just as bright a pink.

“Trying to kill a soft-hearted woman, are
you? It’s not enough for you to turn my better half into a
goat.”

Old Janny stamped her right forefoot. The
black cleft of her hoof indented the carpet. The design of silver
thread had changed to that of rolling hills and fruit trees.

“You’re right to be cautious,” the Chef
said. “The basilisk protects itself from predators by petrifying
them, both with its gaze and the magic in its blood.”

“And we’re to eat such a beast?” The pale
wattle of skin beneath Old Janny’s chin shook with her fear. She
patted her chest. “Courage, Janny. Courage.”

“The basilisk magic disperses in air,” the
Chef said. “You need only chew the
pâté
with
your mouth open. The mastication should be concealed with
considerate use of the fan.”

On the dropped fan, the painting of the
reptilian creature wound itself around a pear tree. The basilisk
bowed the trunk to the breaking point, four of its eight clawed
arms pressing against the bark. Its beak-jaws closed on the last
pear.

“Hold on,” Old Janny said. “Basilisks eat
children, don’t they? Which means the beasts mustn’t be all
bad.”

The Chef said, “I force-feed goblins to the
basilisk to give the
pâté a nutty
flavor
.”

The djinn served Aja a plate. The
pâté
looked like a slice of cheese with
orange flecks. A pear beside it was carved into a flower shape.

“
Rattle! Crash!”
The noise came from
the kitchen. The empress screamed in surprise. Aja twitched. Her
fingers writhed and angled their fangs toward the stairs. The
clangor had sounded to Aja like a stove burst to pieces. Or
something cooking had escaped.

“The stupidity of golems will be the death
of me,” the Chef said. He thumped down the stairs.

Aja nudged her plate. “Will this cure us?
The djinn said it would.”

The angry light of flames wreathed the Chef.
Without answering, he disappeared into the kitchen.

A fork clinked against a plate. Old Janny
lifted a bite of
pâté halfway to her mouth. She set
it down uneaten. Her hooves flicked out in front her as she stood.
She clopped toward the empress, who was leaning down as if to peck
the food from her plate.

“
You poor pigeon, let me
help.”
Old Janny picked up the empress’s plate. “Turn this
way, so no one has to see your face.”

“They already all know who I am,” the
empress said.

Beside her, the lionman looked up with
concern. The fan lay broken on his knee. He had tried to open it
with his paws. Pressing both hands together, he trapped the fork
between his furry mitts and angled the prongs toward his plate.

“That handsome kitten and I served the same
mistress.” Old Janny nodded to the lionman. She loosened the
empress’s veil and fed her a bite. “Keep your mouth open when you
chew, and, oh my. Let me just pick up this fan. Never thought I’d
prefer the sight of a basilisk.”

No one offered to help Aja. The other guests
had moved their plates as far from her asps as they could. She saw
she would just have to help herself.

Aja ignored her fork. The instrument looked
dangerous, and it would stab her tongue, if she managed to pick up
the fork at all. Neither did she touch her knife. Too risky with
her bendy fingers. Aja cut the pâté by crushing it with the side of
her hand. The food squished around her scales.

She smushed the pâté into bits. Now she had
to get it into her mouth. She couldn’t lap it up like a dog. Not in
front of everyone. Her thumb snake gobbled up a piece. She scolded
the snake. “You’re supposed to chew first. Uh oh.”

A tingling raced up her thumb and shot into
her hand. The snake froze, mouth closed, stiff as a stick. Its
scales dissolved into a bloodless skin.

“Look! It’s working,” Aja said. “It…it
turned to stone.”

The nearest snakes wound around the thumb as
they might slide over a statue. If the asps tried to nibble on her
thumb, she thought they would break their fangs. Aja grimaced,
tongue curled between her teeth.

She could petrify every snake, but that
would leave her no moving hands.
I have to eat the basilisk the
proper way
,
like Ryn.

“Yum!” The empress smacked her mouth open
and closed with gusto. Even with the chewing sounds, her voice rang
with beauty. “It’s better than the stew. I could burst with flavor,
but I’ll sing instead. Ahh-ja! A-jaaaaa!”

Aja looked up from her plate. That sounded
like her name, but the empress was facing away.

“Ahaha-ja,” the empress sang, “your snake
sadness is a pity, but is it true that you live in this city?”

“Um, yes.” Aja had to say it to the side of
the empress’s head.

“Why does the Chef host his Banquets? Is it
a lure? Solin thinks the Chef wishes to harm, but I’m not so
sure.”

A winged girl facing the other way was
singing questions for Aja and her snakes. Aja decided this was the
weirdest conversation ever. The empress might expect Aja’s answers
to rhyme. Why had the empress even asked? Because Aja lived in
Jaraah? Perhaps none of the other guests were from the city.

“There’s always been a Midnight Banquet,”
Aja said. “Never thought of why.”

Aja curved her hands around her plate. Her
snakes faced each other and hissed forked-tongue challenges. Except
the finger that had turned to stone.

Had the Chef wanted to hurt her? To change
her? She thought he might’ve tricked her to come, to fatten her up
and turn her into a plump snake. But snake meat was cheap. That
didn’t make sense.

“I don’t know what the Chef wants,” Aja
said. Chills pulsed up from her hands, as if her blood were turning
cold.

“He has to want something.” This, Old Janny
said. “All men do. Bless them.”

Around the streets, people spoke of the
Midnight Banquet as a kindness, a stroke of good fortune. Aja
hadn’t seen any kindness in the Chef’s eyes.

“He’s afraid of the lord,” the empress said,
“like a bird frightened by a hawk.”

Old Janny fed the empress another forkful.
“You mustn’t rub noses with the likes of Lord Tethiel. Not a
wholesome loaf, not like him.”

She made an approving noise toward the
lionman.

“Don’t blame you for conscripting him,” Old
Janny said. “An eyeful, isn’t he? A real knee knocker, if you catch
my meaning.”

If only Old Janny would eat something and
stop talking. Aja had to focus on coaxing another snake to try the
pâté. With two adjacent asps petrified, she might hold a fork
between them.

“Get me my youth back, and I’d be on the
empress’s guard like mud on toads,” Old Janny said. “Wasted my
youth raising children. After the fourth baby, tell me that you
aren’t owed a few years.”

“I want twelve children,” the empress said
with her mouth full. The air swirled from the beat of her wings.
“If they fly away, I’d sing them back.”

“Got you,” Aja said to her finger. It had
swallowed a ball of pâté.

Old Janny called to the djinn. “Hey, you,
Miss Glowcheeks. Would you fetch an old soul more ash from the Tree
of Life? I heard a woman can walk out of this Banquet twenty years
younger.”

“I’ll bring you more ash as soon as
possible,” the djinn said without moving so much as an inch.

“There’s a good girl.” Old Janny knelt in
front of her own plate, front legs folding first, then her hind
ones. She lifted her skirt hem and looked back at a white tuft of a
goat tail. “Course, won’t matter how young I am if that’s what I’m
wagging. Suppose it could be worse.”

She glanced at Aja’s hands.

Aja tried to pinch the fork between her
petrified fingers but could not move them even that much. The wrist
of that hand had trouble turning. Her utensil dropped to clatter on
the plate. Her idea wouldn’t work, and her two fingers might stay
hard as rock forever.

Tears burned the corners of her eyes. They
felt like venom.

She stared eye to eyes with her snakes.
Their pupils were a vertical slash.

“Have to be human again,” Old Janny said,
reaching for her fork. “Have to take my medicine, even if it’s
basilisk.”

Old Janny’s hand slipped past the utensil,
to lift her chalice instead. She threw back a swig.

She jerked, and her body rippled. Her eyes
bulged. Cheeks puffed out, but she did not spit the drink.

Swallowing, Old Janny aimed an eye into her
glass. “What was that?”

The djinn floated to her side. “I should
have mentioned it. This is a symphonic tonic.”

“Meaning?”

“A symphony in a bottle. You can attune the
melody to your tastes by stirring the tonic and running a finger
over the glass.”

Old Janny sniffed her glass. “Smells
expensive.”

“The precise ingredients of the tonic cannot
be spoken of at a respectable dinner,” the djinn said. “Think of it
as distilled music.”

“That sounds soar-over-clouds amazing,” the
empress said. She whirled around, her veil still dangling down her
neck. Her lips were painted with hieroglyphs. The henna designs of
a fox, a measuring scale, and water ripples all stood out dark on
the pink of her ear-to-ear smile.

Aja bet servants pressed delicacies to those
same lips. The empress had people to powder her plump cheeks. Fit
her with that hanging-bird amulet with its silver wingtips. Every
day Empress Ryn wore jewelry bright enough to make the sun
jealous.

If Aja had sparkled with the same jewels and
ate the same food, people would have to respect her. She wouldn’t
stoop to stealing such finery, but she had come to the Banquet. She
had done what she could. And now she was half snake.

“Ryn, your veil.” The lionman gave a
rumbling hiss, then made a choking sound. He pawed at his
belly.

“Oh no!” The empress fluttered to his side.
“What’s wrong?”

“Didn’t chew my basilisk once.” His claws
pierced his robe and scratch his own skin. “Swallowed by
accident.”

Third Course,
Part II:

A Bellyful of Death

Aja had to bow before the unveiled empress.
Asp fingers slid on the carpet, trying to slither toward her. They
stayed attached to Aja’s hands and couldn’t reach far enough.

The lionman looked from the kneeling Aja to
the empress. He said, “You promised to keep your veil on.”

“Aja is my friend,” the empress said. “How
could I hide who I am from my friends?”

A friend, she had called Aja a friend. Aja
thought it could be true. It would be, by the end of the Banquet.
Aja was too wobbly and squishy to stand.

“Is a snake girl you just met your friend?”
The lionman swiped a claw from Aja to Solin. “Is the hexer your
friend? Is—Ooof!”

The empress wrapped a wing around him. “Your
tummy’s hurting?”

“Like I gulped a bucket of ice.”

Aja glanced at her fingers, the sinuous and
the petrified. Let the lionman turn to stone next. Let him die.

Guilt slimed over her. How could she have
thought something so cruel? Even if he had called her a snake
girl.

With a clopping of goat hooves, Old Janny
approached the swordsman and draped an arm over his shoulder. “No
stranger myself to having a belly full of poisons. What you have to
do is pop your own cork. Flip your flagon. Tickle the dragon.”

“What?” He clenched his stomach.

“Throw up,” the empress said. “Like a mother
bird.”

“Touch the back of your throat.” Old Janny
made stabbing motions into her own mouth.

The lionman eyed Solin, who tiptoed closer
on his crutches. The lionman shivered and reached into his jaws.
Taking his paw out again, he frowned.

“I don’t think I can,” he said. “My cat
hand’s too wide, and it’s all going numb.”

Aja swiveled around in a coil shape to
stand. She would feel awful if he did turn to rock. He was the
empress’s friend. Aja had to help him. Even if he said mean things,
older brothers did that all the time. That’s what Aja had seen.

“Janny.” The lionman opened his mouth in a
spread of fangs. “You do it.”

Old Janny jerked her hand back. “Sorry. I’m
allergic to fangs.”

Aja tried to think how to help. She could
punch the lionman in the stomach. No, the hiss of her asps warned
her that they would bite the lionman. Oh, she had a better idea. A
great one.

“Take a feather from Ryn,” she said, “use it
to—”

“Look.” He held up his paw. The tips of
human fingers stood out among the fur. His claws had changed back
into nails. “It’s curing me. I’ll be all right.”

“You won’t be.” Aja lifted her two petrified
fingers. Someone had to pay attention to her. “You’ll be
stone.”

The empress flapped her wing until a feather
shook loose. “Catch it.”

“Yes,” Old Janny said, “scratch your throat
with it.”

“Get that basilisk out of you,” the empress
said, “or I’ll only have a statue to sing to.”

The lionman slapped the feather between his
paw hands and did the deed. He stumbled out of the lamplight,
retching.

The djinn held out an urn for him. Between
the splatters of vomit, she said, “Mankind is unquestionably the
highest form of life.”

The lionman reeled back into view and
scooped his sword from the carpet. His hands had changed back to
human ones. Eyeing Solin, he stood over the empress. “I feel better
already.”